The curd ready to be kneeded.

A few weekends ago, the youngest daughter and I set out to make some cheese.  Our first go at it was mozzarella.  I also think we did a pretty good job.  I can’t say that it was bursting with flavor, but then again mozzarella isn’t exactly known as a cheese that takes a bite out of your tongue.  I’m looking forward to making more in the future, but I need to build a smoker first.  I think smoked mozzarella sounds very tasty.

The hardest step in home cheese making is obtaining a source of milk.  I don’t have goats or cows, yet.  We all really want to get a couple goats, but we aren’t quite prepared to give up going on vacations.  We really need some friends that live nearby to get some animals that we can trade off animal care duty with.  There is a co-op very near here where I can buy a share of a cow relatively inexpensively, but it is a lot more milk than we could use in a reasonable amount of time.  I’d need to make cheese and butter nearly every weekend to use it all.  One solution is purchasing milk from the store.  This is the route I am going to take until I master the craft.  One hidden downside to this is that more and more dairies are no longer just pasteurizing milk.  They are now ultra-pasteurizing it.  When milk is ultra-pasteurized, the proteins that make time travel cheese making possible are broken down and a good curd will not form after addition of the rennet.

The youngest daughter kneeding the cheese.

To make the cheese you need milk, rennet, an acid, and some salt.  That is it for mozzarella.  Basically you heat it up, press/kneed out the moisture, and then stretch it like taffy.  That’s it.  There are some important temperatures and timings, but you can google those for now.  I’m not going to go into all the details of making the cheese this time.  There are a lot of good resources out there that will teach you what you need to know.  I want to get a few more tries under my belt first.  This time I was concentrating on how to pull it off.

Stretching the Cheese

One other interesting tidbit on making cheese is that it can be made from dried milk.  Most of the recipes call for the addition of cream to the dry milk, but I have seen a few that don’t.  I am excited to start experimenting with this.  I also wonder if you could add melted butter back into the dried milk instead of cream.  Another idea for another day.

I was at the restaurant supply store in town a couple days ago picking up some salt.  I got tired of paying $0.60 per pound for salt when I was certain that it was much cheaper in bulk.  Sure enough it is.  It was under $3.00 for 25 pounds.  It doesn’t ever go bad and is really easy to store in a bucket in the pantry.  I’m guessing the 25 pounds should last me a couple decades.  By now you are wondering what does cheap salt have to do with Cheese Powder.  While picking up the salt I saw a bag of cheese powder really cheap.  I thought, I wonder what that tastes like, and I wonder what I could make with it.  So I picked it up and started experimenting.

The first thing I tried was making a cheese sauce with it.  The directions on the package were for a restaurant and were how to mix the whole bag.  Obviously, a lot more than I would need, or want, at one sitting.  I started with 1/2 cup of water and brought it to a boil.  Once boiling I reduced the heat to minimize evaporation and kept it just under boiling temperature and started slowly adding the cheese powder.  After about 3 1/2 tablespoons of the mixture it was just right.  After cooling it thickened even more so I think the perfect amount is 3 tablespoons of cheese powder to 1/2 cup boiling water.

The girls love tortillas.  So we almost always have some floating around here.  I tried dipping a hunk of tortilla in the sauce and eating it and sure enough it tasted like cheese.  So  I have something cheap that tastes like cheese; is made from cheese (I checked the label – first ingredient it cheese); stores just about forever; and is super easy to prepare.  Wow!  Now I just need some uses for it.

The first is easy.  Make cheese sauce.  This can be used in a variety of dishes.  If you add some jalapeno peppers, it takes a bit of a Mexican flavor and can be used in tacos, enchiladas, and other Mexican dishes.  Plain or creamed up a bit it can be used for adding some zip to vegetables.  Here is the recipe for the cheese sauce:

Cheese Sauce Mix

1/3 cup dehydrated cheese powder
3 Tbsp powdered milk
3 Tbsp dehydrated butter
3 Tbsp flour
1/8 tsp onion powder

Mix these ingredients well. Should yield 1/2 cup of dry mix.
To make the sauce: Mix 1 cup of boiling water to 1/2 cup of dry mix.
Use on vegetables like broccoli, celery, potatoes, or add some southwestern spices and serve over southwestern dishes.

Another sauce type recipe, but much thicker is this dip recipe.

Southwestern Cheese Dip Mix

1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cheese powder
1/4 cup canned chillies
1 tsp taco seasoning

Mix well.  Use as a dip for corn chips or raw vegetables.

An obvious use for the powder is to make macaroni and cheese very similar to the stuff that comes in the blue box.  I loathe it, but the kids like instant macaroni and cheese for some reason, so we keep boxes around for nights when the wife and I are going out and the kids are on their own for dinner.  I like the idea of being able to make my own, instant, macaroni and cheese but I would end up sprucing it up anyway, so why not just make the real thing?  I would need to use some homemade egg noodles.  Then I would want to add a bit of garlic, and onion.  Cube some left over ham, or possibly open a can of Spam and cube it up.  Finally I’d mix some bread crumbs with some butter and sprinkle on top and bake for about a half hour.  It hardly seems right to dump in a few spoons of cheese powder instead of making a roux from some homemade cheese!  But in case you like the blue box stuff, here is a recipe for it.

Macaroni and Cheese

1¼ cups uncooked macaroni
¼ cup cheese powder
¼ cup milk
¼ cup butter

Cook macaroni in boiling water until tender. Drain. Add cheese powder, milk and butter; stir gently until noodles are well coated.

Finally I present an old backpacking/camping recipe using the cheese powder.  We used to save packets from the blue boxes to make this when we went backpacking, so I’m not certain how much powder comes in one of the pouches, but I’m guessing that it was probably about 3 tablespoons based upon the amount of milk and butter you are supposed to add.  This is a 1 pot meal that is tasty and filling.

Cheesy Chicken Rice Soup

1/2 cup instant rice
3 tbsp cheese powder
1 Tbsp powdered milk
1 Tbsp dried veggie mix
5oz can of chicken
Salt to taste

To this add one cup boiling water and cover.  Let sit 5 to 10 minutes.

Cheese Powder Repackaged and Awaiting a Trip to the Pantry.

There are some simple things to try and do with cheese powder.  I took the large bag that it comes in and divided it up into smaller portions and vacuum sealed them in mason jars.  These should have a relatively long shelf life as long as the fats/oils in the cheese powder don’t go rancid.  Evacuating most of the oxygen from the container using the food savers will help prolong that process.

PS:  The hard drive crashed at the end of last week.  I spent most of last weekend reformatting and reinstalling drivers.  Most of the week was spent restoring files, reinstalling software and reconfiguring the system.  I backup fairly regularly and don’t think I lost anything other than the time for the reinstall.  If you do not regularly back up your system think hard about doing it soon.  You will regret the loss if you haven’t.

We like cheese around here.  It’s a little on the pricey side, and until we get some goats making a lot of our own cheese I fall back on buying it from the store.  You can save a lot on it by buying it when it goes on sale.  I call this sort of purchasing Opportunity Buying.  If you only buy the staples when they are on sale you would be surprised at the amount of money you can save.  The down side to this is that cheese in the modern world is usually stored in a refrigerator at 40.0F.  If you want to buy a lot of cheese, you need to take up a lot of space in the refrigerator.  Furthermore relying on mechanical refrigeration for storage contradicts one of the precepts of sustainable storage.

3 pounds of cheese wax

About a week ago I ordered some cheese wax to try preserving some cheese.  Traditionally, cheese is aged in cool humid environments.  Not too cool; not too warm; but not refrigerated.  The range of sources I’ve been able to get information indicate that cheese should be aged/stored at a temperature between 55 and 70 degrees.  Fortunately there are a few spots in the basement that rarely get above 63 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wax Melting in Double Boiler

To wax cheese you begin by melting the cheese in a double boiler.  I use a large tin can in a pot of boiling water.  The was should be heated to at least 200 degrees before applying to the cheese.  According to the manufacturer of the wax, the temperature should be limited to 210 degrees to prevent fires.  It is also recommended that the wax be heated to at least 200 so that if it cools off a bit during the dipping process the surface will remain above 180.

Store Bought Cheese

Cheese Divided for the Test

Once the wax is melted, the cheese should be dipped into the molten wax long enough to slightly melt the surface, but not so long as to actually melt the cheese.  The slightly melted surface helps the wax fill any air gaps and prevent the growth of mold.  Increasing the surface temperature above 180 degrees also eliminates several potential bacteria that could cause other issues.  The wax should then be permitted to cool.  Two or three layers should be applied.  Several thin layers will cover more evenly than fewer thick ones.

Half Waxed Cheese

Waxed Cheese

Once the cheese is waxed I’m going to store 1/3 of it in the refrigerator, 1/3 of it in our basement pantry, and 1/3 of it in the coldest corner of the basement.  We are going to sample pieces of it at periodic intervals over the next few months.  The pieces waxed in the refrigerator will serve as a control group.