Cheese is Nasty

I made my own cheese the other day. I’ve made ricotta before, this time I tried mozzarella. It was quite easy and super tasty. You start with mozzarella curd, which looks like this:

Cheese Curd

I bought a pound of this for $5 from a specialty Italian store- they carry it at Whole Foods and such, too. You can make the curd from scratch if you want, but that’s a bit more involved. It’s better to just buy it. I tried a bit of the curd by itself, and it’s pretty nasty tasting, so I started to get worried that the cheese wouldn’t be very good.

The next step is where you actually make the cheese- basically you pour hot water on the curds and they melt together giving you a glob of mozzarella! (These aren’t my pictures. I took some but I’m too lazy to upload them. But this is what my cheese looked like, only I don’t wear glasses.).

Mozzarella Making

Then you simply knead or stir out the lumps and then make into balls or a braid. I did a pretty braid.

Fresh Mozzarella Braid

The final step is that you soak it in a salt-water solution which tightens up the cheese (it loses its excess whey) and gives it the flavor it needs. The end result- muy delicioso!

This is a really easy cheese to make, and it’s much cheaper than buying it at the store. It made quite a bit of cheese and took me less than a half hour (which includes soaking in the brine!). You can freeze it, or store it in a marinade for weeks. If it lasts that long- ours lasted 3 days. If you’re interested in making your own mozzarella, the internet is flush with recipes and how-to videos.

Now you’re probably wondering why I titled this blog “Cheese is Nasty’ well, let me tell you a little story (stop here if you’re eating). A few months ago my husband was channel surfing and happened upon someone eating a duck embryo in an egg. He has not been able to eat eggs since. These sort of experiences can make you turn on something you used to love. I love cheese. A lot. But I’ve learned something very disturbing, something I wish I’d never discovered, and now I really don’t think I can ever eat cheese again unless I’ve made it myself. It happened like this: after making my mozzarella, I decided I wanted to try feta next. I found a recipe online, but it called for rennet and lipase which the recipe author noted were not vegetarian. Curious, I looked up these ingredients, and DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE? Rennet is an enzyme that is taken from a freshly slaughtered calf’s stomach, and Lipase is taken from the saliva glands in lambs or goats. That’s right, CHEESE IS NOT VEGETARIAN! Well, some cheese anyways. Rennet can be synthetic and therefore vegetarian, but I haven’t been able to find out if there is a synthetic version of lipase (if you know, please email me!).

I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 8 and all the while I had no idea that I was eating nasty animal bits in my cheese. And lipase is almost always used in feta, one of my favorite cheeses. I even emailed Athenos Feta Cheese brand to see if they used these ingredients, and here is what they said:

“Athenos Feta Cheeses are made with microbial rennet which is derived (sic) the growth of pure cultures of bacteria or mold. However, two flavorings are added to this rennet, they are Lipase liquid and Rennet Paste. Lipase liquid is derived from goat/kid and Rennet Paste is derived from Kid, lamb, or calf.”

Gross. I am still eating cheese, but my stomach churns a bit at the thought. I want to find a brand that is all vegetarian, but so far all I’ve found is this great website that tells which lines of which brands are animal-free, but it’s all a bit confusing.

I think the only solution here is to rock this Amish-style and make my own cheese from now on, from start to finish so that I know it doesn’t have freaking goat saliva in it. I wonder if there’s a creamery in Austin that I can buy supplies from?