Making your own cheese or yogurt is simple. You just need milk, heat, patience, and the ability to use a thermometer as it was intended. Ah, there’s the rub.
Cheese and yogurt are what fresh milk wants to become if it’s not needed in assisting a cookie or accompanying hot pancakes to their natural end. Cheese-ish and yogurt-ish are what fresh milk will sort of become when no longer fresh, which is why it curdles right up on its own after a while. But shepherding fresh milk with heat, patience, and a reliable temperature recorder help you make the cheese or yogurt you would like, not the cheese or yogurt it wants to be. And isn’t that one of humankind’s good small triumphs?
As the James Beard Award-winning journalist Janet Fletcher nicely demonstrates in this brief video, yogurt is really just hot milk kept hot for the right amount of time. Janet joins us at SHED on Saturday, June 13, for a yogurt-making workshop that includes a copy of her new book, Yogurt: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, for all attendees.
At the end of June, we are glad to host Louella Hill, the self-proclaimed “San Francisco Milk Maid,” as she leads a cheese-making workshop in the afternoon of Sunday, June 28, followed by a cheese-tasting that evening. All workshop attendees will receive a copy of Louella’s new book, The Kitchen Creamery.
But you can get started now — or any time — making your own fresh dairy treats. Being prepared is more than half the work. Our list of essential tools begins quite simply, with the pot.
While we prefer a heavy-bottomed stainless steel pot, enamel or glass are fine, too. As long as the pot is nice and big, unchipped, and non-reactive (no copper, aluminum, or iron), you’re off to a good start.
The thermometer. Not a meat thermometer, not a candy thermometer — a dairy thermometer is your best buddy in the simple quest to transform liquid milk into creamy curds and delectable yogurt. Invest in this. A dairy thermometer has a scale that doesn’t go above 220 degrees, allowing it greater accuracy, and should have a clip that allows it to be secured to the side of the pot so that you have your hands free to stir, because stir you will be doing. Also look for one that recalibrates so that you don’t fool yourself when things quite literally get hot. Using the thermometer isn’t quite enough; remember, you do need to check it, too. (This is more an admonition for ourselves than anyone!)
A cheesecloth or butter muslin. “Butter” muslin has a tighter weave that holds milk solids more, um, solidly. If cheesecloth is all you have or can find, no matter. Double-folding the cloth before straining adds extra straining power. The nice thing about owning a cheesecloth or butter muslin is that you own it — once hand-washed and left to line-dry, it can be used until it stops being so useful.
A perforated ladle may seem like a quaint object solely useful for cheese- and yogurt-making until you actually have one and then it seems like the one solitary tool that your kitchen has been grossly lacking lo these many years. Buy yourself a good non-reactive stainless steel ladle and plan to give it on to your grandchildren one day many decades from now. You’ll use it for pasta, you’ll love it for soups, and it will make your dairy explorations so much easier as you wangle it to deftly lift curds from whey.
The colander is what separates your nascent cheese from the sink, involves it in the cheesecloth, and allows excess liquids to easily drain away. Take a look at your colander. Do you love it? Get a good one and give it to those grandkids with that perforated ladle at the turn of the next century.
After you’ve mastered the most basic ricottas and plain yogurts, you will be ready for more sophisticated forays. That’s when you’ll want to learn more about starter cultures, milk additives, bacterias, tasty molds, and the like.
Rennet is the most common additive in helping milk to form curds, and is available in liquid, tablet, or powder form. Liquid rennet is the easiest to accurately measure. Don’t mistake junket for rennet; junket is for custards and has the reverse enzyme ratio you need for cheese.
If you’re making hard cheese, you’ll want to have calcium chloride on hand to give a firmer set to your curd. Citric acid is essential when making your own mozzarella, for example, and the addition of lipase enzyme returns to your milk what pasteurization took from it, allowing it achieve the sharper taste you want for feta, bleu cheese, and other ripe goodies. Cheese salt should contain no iodine as that flattens the lactic bacteria that add flavor, and should be neither too fine or too coarse — which is why it’s best to simply purchase salt that advertises itself as being for cheese.
We make our own ricotta and yogurt at SHED, and actually smoke the yogurt to add both tang and smolder to such plates as our tete de cochon. Cheese- and yogurt-making are addictive pastimes that reward everyone in the house. We hope that you’ll join us for one of our upcoming workshops and stop in soon to browse the equipment we have to help you expand your knowledge and comfort with essential food stuffs — even if they do need the basic human patience of reading a thermometer.