One of the presents I received for my birthday was The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. I have mastered making mozzarella and ricotta in the past, but I’ve been wanting to try some new things and eventually move on to the much more complex hard cheeses. This book doesn’t get that far- it ends at semi-soft, like feta, presumably so that there’s something for the sequel.
Last night I broke in my book by making homemade butter (super easy, it’s exactly like making whipped cream, only you keep whipping until your whipped cream is butter!). The butter is creamy and nice and tastes better than store bought. I can’t decide if it’s any cheaper than store bought, though. One benefit is that once you form butter, liquid seperates out and this liquid is called Buttermilk, so you get two products in one, I guess! The buttermilk tasted great, like cream without the fatty mouth-feel. Not at all like the sour store-bought concoction I remember drinking at my grandmas when I was a kid!
My next task was yogurt and yogurt cheese. Yogurt is simply milk heated up with some “starter” (a little bit of already-made yogurt) added in. Then it’s incubated for 6-12 hours (basically it’s just thrown in a thermos in a pan of hot water during that time). It takes a long time, but it’s mostly just waiting around. The longer you incubate, the sharper the yogurt is. I stopped at 6 hours and I think that’s pretty good- it is still a bit sour, but much creamier on the palate than store bought yogurt. Maybe next time I will try the full 12 hours and see how sour it is! I have to say I LOVE my yogurt, it is definently better tasting than store bought, and it comes in at about half the price, too.
Since I made yogurt and had to use store bought for my starter, I decided to use the rest of the store bought yogurt to make yogurt cheese. This was the easiest of all! You simply dump the yogurt in a strainer lined with mutiple layers of cheesecloth, place over a bowl and leave it over night. Periodically you dump out the bowl which becomes full of the whey as the yogurt is draining out. In the morning, stir in a teaspoon of salt, and you have a delicious spread! It’s very much the consistency of soft cream cheese, but has a nice sour taste sort of like goat cheese. This stuff is awesome. I am going to try it with non or low fat yogurt next, and if the results are the same it will be a very nice low-fat cheese substitute! My book recommends mixing yogurt cheese with mayo and peanut butter to cut the calories, but I don’t know about that idea!
My next task is to buy some vegetable based rennet online and tackle feta. I am also going to give sour cream and cream fresh a shot. I love making my own dairy products because I am just amazed at how one product, milk, can make so many different delicious things just depending on how you heat it up! I asked Anthony if we could get a cow, but he told me they have to be pregnant to give milk, which makes sense, but I never thought of it before. Keeping a cow preggers permanently sounds pretty hard.
If you want to try making your own dairy products, get this book! It’s a good beginner book, and hopefully they’ll come out with a hard-cheese sequel soon. I can’t say it enough, making your own dairy products is SUPER EASY! Once you try it you’ll never go with store bought again!