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Make Your Own Mozzarella Cheese

Making your own cheese at home -- much like other dairy products, like yogurt -- is one of those things that, while requiring some demystification and a few special ingredients, can be done a lot more easily than you think. In the case of mozzarella cheese, one of my favorites, can be done in less than an hour, for the cost of little more than a gallon of milk. It's a fun food science experiment; one minute, you have a pot of milk, the next, the beginnings of cheese -- and you get to eat the (delicious!) results. Let's get started.

Supplies & Ingredients

--1 gallon (or larger -- I used my 6 quart stock pot) stainless steel or other non-reactive (e.g. non-aluminum, non-cast iron) pot, with lid 
--dairy thermometer
--colander
--slotted spoon
--long knife
--rubber gloves (optional, but recommended)
--cheese cloth (optional, but also recommended)

--1 gallon milk -- not ultra-pasteurized. If using raw milk, and you aren't absolutely, positively sure it is free of pathogens, heat the milk to 145 degrees Farenheit and keep it there for 30 minutes to pasteurize it. If using store-bought milk, be sure you go with regular "pasteurized" milk, and not "ultra-pasteurized" (it'll say on the label) as the latter has been heated to a very high temperature that destroys all the organisms you need to make cheese.
--1 1/4 cup cool chlorine-free water. If you don't have a water filtration system that removes chlorine for you, you can get it at the grocery store.
--1 1/2 teaspoon citric acid
--1/4 teaspoon (or 1/4 tablet) rennet
--1 teaspoon cheese salt (or salt substitute). Optional, but, again, recommended.

The last three ingredients can be had from anywhere that sells cheese-making supplies -- I got mine in a kit from cheesemaking.com, but the ingredients aren't that hard to come by.

Photo credit: Collin Dunn

Turning milk to cheese

Step 1. Dissolve the rennet in 1/4 cup of the cool (chlorine-free) water; stir it up and set it aside.
Step 2. Mix citric acid into the remaining 1 cup of water, and stir until dissolved.
Step 3. Pour the milk into your pot. Stir it continuously while adding the citric acid solution.
Step 4. Continue stirring the milk over medium heat until it reaches 88 degrees F.
Step 5. Remove the pot from the heat, and slowly stir in the rennet solution, stirring up and down for about 30 seconds.
Step 6. Cover the pot and leave it undisturbed for 5 minutes.

Photo credit: Collin Dunn

Curds & Whey

Step 7. Take off the lid, and -- voila! -- you should have the beginnings of cheese. The curd (solid) will have separated from the whey (liquid), and the curd should look like custard, with a clear separation. If the curd is still too soft or milky, give it a few more minutes to set. If you have something that more closely resembles ricotta cheese, you may have stumbled into some ultra-pasteurized milk by mistake. Time to start over -- sorry!

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

Cutting the cheese

Step 8. Cut the curd with the knife -- be sure that it's long enough to reach the bottom of the pot. You want to create little cubes of curd, so cut parallel lines, about an inch apart, at a 45 degree angle. Since the goal is creating curd cubes, you'll want to make four sets of cuts; after the first set of slices, rotate the pot 90 degrees, and repeat until your one solid curd has been sliced and diced into a bunch of floating cubes. Click the photo at left to see what it looks like when you're done.

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

Heating the curds

Step 9. Put your pot of curds and whey back on the stove, and heat to 110 degrees F, slowly stirring the curds. Once you achieve 110 degrees, take the pot off the stove while continuing to stir for another 2 to 5 minutes -- more time will equal a firmer cheese.

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

Separating curds & whey

Step 10. Ladel the curds into the colander (which I lined with some cheesecloth), folding gently to help drain off the whey. Repeat a couple of times until the curd begins to become more dense and less moist. Keep as much of the whey in the pot as you can -- you'll need it.
Step 11. Once your curds are more or less one solid mass, heat the leftover whey (or a different pot of water, if you got ahead of yourself and discarded your whey) to 185 degrees F. Put your curds back in the pot for 5 - 10 minutes, and don your rubber gloves.

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

Streching the curds

Step 12. Remove the curds from the hot whey and stretch. If they don't stretch like taffy, and fall apart, put them back in their bath -- they have to be about 135 degrees F to stretch. Sprinkle the salt on as you stretch -- you might get a half-dozen or so good pulls on it -- and continue stretching until it's cool. The more you work it, the firmer it will be, so less stretching will equal a softer cheese. I found that stretching roughly half of the curd at a time was a good workable amount.

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

Great balls of cheese

Step 13. Form your stretched cheese into pleasing shapes -- I chose balls (the little one was the test to see if it was hot enough to stretch). If you go with a round shape, you can pull the edges up underneath (to hide any seams) and they'll sort of melt into themselves. Other options: Braids, string cheese, rolled logs...the options are only bound by your imagination.

If you aren't ready to eat your new cheese right away, give it a bath in ice water to cool it, and store it in the refrigerator for two weeks. Mine didn't make it that long -- I sliced it up and made a delicious caprese salad. Happy cheese-making!

More on making your own
Caprese Salad made with Home Made Fresh Mozzarella
Make Your Own Yogurt
Make Your Own Green Beer for St. Patrick's Day (or any day, really)
Make Your Own Organic Baby Food
Make Your Own Eco-Friendly Cosmetics

Photo credit: Jocelyn Tutak

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