We got a cheesemaking kit a few months ago, from UncommonGoods.com. (That kit no longer seems to be available, but you can buy a similar one here.)  As we’ve just been studying early America, I thought this would be a perfect time to try making cheese.  Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the directions (we were instructed to add the same something twice), which caused me to jump around in the directions and overlook something else, and we flubbed it up.  It still turned out looking more or less like it should, but it tasted more like sour milk than cheese, so we threw it away.

I took pictures along the way, and you can see what we did.  Here are the ingredients:

Apart from the milk, all of those things came out of the box.  There’s enough in the package for 15 batches.

First, we break a rennet tablet into quarter.  I wish there had been some tips for this.   They’re scored, but they don’t break very well along the lines.  (An inexpensive pill slicer might be a good option.)  We got more or less a quarter, and it was time to add this rennet to water:

And stir it ’til it dissolves.  (It didn’t really dissolve very well.)

In another container, we measure citric acid into a container, and dissolve it, too.  (This dissolves beautifully.)  Now, this is where we got mixed up.  The directions said to pour this into the pot.  Then they said to pour the milk into the pot and stir while adding this citric acid solution.  So I got a little confused.  (Having spoken with the company since, we now know that the earlier addition of the citric acid is correct, but it doesn’t make that much difference.)

The problem is, I then started looking through the directions, and didn’t see the instruction to add the rennet.  (It’s there; I just overlooked it.)  So we assumed the second citric acid addition was really supposed to be the rennet, and added it here.  This means it got stirred vigorously (which it shouldn’t have) and heated (which it shouldn’t have).

We should have heated the milk to 90 degrees (F), then gently stirred in the rennet, off of the heat.  Then the pot is left to sit (It should be covered, but that’s no fun as a photo):

Now you should have curd and whey, and you cut the curd up with a knife.  We did end up with some curd, but it was a very small amount compared to the whey, because of our goof-up, and it’s hard to take a picture of.

Now you reheat it while stirring gently.  Once it reaches the proper temperature, you pour off the whey.  (Don’t throw this out!  You can use it for other things, like lacto-fermented recipes.)

I don’t think our whey is supposed to be that milky  I think that’s another effect of lousing up the recipe.  I think it should be somewhat clearer/thinner.

Then you put the curds into a colander and dip it into heated water to make it pliable.

And you stretch it like taffy:

After stretching it, you shape it the way you want it (we made bite-sized nuggets), and cool it by immersing it in progressively cooler water.  And you end up with something like this:

Disclosure: The cheesemaking kit we used was provided by UncommonGoods.com to facilitate this post.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own – along with all recipe flub-ups. 😉