We used lots of milk... non-homogenized whole milk...yack! for drinking but perfect for making cheese! We warmed the milk to a certain temperature, kept it there for a while and then added the magic ingredients.
After adding the ingredients and waiting a little while, we had cheese curds! Lots of cheese curds. We let those sit too.
Then we dumped out all the whey and just had the curds left. Did you know that if you cook mozzarella whey you can make ricotta cheese? We want to try it out next time.
Then we hung up the curds in some cheese cloth to let the rest of the whey drain out. After a couple of hours we put the curds in the fridge because it was past midnight and we decided to finish the process the next day.
To turn the curds into mozzarella, we just cut up the curds into small pieces and then added really hot, salty water to them. This cooks to curd and adds salt and flavor.
As the curds cook, you are able to pull and stretch them, making mozzarella cheese. This was really fun to do even though the curds were pretty hot.
And that's all there was to it! We ended up with delicious, fresh mozzarella that we used in lasagna. And we have some left over that we plan on using for pizza soon. Talk about yummy!
