If you recall, last week when I showed you how to make mozzarella cheese, I mentioned that if you’re making it from raw milk, you skim off the cream and save it to make butter. HERE is one way to make butter!

Fill your food processor 1/3 full of heavy cream. Be sure not to fill it more than 1/3 full…it will probably not turn into butter if there’s too much in the container.

Turn your food processor on high…and then flee the room. (It’s really loud and annoying!)  The food processor will whip and whip and whip the cream until it turns it into butter. It should take somewhere between 8-15 minutes.

Once the fat has been “pulled out” of the cream, it should look something like this…and you can turn off the food processor.

Pull all the solid pieces and squish them together. 
Place the solids in to a clean bowl.

 Run some clean COLD water into it.

Clean the butter with the cold water by squishing it with a wooden spoon until all the liquid comes out of it. Repace the cold water 2-3 times as you clean it.

Squeeze the excess water out of the butter and shape it with your hands.

Ah, look…a lovely little butter ball.

You can add salt to the cream if you want salted butter…this will also be a preservative, making the butter last longer.

OR…if you don’t have a food processor and want to have a little family fun…put your cream into a jar and shake it like crazy. Pass the jar around, and take turns shaking it. (I’ve tried shaking it all by myself once when no one was around to help…and I thought my head and arms would fall off from shaking the jar so much all by myself. I don’t think I ever got butter out of that jar.)

Have you ever made butter before?  Isn’t it COOL to see the butter form out of the cream!? 

I LOVE how with just one little gift from a cow (or goat or whatever) you can make SO MANY great yummy things!

P.S. Even if you don’t have fresh cream…go buy some heavy whipping cream at the store and try making butter. It’s just…cool.

Next week…RICOTTA CHEESE! :)

(Join us Saturday for the little Green Project!)
——————————————-

This post is linked to Frugal Fridays.

Want to know what makes me excited (besides little plastic drawers)? The fact that with only two gallons of  milk…I can squeeze out THREE great dairy products. With the two gallons of raw milk you see pictured below, I was able to make three eight ounce balls of mozzarella cheese…a half pound of butter…and about a cup of ricotta cheese. 

Talk about milking something for all it’s worth! (Whoa…very cheesy joke.)  (Which I feel is appropriate because this post is about making…cheese. Cheesy-ness abounds.)  Anyway…

Even if you don’t think you’ll ever make your own mozzarella cheese…you may still have fun reading about how it’s made!

To make Mozzarella Cheese you will need:

• Two gallons of milk (I use raw, organic) (As far as I understand, you can use pasteurized and homogenized milk too…although you won’t get the butter and ricotta out of it since the cream doesn’t rise to the top.)
• 2 teaspoons citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup cultured buttermilk
• 30 drops vegetable rennet mixed with 1/4 cup water (I get my rennet from Azure Standard or Wilderness Family Naturals.)
• 1 gallon water
• 1/2 cup sea salt

• Large stock pot
• Long knife
• Food thermometer
• Strainer
• Tea towels

Okay, ready to make cheese? You’ll need to block out about two and a half to three hours of time…but most of that time is wait time, not work time!

First, if you’re using raw milk…skim off the cream. You know I’m usually big on leaving in the fat…but the fat separates itself out of the cheese while you’re making it for some reason. So, skim it off, put it into another jar and save it for making butter!

Pour the milk into a large pot (I use my big stock pot). Stir in the buttermilk and citric acid mixed with water. Heat to 91 degrees. Remove from heat, put the lid on and let it sit for one hour. 

Add the rennet mixed with water to the milk. Allow it to sit for at least 15 minutes, or until the milk solidifies slightly and it able to be “sliced”.

Use a long knife to “cut the curd” into one inch squares. 
Let the curd sit about five minutes.

Heat the curd to 91 degrees. Remove from heat, place the lid on the pot and allow it to sit for one hour. After one hour, the curd and the whey should have separated.

Place a strainer into another large pot and cover it with a tea towel.

Pour the curds into the strainer/tea towel…straining out as much whey as you can. Save the whey!!

Rig up something fancy like this to hang your curds, making sure you have a bowl underneath to catch more whey that will drip out. I usually leave mine overnight as it takes several hours for all of the whey to be removed.

In the morning…remove the tea towel. Wow, a big hunk of cheese! Now…the fun part begins!

In your large pot…heat one gallon of water mixed with 1/2 cup salt. (Hint:  I use Redmonds Real Sea Salt and it can be too chunky if I don’t try to dissolve some of it first. Therefore, I put my water and salt into a jar and shake it well, then pour it into the pot. The residue from the salt remains in the jar, leaving only salty water…without chunks!

Heat the salt water to 170 degrees. Meanwhile… 

Cut the cheese (oh, my boys think it’s SO FUNNY when I say that…) into 1-2 inch squares.

Once your water reaches 170 degrees, remove it from the heat and dump in your cheese. Kind of stir it around for a minute or two until the cheese softens and begins sticking together.

Use a big wooden spoon to catch the cheese from the water. It should start sticking together and forming a blob on your spoon. Stretch the cheese.  This part is SO COOL!! Dip it down into the hot water every once in a while to reheat the cheese so that it will continue to stretch, but try not to keep it in the water too long. Keep on stretching and dipping the cheese until it is shiny. This stretching process will take about 8 minutes. (Every once in a while I get a batch of cheese that just won’t stretch. It’s a bummer. The cheese still tastes fine…it just doesn’t look as pretty, shred as well, or melt as nicely. We eat it anyway!)

After you’ve stretched your cheese and it has formed a big long shiny wad, take it out and put it onto a plate. 

I divide my cheese into three blobs. Squeeze out the excess water and shape the cheese into nice balls. 

Place the balls into a bowl of cold water. This will take out the heat and help them hold their shape.

Tada!!! Mozzarella Cheese! 

I’ll take time during my next two Frugal Friday posts to share how I make butter with the leftover cream…and ricotta cheese with the leftover whey!

So…have you ever made cheese before? Do you think this process looks like something you could do? You wanna come over and make cheese with me some time? (Then we can say “cut the cheese” together and laugh like we’re really funny.)

———————————————-