DIY MOZZARELLA Cheese Recipe
Greetings my beautiful lovelies! It's Emmy. Welcome back!
Today, I'm gonna attempt to make homemade mozzarella cheese.
Now, I've seen many videos about this and it looks pretty straightforward.
But, like a lot of things that look very simple, it isn't.
So in my initial stages of researching this, I went to my grocery store and I picked up this.
And this is rennet. And rennet is derived from the gut of an animal, and it is used to coagulate
the cheese. And if you're a vegetarian, they also have a vegetarian rennet.
But, this is essential. This is what will curdle your cheese and transform your milk into something solid.
So I thought, "Okay! I've got my rennet and let's go ahead and get started!"
But then I saw lots of different recipes, and different brands of rennet, and different amounts of rennet.
So I said, "Maybe this won't work."
So, I went ahead and bought this. And this is a homemade mozzarella cheese making kit, and it contains pretty much everything you need,
besides the milk, to make homemade mozzarella cheese. I thought this would be a foolproof way to do it. So, let's do it!
So this contains the cheese salt, the citric acid,
the thermometer, rennet, and some muslin that you'll need to strain the cheese. So let me give you a synopsis of the whole process:
It's kind of similar to making tofu. If you haven't seen that video, I'll put a link up above.
Basically, we're gonna take the cow's milk and we're gonna add rennet to it,
we're gonna add some salt, and a little bit of citric acid.
All of these things combined will create a kind of solid, gelatinous kind of mass of milk.
We're gonna cut that up and form it into curds, cook it a little bit,
separate the curds from the water -- which is the whey -- and with the curds,
I'm gonna form it into mozzarella. Now mozzarella specifically is a fresh cheese. It is not aged at all.
It's consumed within a few days of actually making the cheese, and it comes from the southern area of Italy. And the word "mozzarella" is
believed to come from "mozza," which means "to cut" in Italian. So, let's go ahead make this cheese!
So this kit includes four tablets of rennet, and we're only going to need a quarter of a tablet.
It's like cutting vitamins!
Alrighty, so my rennet tablet is in my bowl. Dissolve that in a quarter cup of water.
So, citric acid I've used before in canning, and making homemade bath bombs. [laughing]
It's a very fine powder and you don't want to inhale it; It can be very irritating. So, one...
...and a half.
Dissolve that. Alright, to our large pot, we're going to add our dissolved citric acid and water.
So next we're gonna add one gallon of whole milk.
It's important that this is not ultra pasteurized because then it won't set up properly.
I got this milk from Wright's Dairy Farm here in Rhode Island. It's a lovely little farm --
they have little dairy cows and calves that your kids can see, if you have children. And they've got a little bakery on premises too,
which is really really popular. So, yeah. Great little place if you live in the Rhode Island, Massachusetts area.
Now, we're going to heat this, stirring it vigorously, until it reaches 90° Fahrenheit.
We're now at 90° Fahrenheit. I'm going to remove it from the heat. Now we're gonna add our rennet, slowly.
And now we're gonna pulse this for about thirty seconds up and down.
I've always wanted to make mozzarella cheese since I saw that episode of Reading Rainbow and they make mozzarella knots: I'm like: "Yes,"
I want to do that someday." So here I am!
Alrighty so now we're gonna let this sit undisturbed for five minutes and then the curds and whey should start to form the curds.
Alrighty, so it's been five minutes. Let's go ahead and check on our cheese.
So... let's see if we touch it....
Oh yes! Indeed, it has formed into curds. "Check the curd at this point. It should look like custard
with clear separation between the curd and the whey. If the curd is too soft or the whey is too milky
let it sit for a few minutes more."
Oh yeah, look at that!
Amazing! It is like custard.
Now, we're gonna take a knife and plunge it in here and cut it. Oh my gosh, that's such a great feeling!
All the way down.
I feel like a cheese maker in one of those like "how do they make that?" videos! Oh, it's so satisfying!
Okay, so I'm gonna cut the curds....
[with] my knife: make sure we get all the way to the bottom.
*whisper* Oh....yeah!
Now we place this back on the heat. Heat it to a hundred and five degrees. Can you see that? Look at that!
Oh, that's so awesome! It's like tofu!
Ahh!
Can you see that?
So, so stinking cool!
We're supposed to slowly stir this until it reaches a hundred and five degrees.
Just after a few minutes, it is now at a hundred and five degrees,
and now we turn off the heat and stir it for two to five minutes.
It says the more you stir it the firmer your cheese will be.
Now the curds have changed --
they don't look like Jell-o any longer, and the whey has a slight yellow color to it --
kind of looks like cottage cheese.
Alrighty, so three minutes have been up, and now we're going to ladle our curds into a microwave-safe bowl.
I'm gonna use this little sieve here to kind of
speed things up a bit.
This is so great! And I'm gonna save this whey because I'm gonna try to make ricotta cheese next.
Alrighty, so here are my curds strained of the whey. Now, I'm gonna microwave this for one minute [humming].
This is one teaspoon of cheese salt.
Fold gently into the middle. Okay!
Now we're supposed to microwave this for another thirty seconds and the temperature of the curd should be about a hundred and sixty degrees.
If not we'll give it another thirty seconds.
Five, four, three, two, one!
This is only at a hundred and twenty degrees. I'm gonna give this another thirty seconds.
Check the temperature of our mozzarella.
Just at a hundred and thirty huh -- so, thirty more seconds!
We are at one sixty four! Now we're supposed to stretch this, and pull it like taffy until it's soft and shiny.
Okay, look at this!
So beautiful -- look at that!
Oh my gosh that's hot!
A hundred and sixty-five degrees to be exact. Okay, and then it says, "shape it into a ball."
Okay.
Look at that beautiful ball of mozzarella.
Okay.
Now we're gonna plunge this into some cold, refrigerated water and let it rest for fifteen minutes.
Goodbye beautiful mozzarella!
Hehehehe....
Alrighty, so we are back! So I let my mozzarella rest for fifteen minutes in the refrigerated water,
then I placed it into a bowl of ice water.
Now the directions say that this cooling period is really important because we want a fine-grained cheese.
So here's my beautiful ball of cheese. It turned out so stinking cute!
I'm so excited to taste this! Put it on this little dish right here.
I love it! I'm so excited about my little mozzarella cheese. It's actually not that little -- it's pretty huge!
It's so stinking cute I don't want to even cut into it, but cut I must! Alright, here we go!
[Gasp] There it is!
And it looks beautiful! Look at that: little bits of air bubbles there.
And I'm gonna just slice it like this.
Oh yes, this turned out beautifully!
Look at that you can even see the stretch on that. Oh my gosh, this is great!
Beautiful! It totally worked, it totally worked, I'm so excited!
I'm so excited about this cheese. It turned out so
beautifully! Let me show you what the texture's like: if you look really carefully there's a little bit of swirling in there.
You can see where I folded and stretched the cheese.
If I pull it, you can see that there is some grain to it right there.
And, it does kind of break apart pretty easily, but there is some stretch, too.
Alrighty, let's give this a taste. Itadakimasu!
Mmm-hmm!
Absolutely delicious! Now the recipe says that the salt is optional -- I highly recommend it.
That one teaspoon of salt is just the perfect amount of salt in there. Enough to kind of brighten things, but not
to make this overly salty. This is a fresh cheese,
so it tastes of milk and it's creamy, but it has a nice little chew to it. It's got a little bit of a bite.
Mmm...
But not as firm as say string cheese.
But it's got a little bit of tooth to it.
But not so soft as like a cream cheese. And because this is a fresh cheese, it tastes clearly and distinctly of milk:
it's rich and creamy and has that lovely pure flavor of milk.
Mm-hm.
No tanginess, no funkiness, none of those flavors that come with aging cheeses which I happen to adore,
but this fresh cheese flavor is lovely!
Mm-hmm. Now, let's try with a little bit of tomato.
I just happened to have some green house tomatoes here that I bought from the supermarket....
This would have been better if I'd had some basil too, but....
tomato will have to do!
Mmm.
Such a great combination!
The tomato lends a little bit of acidity, a little bit of brightness, a little bit of
moisture. Really interesting mouthfeel too -- it's a little bit
squishy and wet as opposed to the kind of slightly bouncy texture of the cheese.
Delicious, wonderful combination. That little acidity from the tomato with the creamy dairy-ness of the cheese --
Excellent, excellent, excellent! So there you have it: homemade mozzarella. If you're interested in tackling this project, which I highly recommend,
it's actually quite easy. You just have to make sure you get your temperatures and
procedures correct. I do recommend this kit, everything worked just as instructed.
It is made by The Cultures for Health and I will put the link down below
into the description. Alrighty, I hope you guys enjoyed that one;
I hope you guys learned something. Tune in for the
ricotta episode where I take the leftover whey and see if I can make ricotta cheese with that.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Please share this video with your friends;
follow me on social media; like this video; subscribe; and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo! Take care! Bye!!!!
[Singing] I got a baby mozzarella cheese, baby mozzarella cheese!
Ever since I watched Reading Rainbow and learned how mozzarella was made I've wanted to try it myself. LET'S DO IT! New videos every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday 8 pm EST. Join the #emmymade League of Adventuresome Eaters & find me here: SUBSCRIBE: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=emmymadeinjapan TWITTER: https://twitter.com/emmymadeinjapan INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/emmymade SNAPCHAT: @emmymade FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/itsemmymadeinjapan/ OTHER CHANNEL: emmymade http://bit.ly/1zK04SJ How to Make Tofu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdGLybLVLhs DIY Fizzy Surprise Eggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbuh-QEv0gM Find the Cultures for Health mozzarella kit here: https://amzn.to/2GSfP98. Disclaimer: Some of the above links are Amazon affiliate links and I receive a small commission with each sale at no extra cost to you. Thanks so much for the support. This video is NOT sponsored. Just cutting cheese. 💨 'Childrens Playground 6' 'Please Enter 3' 'Simple Pleasantries 2' are courtesy of epidemicsound.com and 'Sprightly' from iMovie. If you're reading this, you're on the inside. Comment: "Hello, Baby Cheese."