Last week, we made cheese and butter in our class! I never knew how easy (and tasty) making your own cheese could be. We first heated up half a gallon of milk and then added some citric acid and rennin to the milk making it curdle. After letting the curdling process proceed for about 30 minutes, we then strained the curdles using cheesecloth separating the casein from whey proteins. Microwaving and straining the curdled casein multiple times, our cheese began to solidify. Some of us added salt while others did not and we made our very first mozzarella cheese! It was really delicious and I can’t wait to try this at home.
- Straining the cheese
- Jocelyn and Amy’s final product
We learned that citric acid makes milk curdle because the pH affects the polarity of the casein, making each of the protein molecules attract each other. Rennin can speed up this process.
We also made butter in class, which made me realize that the light and fluffy whipped cream that I’ve enjoyed so much is in fact just an intermediate to butter, which is a little gross. However, it’s really interesting how increasing the amount of time we were beating the buttermilk influenced the physical state of the buttermilk. It would be really cool to go through the chemistry behind what is going on there
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