You're in Steve's kitchen, today is all about curds and I mean those squeaky
curds that squeak like a mouse in a cheese factory, that are perfect for
Canadian style poutine and I'm going to be making some poutine, that's why I need
the curds. You really want delicious squeaky curds when you're making poutine
at home and it isn't that difficult to make, so I'm going to show you now how we
can take a really good quality milk and this is a full cream milk, no rubbish
sort of partially creamed or half cream. I don't even know what they call it, we so
rarely use it. A full cream milk and we're going to turn this into squeaky curds.
Now I don't need a whole lot of cheese curds so I'm taking two litres of full
cream milk and that's approximately a little over four pints. Now different
milks will give you different qualities of curd, if you find the milk that you've
got isn't super good you might want to add a tiny amount of calcium chloride in
with the milk. I'm actually going to use sodium chloride basically simple uniodised
salt, calcium chloride will actually give you a slightly firmer curd.
So if you've got a poorer quality milk that's the reason you use it. So for two
liters of milk I'm using a teaspoon of sodium chloride or regular salt. Now if
you're on a low-sodium diet this can be left out altogether. Now I've added a
couple of tablespoons of hot water just to dissolve the salt down and we can add
that in with our milk and give it a little stir through but the first thing
we've got to do is heat this milk up and when we talk about heating the milk
during cheese-making, it's a little bit misleading because actually getting the
milk to stay under a certain temperature is actually a little bit harder than
heating it. We're only talking about temperatures about 33 degrees Celsius
about 90 Fahrenheit, so a lot of people will use a double boiler put their pan
into some hot waters to bring it up to temperature. I'm not actually going to do
that today, I want to keep this as simple as possible, I find on a very low heat on
the gas, we can bring this up to 32 degrees 33 degrees Celsius about 90
Fahrenheit and we can maintain that heat fairly easily. Now you can see that just
come up to temperature, I'm going to turn that off we're not going to
beat ourselves up by a tiny little discrepancy. Now here's a step you can
decide to leave out if you want, I'm actually going to add a tablespoon of
cultured buttermilk which is a sort of mesophilic starter, well it is a
mesophilic starter and it just adds a certain flavor into the cheese. Now you
would need to leave this in there for about 40 minutes to allow those flavors
to develop, if you decide not to use a buttermilk or a mesophilic starter you
could actually put the rennet in at this point and skip this altogether. We're
just going to pop the lid on that and I'm going to leave that for about 30 to 40
minutes to allow the culture to ripen. The only thing you really are going to
need for this recipe is some rennet, I've got a vegetable rennet here, you could
use a animal rennet, both will work well. Generally the instructions on how much
to use is on the rennet package whether you're using liquid or powder. Now the
milk has ripened, I'm going to be putting my rennet in, for 4 pints or 2 liters I'm
going to want, for this particular rennet anyway, about quarter of a teaspoon, so
it's a very small amount. You do need to read sometimes if you're using powders
you'll need to dissolve it in some liquid first. We're going to put that in
with our milk and then I'm going to use a whisk and just gently mix this through
for a minute or so to get a nice even distribution and don't forget at this
point our milk still has to be at about 33 degrees Celsius that's about 90
Fahrenheit. We're just now going to cover it and we're going to leave it for about 40
minutes for the curds to set. Now there's an old saying 'the proof of the pudding
is in the eating' which has got nothing to do with what I'm about to do but I
thought I'd say it anyway. We're going to take a look now and we're going to see
if we can get a clean and break in our curds, it's been 40 minutes and hopefully
the rennet had time to do its work and when we say a clean break what I mean is
get your finger into the curds, you can see they're set fairly firm, we're just
going to bring it under and look at that we've got a lovely clean break in the
curds. So now with our curd set what I'm going to do is take a knife or a
thin palate knife and I'm just going to push it down into the Curds and I'm
going to cut, I'm cutting the curds up into approximately inch sizes. So I'm just
going to work my palate knife across and then I'm going to take the knife again
and I'm going to go across the opposite direction. So I'm getting nice cubes of
curd, I want to take the palate knife at an angle now and the same thing I'm
going to cut, I'm going to slice diagonally across the curds. So hopefully
what this does if you haven't got a proper curd cutting tool, is to break the
curds up into small cubes and then I'm going to turn my pan and I'm going to do
it from the the opposite side. The curds here, if I lift a little piece out, they're
ever so light and creamy and they're still full of lots of whey, so we want to
try and help force this out of the curd. Our Curds and whey temperature has dropped just a
little bit, it's about 31 and a half degrees Celsius. Now we want to start to
bring this up the temperature, needs to be around about 37 degrees Celsius,
that's about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm turning my heat back
on but really very low and if you want to you can do this in a double boiler
but what we're going to do is just start to mix, these are beautiful thick curds,
really dense, very good curds that I've got from this milk and whilst we're
mixing it we're just going to be checking the temperature. Now I don't
want it to go much above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees in
Celsius because all we're effectively doing here is cooking the curds and I'm
using a slotted spoon because I want to be fairly gentle moving the curds around
in the whey. Now when the liquid comes up to temperature I'm actually going to
turn the heat off and I'm going to continue to stir this very gently for
about 30 minutes. So we've continued to keep the temperature up around about 37
degrees Celsius and you can see now after thirty minutes of stirring
the curds themselves have got a lot smaller we've got a lot more whey in
the pan. So now we've cooked the curds and I loosely say cook because as you know the
temperatures are not that hot, I can put my hand in there and it's not going to
burn at all. What we need to do now is separate out the curds and the whey. I've
got a colander, it's got some cheesecloth in it. Now if you're doing a bigger batch
than this you'll probably want to drain off some of the whey first but I've only
got a small batch so I'm going to pour the whey into the cheesecloth, there you can see
all those beautiful curds there, they look a little bit like popcorn. I'm going
to lift up the corners of my cheesecloth, now the only reason I've done this into
a bowl is because I'm going to be keeping the whey for other recipes, so
we're just going to gently squeeze some of the whey out of the curds. Now what
we're going to do is take those curds, I'm going to put it on to a rack here so
that the whey can drip through. Now you can see the curds trapped inside the
cheesecloth and the whey is starting to drip off but what we're going to do is
actually take a board, a cutting board that's been cleaned obviously and we're
just going to lay it on top and then I'm just going to put a bag on there to give
some extra weight. So that little extra weight on the board is just going to
help express more of the whey out because although we've cooked that now and it is
more dense, we want to get the curds a lot drier than they are and we don't
need to go for a long time only about an hour and what I'm going to do in about
15 or 20 minutes is lift that off and just check the curds. I may actually cut
them and stack them but as this is just a squeaky curd that we're using for
poutine we're not maturing it or doing anything
unusual. You could take this curd by the way and make a fantastic mozzarella with
it, it's the same sort of curd you use but we're doing this for squeaky curds. Now
from the cheese making process you end up with a lot of this beautiful whey, this
shouldn't be wasted, this is great food by the way for pigs, so if you're not
going to rush out now and get yourself a pig farm you can use this in all sorts
of baking, you could actually use it to make a lovely ricotta
cheese as well, whether I might do that or not I'm not sure but don't throw it
away. So what I'm going to do is after sort of every 15 to 20 minutes for about
an hour or so I'm going to unwrap the cheese, I'm just going to take the cheese
cloth off and you can see the curds are starting to form
beautifully. I'm actually just going to turn this over. Now sometimes people cut
the curds in half and stack them, I think with this thickness I'm not going to
worry about that, I'm just going to wrap it up one more time and you can see
underneath here just how much whey is starting to come out at the bottom of
the cheese and I'll just continue this process for probably about an hour to an
hour and a half until I've got the cheese as dry as I want it. Now because
this is a fairly young curd we don't need to really set it any longer than
that, I think this is probably going to be ready. Now I'm just going to pull back
the cheesecloth we're going to lift, look at that beautiful curd there it's
absolutely perfect. Now we'll take that gorgeous curd, pop it down on the board
and now what we're going to do is just cut this into strips.
I'll then just turn the board round and I'm going to cut these into beautiful
little curd cubes like this. So we've got these beautiful curds now, lovely solid
squeaky curds, the last thing I'm going to do is just put them into a bowl and
we're going to take a little salt, just sprinkle it over the curds. I'm just
going to toss them in the salt, so we've made our lovely curds, now I can give it
a try. It's going to taste like a very young cheese and as I say you could turn this
into a mozzarella if you wanted, it's got a lovely little squeak, this is going to
be great in the poutine. Very, very simple to make, now join me tomorrow because
we've got Canada Day coming up and I thought I'd make poutine in Steve's
kitchen, got my curds now, so it's going to taste great. I'll see you then, be good