Making homemade cheese under Gran Sasso mountain.

Cooking is not just a job for us, but primarily a way of life, as the philosopher Feuerbach “we are what we eat“, so it is very important carefully choose the products we eat.

Buying local food directly from producers is definitely a way to have a better quality and a direct relationship with those who produce what we eat, as we wrote in our article “a day at the food market“, but if you want to be even safer about what you eat, why not make yourself what you would like to eat, choosing yourself the best ingredients for a great end result…..well…this is what we did yesterday, surrounded by one of the most beautiful mountains in Italy, the Gran Sasso, we produced our homemade cheese….here’s the story

 

The Gran Sasso mountain

Betty…our local milk producer

Once you are in a beautiful place, and you have a fresh delicious milk, you just need to start making your own homemade cheese, free of all the colorings and chemical stabilizers used to make chhese more attractive and stable for store shelves. 

This homemade cheese will be better-tasting, more alive, and more versatile than any commercially processed cheese.

Level: Easy      Preparation time: 2 hours

Ingredients, this recipe is for 2 lb (1 kg) of cheese and 1 lb (0,5 kg) of ricotta:

Whole cow or sheep milk  2,5 gal (10 lt)

animal or vegetable rennet  1 teaspoon (5 gr)

juice of half lemon

  Directions:

1.  In a pot heat the milk at a temperature of 100 °F degrees (38 °C), add the rennet turn vigorously with a whisk and leave about half an hour;

    

2.  when the milk has solidified break the curd with a whip and collect all the cheese obtained by disposing in special molds, about 1 pound (500 gr) each, and press it a little bit by draining the whole serum, after that, put it in the fridge, it will be fresh cheese for about a week, but if you want to ripen it, leave it in the fridge about two months before consumption.

                            

3.  at this point we will have in the pot of milk less pure, because deprived of a large part of casein, we will use it again to extract the ricotta, using the casein remained;

4.  so bring the milk to a temperature of about  167 °F (75 °C), add the lemon juice, lower the heat and wait until the cheese begins to surface;

5.  take the ricotta surfacing using a skimmer and put it into the basket;

          

6.  once the ricotta has drained the serum, we can put in the refrigerator, it is preserved fresh for a maximum of three days;

Following this basic recipe you will discover how easy it is to prepare the homemade cheese, of course there are many types of cheese that can be done, as well as delicious recipes you can make using the cheese you have done, so check out on our recipes category, we’re posting soon other fantastic recipes to make.