We all know mozzarella cheese. This very tasty and healthy product is made from cow and buffalo milk. It has a pure white color and an elastic texture with a smooth thin crust. Unlike most cheeses, you can easily make mozzarella at home. You can use it both for a sandwich, and as an ingredient for many salads and pizza. So, we suggest learning how to cook mozzarella at home.
Ingredients
In order to prepare mozzarella at home, we need the following products: four liters of pasteurized milk, liquid rennet - half a tablet or half a teaspoon, distilled water - 175 ml, citric acid - two teaspoons, 2.5 tablespoons of salt .
Making mozzarella at home: milk and rennet
Fill a large pan with water, put it on the stove and bring to a boil. In a separate container, mix half a tablet or half a teaspoon of liquid rennet with a quarter cup of distilled water (cold). Stir until the enzyme is completely dissolved. Set the container aside for a while.
Separately, mix 2 tablespoons of citric acid with 120 ml of distilled cold water. Mix well. Pour four liters of pasteurized milk into a pot with a capacity of 6-8 liters . Sterilized (ultra-pasteurized) milk should not be used, as it will not curdle during cooking. Pour water into the same pan with citric acid dissolved in it. Gently mix. At this stage, you can see how the milk begins to coagulate slowly.
Coagulation
The preparation of mozzarella at home the next step involves the process of coagulation of milk. We heat the pan over low heat until the mixture in it has a temperature of 31 degrees Celsius (use a thermometer). Do not forget to stir the milk constantly so that it does not burn. To do this, you can use a spoon, whisk or a heat-resistant spatula. At this stage, the process of coagulation of milk begins. After the mixture in the pan has reached the required temperature, add distilled water to it with the rennet dissolved in it. Thoroughly mix the contents of the pan for 30-40 seconds and reduce the heat to the minimum. We continue to cook the milk mixture until its temperature reaches 40 degrees Celsius. Remove the pan from the heat and leave it to stand for a quarter of an hour. At this time, the coagulated white mass (essentially cottage cheese) will separate from the whey. As you can see, while the mozzarella recipe at home is not complicated. Therefore, we continue.
The next step is to work with the curd mass
Without removing the cottage cheese from the pan, cut it with a knife into cubes with a side of about 2.5 centimeters. For convenience, while slicing, you can hold it with a large spoon or ladle. Set a piece of gauze or colander over the bowl. Then with the help of a slotted spoon made of stainless steel we transfer the sliced cottage cheese from the pan into a colander or gauze. Let the serum drain into a bowl. If you used gauze, you can hang mozzarella in it to drain for three to four hours. In this case, your cheese will turn out harder.
Pour the whey formed in the bowl back into the pan. We return there also a colander with cottage cheese. Then add half a teaspoon of salt. We repeat the procedure for shifting the cottage cheese so that the serum is again glass from it. The more times you do this, the drier your mozzarella will end up.
Reheat the water in the pan. When its temperature reaches 76-80 degrees, we shift the cottage cheese into it. At a time should be placed in a pan a third of the total mass. We put on thick rubber gloves or take a slotted spoon and, squeezing the curd mass into a single whole, we lower it into hot water.
Making mozzarella at home: the final stage
We take cottage cheese from hot water. At the same time, check if it stretches, since its consistency should be sticky and uniform. If the cottage cheese crumbles, then check if there is enough hot water in the pan. If necessary, heat it and hold the curd mass in it for some more time. Stretch and curl your almost finished cheese several times. When you are convinced that it has acquired the necessary consistency, roll it into a ball.
Now you can proceed to the preparation of brine. To do this, mix two cups of whey with two tablespoons of salt. Add some ice cubes there. In the resulting brine, you need to put the finished cheese. It should be in it before cooling. Then the finished mozzarella can be removed from the brine.
In order to properly store cheese, it is necessary to wrap it in plastic wrap, and then close it in an airtight container. Thus, it can be kept in the refrigerator for a week, and in the freezer for a month.
Some tips
- If you decide to cook mozzarella at home, then before you begin this process, make sure that all kitchen items and utensils are clean. Indeed, fresh cheese spoils very quickly if it has been exposed to bacteria.
- If fresh mozzarella was too soft to grate it, then you can freeze it first.
- The remaining whey from mozzarella can be used to make ricotta cheese.