How to Make Mozzarella Cheese
ByWant to know what makes me excited (besides little plastic drawers)? The fact that with only two gallons of milk…I can squeeze out THREE great dairy products. With the two gallons of raw milk you see pictured below, I was able to make three eight ounce balls of mozzarella cheese…a half pound of butter…and about a cup of ricotta cheese.
Talk about milking something for all it’s worth! (Whoa…very cheesy joke.) (Which I feel is appropriate because this post is about making…cheese. Cheesy-ness abounds.) Anyway…
Even if you don’t think you’ll ever make your own mozzarella cheese…you may still have fun reading about how it’s made!
To make Mozzarella Cheese you will need:
- Two gallons of milk (I use raw, organic) (As far as I understand, you can use pasteurized and homogenized milk too…although you won’t get the butter and ricotta out of it since the cream doesn’t rise to the top.)
- 2 teaspoons citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup water
- 1 cup cultured buttermilk
- 30 drops vegetable rennet mixed with 1/4 cup water (I get my rennet from Azure Standard or Wilderness Family Naturals.)
- 1 gallon water
- 1/2 cup sea salt
- Large stock pot
- Long knife
- Food thermometer
- Strainer
- Tea towels
Okay, ready to make cheese? You’ll need to block out about two and a half to three hours of time…but most of that time is wait time, not work time!
First, if you’re using raw milk…skim off the cream. You know I’m usually big on leaving in the fat…but the fat separates itself out of the cheese while you’re making it for some reason. So, skim it off, put it into another jar and save it for making butter!
Pour the milk into a large pot (I use my big stock pot). Stir in the buttermilk and citric acid mixed with water. Heat to 91 degrees. Remove from heat, put the lid on and let it sit for one hour.
Add the rennet mixed with water to the milk. Allow it to sit for at least 15 minutes, or until the milk solidifies slightly and it able to be “sliced”.
Use a long knife to “cut the curd” into one inch squares.
Let the curd sit about five minutes.
Heat the curd to 91 degrees. Remove from heat, place the lid on the pot and allow it to sit for one hour. After one hour, the curd and the whey should have separated.
Place a strainer into another large pot and cover it with a tea towel.
Pour the curds into the strainer/tea towel…straining out as much whey as you can. Save the whey!!
Rig up something fancy like this to hang your curds, making sure you have a bowl underneath to catch more whey that will drip out. I usually leave mine overnight as it takes several hours for all of the whey to be removed.
In the morning…remove the tea towel. Wow, a big hunk of cheese! Now…the fun part begins!
In your large pot…heat one gallon of water mixed with 1/2 cup salt. (Hint: I use Redmonds Real Sea Salt and it can be too chunky if I don’t try to dissolve some of it first. Therefore, I put my water and salt into a jar and shake it well, then pour it into the pot. The residue from the salt remains in the jar, leaving only salty water…without chunks!
Heat the salt water to 170 degrees. Meanwhile…
Cut the cheese (oh, my boys think it’s SO FUNNY when I say that…) into 1-2 inch squares.
Once your water reaches 170 degrees, remove it from the heat and dump in your cheese. Kind of stir it around for a minute or two until the cheese softens and begins sticking together.
Use a big wooden spoon to catch the cheese from the water. It should start sticking together and forming a blob on your spoon. Stretch the cheese. This part is SO COOL!! Dip it down into the hot water every once in a while to reheat the cheese so that it will continue to stretch, but try not to keep it in the water too long. Keep on stretching and dipping the cheese until it is shiny. This stretching process will take about 8 minutes. (Every once in a while I get a batch of cheese that just won’t stretch. It’s a bummer. The cheese still tastes fine…it just doesn’t look as pretty, shred as well, or melt as nicely. We eat it anyway!)
After you’ve stretched your cheese and it has formed a big long shiny wad, take it out and put it onto a plate.
I divide my cheese into three blobs. Squeeze out the excess water and shape the cheese into nice balls.
Place the balls into a bowl of cold water. This will take out the heat and help them hold their shape.
Tada!!! Mozzarella Cheese!
I’ll take time during my next two Frugal Friday posts to share how I make butter with the leftover cream…and ricotta cheese with the leftover whey!
So…have you ever made cheese before? Do you think this process looks like something you could do? You wanna come over and make cheese with me some time? (Then we can say “cut the cheese” together and laugh like we’re really funny.)
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Oh, I so want to do that sometime!! Just have to check out our natural foods store for the rennet and citric acid. Also, do you get cultured buttermilk left after making the butter? Or is that different? Do you use store-bought buttermilk?
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FlightRisk Reply:
September 5th, 2010 at 7:04 am
You can get both rennet and citric acid at any grocery store. Rennet is in the pudding/jello aisle bbecause it can be used for ice cream and rennet custard. Look for a small box of tablets, usually by a company called “junket”. Citric acid is with the bakery items. If they don’t have citric acid, I have been wanting to experiment with “fruit fresh”. It is ascorbic acid (vitamin c) and citric acid. It should work. But then vinegar, lemon juice, etc, any acid will work if you know how much to add to bring the ph down. Indian stores are the cheapest place I have found to buy spices, and in huge bags if you want. They usually have a large bag of citric acid that will last youquite a long time. Lastly, if you have a beer/wine home brewing store, they will have starter culture, citric acid, etc since it is a similar process.
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Oops, sorry about that. I put the link there now for buttermilk. And, in case you missed it in the post, I’ll put it here too: http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/making-cultured-buttermilk-kefir-and-sour-cream
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I would love to hang out with you and learn from you :) I can’t wait to try this recipe.
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Not only is this just plain interesting, your photos are fantastic!
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Neat operation. I make my own cheese all the time, except it’s non-dairy cheese and it seems easier to make than this process. Your method looks fascinating, though… how neat.
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Keri Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
how do you make non-dairy cheese?
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You are my hero, Laura! :) I’ve been wanting to make mozza cheese for quite some time (and have the rennet in my fridge to prove it), but haven’t gotten around to learning how to.
Thank you so much for that incredibly awesome tutorial! If I lived close to you, I would definitely come over and make some cheese with you, and laugh like crazy every time you said “cut the cheese”. Just to humor you, of course. :)
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Oh that looks sooo fun!
I’ve been hoping for this since I found U!
Thanks so much for posting!
I have an old, old book here that is very similar… it said rennet can be found in drug stores or something? Have you ever been able to find it in some sort of local store or pharmacy?
I’m also curious as to what your outcome is in quantity. How many cups of cheese? Cups of whey? …
Thank U for taking the time to post for us cheese-hungry gals!
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WOW! I have to admit that I am intimidated. I would love to learn how to really do it but it looks over my pay grade whic is funny. I have never been intimidated before by making anything. I have to think on this one.
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Wow this is amazing! Now can you shred that mozarella to use on pizza and stuff? I love mozarella!
When we were studying colonial times we learned that the people didn’t use milk as a beverage like we do, but as food. After they got all the food they could out of it, whatever was left would go to the pigs! Isn’t that funny. I guess they didn’t have cereal back then!
Thank you so much for sharing this!
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Joelle,
Would you share your non-dairy cheese recipe? What do you substitute with? Can cheese be made using rice milk?
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That’s great. I might just try that. Well, when out stock of cheese goes down anyway.
God Bless,
Katie
http://www.1200ayear.blogspot.com
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Oh my does that look delish! I would love to make my own cheese! There is a dairy farm right down the road from me–I wonder if they would sell me some raw milk. We eat a lot of cheese, especially mozzerella, so this would definitely be handy.
For the rennet and the citric acid, would a natural food store carry those, or just an online retailer. I live in no mans land, so I don’t know if they would or not. Guess I should just check it out.
Thanks!
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Oh, yum! You make it look so easy. I actually have a cheese making kit from New England Cheesemaking Company that’s been sitting in my pantry for nearly a year or more even. But I can’t seem to get up the gumption to actually try it. I’ve been wanting to do this–especially when we were getting raw milk. Maybe some day. . . :)
Oh, and I’m expecting my third little boy in July and our house is already filled with boy humor. Sometimes, I think I need a little girl just to even it out a bit.
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Well, it still looks way to hard for me to do, but it looks a lot easier than when they showed it in Gourmet magazine a few months ago!
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Thanks for the great tutorial – you make it look SO EASY!
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OH my goodness!! That looks incredible. I can’t wait for the next two posts.
I just made homemade yogurt for the first time and I feel so crafty and frugal — imagine if I made cheese! :)
Thanks so much!
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That looks like fun! The cheese looks awesome!
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Hello,
What a great tutorial! I love your sourdough series and look forward to reading about the ricotta cheese and butter.
Take Care,
Trixie
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Hey Joelle–ditto on the dairy free cheese. Care to share your recipe?
Cause you know that the ‘packaged’ ones are beyond Nasty. Nasty.
and Laura, I think everyone who reads her wants to be invited to come over and spend some time in your world learnin from the mastah. :)
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Amen to that April. I would so love to spend time in her world and learn.
Laura, what about cheddar. Can you teach us that one too.
I am learning so much. I love it. Thank you for all you do and share with us.
Kathy
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How cool and fun! I would LOVE to come over and make some cheese with you and my son would probably love to laugh with your boys as they tell jokes and “cut the cheese”! Oh my! This is so interesting and neat and I just can’t wait to try it for myself. Thank you for making it look so fun and relatively easy! I love the pictures.
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Very cool! I’m too lazy to do that – but still very cool :)
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It’s like science lab for grown-ups! I can’t wait to try it, am still looking for a raw milk source here. Would be easier if we still lived in Nebraska, huh.
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Are you an Italian or a Nebraskan? Both? That looks like so much fun- sImilar to making paneer- but paneer lacks the stretching- can’t wait til the cows milk picks up and I can get extra!
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You timed this post perfectly! I had made my usual batch of yogurt last weekend, but the starter was too old & weak, so the yogurt was very watery and didn’t set. Today I decided to try again with the same milk-yogurt, and new starter (which is just plain yogurt I get at the store). I heated it up, but the curds started separating from the whey…so I had to quickly switch gears and make “cheese” instead!! So I just poured the whole pot into a strainer lined with a tea towel, which I set over a bowl to catch the whey. So, I guess it’s “yogurt cheese”! I was trying to decide what to do with it…but in the meantime, my husband has discovered it and loves it!
So now I have all this whey…and I didn’t know one could make ricotta from whey until I read your post…so I think I’ll give that a try right now!
Thank you for this post!!
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Wow, great post. It’s interesting to see the process.
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Wow, this is wonderful! I’m saving it in my bookmarks for the next time I’m feeling adventurous. :)
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Wow! So neat. I wish I had ordered more milk for my next pick up. I really want to try this and I think my girls will get a kick out of it!
Thanks for sharing.
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Wow! This cheese recipe will totally take our homemade pizza to the next level of goodness! Thanks for sharing.
I’ve also been using your Honey wheat bread recipe for pizza crust and cinnamon rolls! talk about great! thanks for sharing.
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Wow! You have perfect timing! I just read about making cheese in Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.’ As soon as I read about it, I wanted to make it and you answered so many of my questions with your detailed post. The pictures are a tremendous help. I can’t wait to make my own cheese! Thank you!
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Oh wow, I love mozzarella, it’s my favorite type of cheese! I would really love to try this out. You make it look so easy!
http://www.adlynmorrison.blogspot.com
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Wow – thank you! I should be picking up my first milk “shares” of the spring on Monday, and I will definitely plan to try this soon!
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I just found your blog. Yes, I would love to come to your house and make cheese! I just made my first batch of yogurt last week and would love to try this sometime. Thanks for the instructions.
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thanks for your wonderful instructions I really apreciated that, its perfect, i start to make my cheese at home, just one a week. i would like to know if you have any infomations about how to use R704. if yes please give me more informations.
thanks and God bless you all
Almeida, hamilton Canada
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thanks for the post! it looks really interesting. i’m keen to give it a go. nice pictures too, i really like the one wher u are stretching the cheese! and i now understand why the expensive artesanal mozzarella balls always come in … well, that ball shape!
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Hi Laura!
I just wanted to let you know that I just made this! I only used 1 gallon of raw milk, so I halfed all the ingrediants. But, I didn’t have buttermilk, so I used kefir. I also didn’t have citric acid, so I used lemon (which I didn’t half as I figured the citric acid was in powder form and concentrated) deluted in water.
I halfed the rennant, but after 15 minutes nothing happened, so I added the full amount and 20 minutes later (a total of 35 min.) it was just right!
I thought you might like to know that alternatives that I used in case someone else asks!
Thanks for all your work!
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I love you posting. You really have a knack for explaining the process in a concise and humorous way :o). Thanks!
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I made my 3rd batch of mozzarella this weekend, the first double batch with 2 gallons. Of course, it was the first one I totally screwed up! :( When I added the mozzarella to the hot water, it cooled the temp down so much, and I was trying to get it back up to temp quickly, but the cheese stayed in the water Way. Too. Long. It never recovered. I have a double batch of mozz that crumbles like feta and doesn’t melt. Shucks. So if someone out there is trying this, remember to follow Laura’s advice and DON’T leave the cheese in the water very long at all!
I actually tried a different mozz recipe first, and the flavor wasn’t nearly as good as this one (no buttermilk involved), but I did like one part of it. Instead of water, the stretching is done in the hot whey (before making the ricotta). This way whatever comes off the cheese into the liquid ends up in the ricotta – where you get 1/2 cup of ricotta, I would get one or even 2 cups. You can also add a cup of whole milk to the whey before heating to get more ricotta, if you don’t know what to do with a half cup but could make a lasagna with 2 cups!
I’m hoping next time I get it right – I felt so badly because I told my son I finally understood how to do it so he could help stretch the cheese…and then nothing stretched. He was disappointed!
:) Katie
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Thank you so much for the wonderful tutorial! It is very interesting to me too! I was wondering if there is a way to get string cheese out of this? This is all new to me and I haven’t tried to make any dairy products on my own yet, but look forward to trying. I think it will be a great educational tool for my kids. Thanks again!
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Laura Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 8:38 am
I think there is a way, and I’ve experimented a little bit trying to form little cheese sticks. They don’t turn out perfectly, but we still eat them!
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I started this tonight — it’s hanging to drip now. Friday is pizza night at my house. My kids are “dairy allergic” but tolerate raw milk. My daughter’s worst reaction was to the pasteurized, processed mozzarella so we haven’t had pizza here in a long time. I have sprouted spelt flour (can’t do unsprouted grains either) and now mozzarella and we are having pizza!! I can’t wait. Tomorrow I’m going to borrow Katie’s idea to stretch the cheese in the whey so I can make lots of ricotta. Now I just have to decide…butter or whipped cream?? :)
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I love this tutorial. So does my mom. So, several ladies in our milk coop started last week a rotation of an extra two gallons of milk so they could take turns making cheese from it. I went to my mom’s house on Thursday to give this mozzarella, ricotta, cream (we made sour cream instead) thing a try.
Well, we had two issues with it, and I’m going to run them by you to see if you have any ideas. First, the ricotta didn’t curd in the whey by heating it. Eventually, we added some apple cider vinegar and, when that failed, more raw milk. The milk finally curded (?), and we gleaned less than a cup of ricotta (which seemed to be from the milk). The whey was really milky. Later, when it settled some, there seemed to be cheese forming at the bottom of the strained whey. We aren’t sure why that happened. Any ideas?
Second, when we went to stretch the mozzarella in the hot water, it sort of disentigrated and made the water all murky. Mom quickly ladled out as much as she could get and stretched and kneaded it on a wet plate, but she could only really get two small lumps out of it rather than three. The salt water was really milky. We used it for soup. :) Our theories are: too much water (she didn’t measure a gallon) or too hot water (she took the temperature, but it could have raised before lowering again). Any theories of your own?
Also, the sour cream packet she ordered from Cheese Making.com just made the cream a little thick, not actually sour cream consistancy. :( A bit of a discouraging day.
So, have you ever had these things happen and do you have any suggestions?
Thanks so much!
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Hello!
I too have tried your recipe twice now and both times the cheese has not stretched. The first time I heated the milk too high and thought that was the problem, but this second time I did everything perfect and it still didn’t stretch. Any ideas?
Also, the first time around the ricotta didn’t work either…I haven’t tried this time yet as I have to make the dough for my pizza
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Laura Reply:
April 19th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Wow, that is SO frustrating. Beyond the water being too hot, I’m not sure what to blame it on. When mine decides not to stretch, I never really can figure out what’s the matter with it. Sometimes it seems to be that all of the whey hasn’t dripped out. Otherwise, I just don’t know enough about all the variables. Grr!
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FlightRisk Reply:
September 5th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Cheesemaking is chemistry, so temperature and acidity level are critical. Having the right equipment helps also, vs. the “hit or miss” method of guesswork. The disolving curds, the “my
mozzarella won’t stretch” etc, are usually due to dead bacteria in your starter, poor temperature
control, or wrong ph.
There are 2 main types of starter culture, mesophilic and thermophilic. The difference is the
temperature at which the 2 types of bacterium due best. As its name implies, thermophilic likes
higher temperatures. So for Mozarella, you want mesophilic. Buttermilk = mesophilic, Yogurt =
thermophilic. In either case, if you get the brands without live cultures, of if they aren’t
healthy, no cheese. So make sure you have fresh, live culture starter. Either buttermilk or
yogurt from the store that has been sitting in the frigde, usually does not have enough bacteria.
You should let it sit in a covered container on the counter at room temp for at least 6 hours.
Better than either of these is to buy cheese starter online. For hard cheeses especially, you
will notice the taste difference for the kind of cheese you want to make.
Next, a digital candy thermometer or a quality regular thermometer is a must. Do not heat the
milk past the recipe temperature for your bacteria type. Go past the temp, kill the bacteria,
no acid production, no cheese. Buy a ph meter, or at least some ph test strips. If the ph is not
right for the cheese, you will have problems. The reason for letting the curds cure overnight is
to let the bacteria, that you hopefully haven’t boiled to death, do their work and lower the ph
to an acidity level of 5.3 or so. There is a range of about .6 either way, but if it isn’t acid
enough, your curds will never “spin” (stretch). If you are left with ricotta-like curds when
trying to spin the curds into mozarella, you may also have not drained enough of the whey from
the curds. Let them sit longer at room temperature and squeeze out some of the moisture. Also,
the brand of milk can matter. Depending on how they process your milk, some of the proteins
could have already been denatured, the calcium destroyed, or any number of things. Try switching brands. You need the calcium in the milk, so you might need to add some calcium chloride if you are using store bought milk.
Lastly, you could try taking your curds and heading them for 10 or so seconds at a time and working them in between to get the curds up above 140 degrees and below 160. Often that helps work out the whey and can get you to a point where they will sping together into the stretchy mass.
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4th time tried, 4th time failed. Something is not adding up here.
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Laura Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Wow. To not have it work THAT many times is maddning! I’m so sorry! Wish I could come over and take a look and see what might be going wrong. :(
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Wow! I have made cheese before, but a long time ago when I was growing up and we had a large supply of fresh goat milk. Now I live in the city and have a large supply of 2% milk, I have been trying to come up things to do with it, do you think this will work with pasteurized 2%?
Thanks for the article! :)
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Laura Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:16 am
I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Although I can’t promise since I’ve not tried it before!
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Bob Reply:
August 18th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
No. It won’t work with 2% milk. Your mozzarella will be hard like a
hockey puck. But, you can use 2% milk with a pint of cream added. I use that for most of my cheeses that require whole milk since most of the whole milk around is
ultra-pasteurized and cannot be made into cheese. Even powdered milk with cream added works better than most of the whole milks out there – Since very few dairies are
labeling their products as UP.
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Bob Reply:
August 18th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Oh, you can get the dry milk recipe from WindDanceVineyard.com.
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this is so cool! I doubt I’ll ever make it but I had no idea how it was made. maybe one day..
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this is great i have been at a loss for what to do with the “skim” after i take the cream. I also want to say that i love your site and refrence it almost daily
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Wow, this looks awesome and my GF loves mozzarella. Its amazong how far weve come that we will spend $25 on three balls of mozzarella, 1/2 pound of butter, and a cup of ricotta. When for about $6 we can get it all and its fun in the proccess. I think people dont appreciate what it takes to make their own food anymore. We are such a disposable society now. This recipe is a must try!!! Thanx
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I been trying to make mozzarella cheese in several times….but I just got like fresh chesse….what I missing….I follow step by step but nothing close to mozzarella….help
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Laura Reply:
October 2nd, 2010 at 5:32 pm
I’m sorry…it’s hard for me to know what is missing without doing it alongside you. :( Mozzarella is finicky sometimes! Wish I knew how to help!
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HA HA HA
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I am fascinated by all of this, and have already tried a couple of your recipes……..LOVE THEM!!
I’m just wondering……..how did you ever learn to make all this stuff ( the dairy in particular)? How long did it take you to get it just right, and as for the butter, do you let the cream come to room temp before starting the process? I have made butter in the past, but have always let it come to room temp. first.
Thank you for sharing your gifts with us! You truly are an amazing steward of God’s blessings!
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Laura Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
As far as dairy goes, it took me several months to figure all of this out, and some of it another friend and I worked at together. Cheese is no easy thing to make!!
I’ve never worried about getting my cream to room temp when I make butter, but maybe it would turn into butter faster that way…hmm.
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