Oil-Packed Mozzarella
Oil-Packed Mozzarella
Fast, delicious, and a beautiful little dairy-infused present.
Hello my friends!
I had every intention of sending you this recipe days ago - before I left to travel 6,000 miles away to Bulgaria. After all, now that we’re all settled into our wonderful fall schedules, it felt the perfect time to put our hands to something homemade and delicious.
In this case, homemade mozzarella.
I’ve been in Bulgaria for a week now and am very excited to share more about this in the coming weeks, but one of my very first observations of the cuisine here is how much of it revolves around cheese. Yogurt and thick slices of quick cow cheese are served at each breakfast. Slightly harder and saltier cheese is grated over mountains of cucumber and tomato salads. Breakfast pastry? There’s cheese in it.
For many cultures, including our own little micro-culture on our own farm, cheese is life. It is both preservation and culturing - a celebration and manipulation of simple milk, crafted to become something new.
As complicated as homemade cheesemaking can be, in this recipe, we’re keeping it very simple. Just four ingredients are needed:
Whole milk
Rennet (available here)
Citric acid (available here)
Salt
Often times, rennet and citric acid can be found at local health food stores as well.
If you follow along in the video, I also like to take the time to sometimes cut and pack my cheese into beautiful little glass jars, drenched and packed in a very good olive oil. Rich, glossy basil leaves can be added, along with a variety of spices, chili flakes, and even pepper slices to create the perfect little packaged meal.
Gimme a glass of wine, a piece of crusty bread, and a whole jar of this homemade mozzarella all to myself. What more does one need?
A few notes on this mozzarella:
If kept in the refrigerator, it’s best used within a few days.
It can easily be wrapped and frozen for long term storage.
It easy easily be grated and then frozen for super-quick pizza cheese!
Homemade Mozzarella
1 gallon milk
1 1/2 teaspoon citric acid
1/4 teaspoon rennet dissolved in 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup salt (or salt to taste)
Combine the milk and citric acid in a pot. Stir well to combine and bring up to 85 degrees over medium heat.
Add the rennet/water mixture into the milk and continue to stir slowly as the curds begin to separate from the whey.
Continue to heat the curds and whey until they reach 110 degrees. Scoop the curds from the whey using a slotted spoon and place in a bowl.
Heat the remaining whey in the pan up to around 150 degrees. Add the salt and stir well to combine.
Add the curd (which will have formed into one mass by now) back into the hot whey. Move it around gently in the whey as it warms up. As it warms, it will begin to be stretchy. Use gloved hands to gently pull the curd, folding it over itself as needed. Dip it back into the whey until it’s soft and pliable again and continue the stretching and folding until the mozzarella is smooth.
Form the cheese into a ball and dip it again in the whey to set. The mozzarella can now be placed in an ice bath (which will help it to hold its round shape) or sliced and enjoyed immediately.
Salt to taste.
I will be sharing lots more on Bulgaria and the culinary discovers that come along with eating new food with new people (and ultimately how that translates back to our own little kitchens), but in the meanwhile, I do hope you enjoy this fresh cheese.
Maybe it’s because I’m quite a few miles away from home, but just seeing photographs of this cheese makes me miss my sweet Cece cow something terribly. There’s few things more routine and structured than tending to a dairy cow, so to break from her for days on end is equally liberating and heartbreaking.
Oh. And I miss my kids too (of course).
I’ll be home, and milk, and making more mozzarella soon enough…
Off to enjoy some more yogurt!
Shaye