I made my first homemade cheese today!! This recipe is very, very easy. No special equipment needed. I used some of it on a Chicken Pizza I made for dinner tonight. Wow! So delicious!! There is a photo in the comments.
The texture of this cheese reminds me of Feta... (which I love!) You can slice it, spread it on crackers and sandwiches and crumble it on your salads etc. It's fun to make too!
I customized mine to my own tastes so that is the recipe I will share with you but you can totally change the flavors up to the way you prefer.
All you need is ~
4 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons butter
Salt to your taste. (I used garlic salt)
Two to 3 teaspoons of garlic powder
Chopped herbs of your choice if you choose to use some. (I used chives, thyme, rosemary, and oregano from my garden.)
Instructions ~
Add 4 cups of Whole milk to a large pot on the stove. Heat it up until just boiling stirring constantly so you don't scorch the milk. Take it off of the burner and immediately add the two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Stir for a couple of minutes. The milk will start to curd up right away. Let it sit for about five minutes. Next pour the curds into a stainless steel mesh sieve. The liquid left behind is the whey. Let the liquid drain from the curds for a few minutes. I help it along a bit by pushing down on the curds to get the excess whey out. Move the curds to a large bowl. Don't throw out the whey. I poured mine into Mason Jars and will use it later this week in my homemade bread.
Once the curds are in the bowl add in 2 tablespoons melted butter, and the spices and herbs if using. Next using an electric mixer beat all the ingredients for about 5 minutes. Taste it at this point to see if there is anymore spice or herbs you would like to add.
You can now scoop out your cheese into whichever kind of mold you would like. I used my 6 inch round cake pan. I put plastic wrap on the bottom and around the sides so it would be easy to lift out when it was ready. Pack the cheese down into your mold. The back of a spoon works great. Place a piece of cheesecloth on top of it then place something heavy on top of that. I used a flat bottomed ceramic bowl about as big as the mold and put my pie weights inside. (I will show pictures for you all in the comments so you can get a better picture.)
From here I put it in the fridge for about 45 minutes then took it out. What you see in the photo was what I got.
You can leave it out on the counter at room temp if you want to use it as a spread. I wanted mine a bit harder. As you can see in one of my photos below in the comments I crumbled some of it and put it on my homemade pizza for dinner tonight. I love garlic so it was so delicious on the pizza!
You should all give it a try... I thought it was super fun with a delicious product at the end!
**Note ~ I made two batches to get the amount shown in the photo.

Dana ~ 👩‍🍳