KLS got a cheese-making kit for Christmas, and already used it to make some halloumi cheese. She did that so quickly I didn’t have time to take photos, so you can bet when it was time for the next cheese I did. Today she made ‘fast mozzarella’!
That’s most of the contents of the kit. It also came with a lengthy manual (you can make over a dozen types of cheese), a thermometer and a cheesecloth. You can also make butter using the kit!
The mozzarella began with a gallon of milk which was heated and then (tiny amounts of) most of the ingredients from the above photo were added periodically.
It started solidifying after the first few items were added, but once the rennet and calcium chloride was put in the process sped up considerably:
All told it was only about an hour on the stove before it was removed for the next step, at which point it looked like this:
If this had been a traditional mozzarella recipe the cheese would now be pressed for about an hour to remove the whey, but the fast version utilized the microwave to do this. In three steps it was microwaved for a minute and each time more of the liquid came out:
It’s almost done! The remaining addition was to stir in a bit of salt, after which it looked like and had the consistency of bread dough:
The penultimate step was to form balls and brine the cheese for 10 minutes. During this step the cheese cooled and solidified:
And then it was done! The three mozzarella balls are now wrapped and in the fridge, waiting to be eaten (by KLS only since I’m not a fan of this type of cheese):
She’s already tried some and says the consistency and taste are both good and she’s looking forward to using it in a recipe! That’s two out of two cheese successes from this kit 🙂