Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: Scribbler on December 11, 2013, 18:46
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Anybody ever tried making cheese at home? I'm guessing there are limitations, eg curd cheese is probably the only possibility?
Also I gather you can use lemon juice instead of rennet for a vegetarian option.
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I've made cottage cheese with a buttermilk starter and personally, I think it has a better flavour than that made with lemon juice.
(Those recipes were on the pc before I got a laptop and I only have print-outs now, but I got them off the internet, so you should find something)
You can get vegetarian rennet I think.
I tried proper cheese once but couldn't get the proper wax to preserve it. It was okay...
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I make a feta type cheese in summer when I use a lot, and ricotta with the whey. You can decide how soft or hard or strong you want it. You can get vegetarian rennet but it has a short shelf life. I'm not sure how economical it would be in GB though, milk over here is cheap (and raw) The waste whey goes on the compost heap or in the chickens (because I can! :lol:) or dogs.
There are other ways of doing it besides rennet or lemon, but I haven't tried it. I have made soft cheese from yoghurt though.
There is loads of stuff on the internet, just gurgle whatever you need to know. :)
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Lakeland do cheese making kits and recipes, so also might be worth looking on there to see what you can buy and for feedback on their products.
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I bought the Lakeland book and kit at the beginning of the year and had a go at the recipe for feta.
Well feta it wasn't! it was ok as a sort of curd cheese. I know I have only tried one of the recipes in the book but I was rather underwhelmed with the results.
I have the cheese making book by Paul Peacock and plan to have a go next year as time overtook me and I have been getting my head round hot and cold smoking this year.
Next year I plan to have a proper go at cheese and turbo cider too.