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The HBHW Recommends
Curds & Whey
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- 12 cups fresh water (3 quarts)
- 6 cups instant dry milk powder
- 1 to 1-1/2 cups white vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Heat the water in a very large pot over low heat. Stir in the dry milk powder as the water heats. Heat it gently so the milk won’t burn. When the milk is very hot (about 120°), stir in about a cup of vinegar. Stir the mixture up gently. Turn off the heat and allow the mixture to sit for about 10 minutes, don’t skip this part. The mixture has to sit for the milk to have a chance to curdle. Now there should be a big clump of white cheese curd in the middle of a pool of clear amber liquid. Look at it to make sure. If the liquid is still milky, then you need to add more vinegar to finish curdling the cheese. Add a couple of spoonfuls of vinegar at a time and stir gently. More of the cheese will curdle and clump up. Continue until all of the cheese is curdled, and the liquid is clear. This liquid is called whey. The white clumps are called curds. You have made curds and whey, just like Miss Muffet.
Now the cheese must be rinsed. Line a strainer or collander with cheese cloth, or a thin cloth napkin, or a clean baby diaper. Get the cloth wet with a little water. Carefully pour the big pot of curds and whey into the strainer. Let all of the whey strain off. Run a little cold water over the curds to cool them down, and to rinse out all of the whey. Squeeze the curds with your fingers to break them up, and rinse them thoroughly. Gather up the cloth around the curds. Squeeze it to remove as much of the moisture as you can. This part takes a few minutes. Be patient, and squeeze the cloth covered ball until it is quite dry.
Now, open up the cloth and transfer the cheese curds to a bowl or container. You will have between 1 and 1-1/4 pounds of cheese curds, or between 3 and 4 cups of firmly packed curd. Stir the salt into the curds.
Ricotta or Cottage Cheese: The cheese you have now will work as ricotta cheese in lasagna, or pretty much any where else. To turn it into cottage cheese, add a little evaporated milk or yogurt to “cream” it and stir to combine. You can divide the mixture in half and make some of each if you want to give them both a try.
There are lots of other things you can do with this curd too. See the Dairy Section for details.
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2 Responses to “Curds & Whey”
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Website & Graphics by ccd
May 20th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
We add 1Tbs to 1/4c of butter powder or just plain butter as we are heating the milk. This makes a product that turns out more like when using whole milk. When making drinking milk from powdered, 2tsp of butter powder added to a quart of milk will bring back the whole milk flavor (approx. 4% milk fat.) Since nonfat milk is what is left remaining when the cream is removed from whole milk, and cream is turned in to butter and non-fat buttermilk, by adding butter powder back in to the mix, the cook is just “reassembling” the milk. Try this technique when making yoguhrt from powdered milk then also try making the yoguhrt in to cream cheese. The same goes for making a cream product when needed for whip cream, drinks, on strawberries, etc. which is about 72% butter fat or roughly 3/8cup butter powder per quart of milk.
Also, save the whey (the leftovers after the curd is removed from the pan) to boil pasta, potatoes, in soups, etc. as it is still very nutritious. The whey can also be used to make the next batch of cheese instead of more vinegar, lemon juice, or other acidic agent. Using the previous whey to make curds will leave a softer curd.
HTH
September 11th, 2009 at 12:44 am
How do you make this with regular drinking milk? We get WIC so it would be more affordable for us to just use the whole milk we get from that.
Thanks!