Easy White Cheese

[Kathy]

Easy White Cheese
Great for breading and frying, stir-frying with vegetables, or by itself, this mild cheese will keep refrigerated for one week.

1 gallon milk
2 T. lemon juice
3 T. white vinegar

Pour milk into a large enamel or stainless steel pot.
Slowly bring the temperature up to 180F;
This may take an hour.
Stir frequently to prevent scorching, and hold the temperature at 180F for four minutes.
Combine vinegar and lemon juice and add to the milk, stirring gently, until the curds separate form the whey. Line a colander with cheesecloth, and pour the contents of the pot.
Tie the corners of the cheescloth together to form a bag and let it hang to drain for three hours.

The cheese will be solid when its ready.
Wrap and refrigerate. Yield: one pound.

Variation: Herbed Easy White Cheese -- Add 1½ teaspoon dried chives and ½ teaspoon dillweed to the curds before hanging.

[dlangland]

Very interesting, Kathy. I'll have to give this a try. Deb

[Deleted]

Okay, I'm a little late reading this

Do you think I could cut the recipe in half, or would that mess up the lemon juice/vinegar part? I don't think DH and I would be able to eat a pound of it in a week.

Do you think I could put it in my crockpot on high until it reached 180? My crockpot doesn't have a temp setting, just Keep Warm, Low and High but I've seen juice boiling when it was on High. Maybe I could set a thermometer to go off when it got to 180? Or do you think it would take too long to get there?
Feel free to point and laugh if that was an obviously stupid question

/Via

[Kathy]

Via, I've never halved the recipe but I don't think it should be a problem.

The crockpot should work on high or else you could use a double boiler.

I use a $3.99 meat thermometer from WalMart to check the temp although you can buy very nice dairy thermometers from the Cheesemaking Supply places.

I'll look over on the cheese making site and see if you can freeze the extra cheese. That would be nice if you could, cook once & have cheese for 2-3 wks.

[Deleted]

It doesn't have to be hard. When I make this, I don't bother taking its temperature, just heat it until there's a thin skin on the top and it feels hot. Scoop the skin off, dump in the lemon juice and/or vinegar (I just use white vinegar, 1 cup to a gallon of milk) and stir. When I used to make this with storebought milk, I got curds, but now that I use fresh milk, I get a big glob of something that looks like melted mozzarella! I just hang it in a tea towel overnight and it's fine.

It's not salty, though, so it probably won't taste very good if you're expecting a salty cheese. I used to put mine in a cold water brine in the fridge for a few days, but that makes wet cheese, so last week when I did this, I tried something different. After it came out of the towel, I rubbed canning salt all over the outside of it and wrapped it in plastic and put in the fridge. This will draw more moisture out of the cheese, so don't leave it untended for more than a couple of days. Then bring it out, unwrap it, blot it with paper towels (the salt crust will have magically "disappeared" and the cheese will be salty) and rewrap it in plastic.

I love this stuff, and it's so easy!

~Lannie