welcome friends today I'm gonna try and make squeaky cheese curds this is
something that I really love to eat and sadly you can't really find it anymore
where we live in Toronto it's just not something that you see a lot of so I'm
starting out with whole milk this is pasteurized but non homogenized so you
see the separation between the cream and the milk here in the jar this isn't
something that you can get at the grocery store here I had to I had to
search this out it is available just a little bit more difficult to find and
the cream is essentially a plug at the top of the of the of the bottle so I'm
gonna pour all of this into this pot now making cheese I've never done it before
I've made ricotta and you can see those videos elsewhere on the channel but I've
never made cheddar cheese or cheddar cheese curds so this will be a little
bit new for me and part of it part the whole process is hold a little bit of
milk back part of the whole process is keeping everything at a certain
temperature you need to control the temperature very tightly so I've set up
essentially a battery or a double boiler this pot has some water in the bottom
and it also has some rings at the bottom to hold this pot off of the bottom I'm
going to heat the water and try to keep it at a constant temperature so that the
process works as it's supposed to and we'll see how that works out I know a
lot of people will say in the comments why don't you use a sous-vide machine
and I've got them and I could definitely do that I think the problem is a lot of
people out there don't have them and let's find a solution that is easily
accessible for anyone who wants to try this recipe so I've got the milk and the
cream now in this pot and so I'm gonna stick this pot inside this pot and we
need to bring the milk up to the temperature that is currently
flashing on the screen I'm not gonna say a lot of the times in temperatures
just because it's confusing and I don't wanna get myself confused so temperature
probe into the milk and we'll keep an eye on that and when it comes up to the
temperature we'll move on to the next step I got to tell you this milk that I
got I've never used it before so it's non homogenized five percent whole milk
and it's pretty crazy so this stuff here it's almost right out of the jug it's
almost butter let's see if I get a taste
that's amazing absolutely amazing I'm looking forward to these cheese curds
okay we're pretty much at the right temperature you want to bring this up to
91 degrees Fahrenheit I'm at 90 and I'm gonna say that's a win so the next step
is to sprinkle on this cheese culture and I will link to the cheese culture
down below so that you can get the right one in my research there are four or
five different cheese cultures that are listed as the right one to make this so
I'll link to the one that I used and I'll also try to remember to put in all
the other ones so you want to sprinkle this on and then we're gonna let it sit
for about five minutes to bloom and then we're gonna give it a stir we're gonna
stir it in to make sure that it's fully incorporated so we're gonna put a lid on
it and we're gonna maintain that 90 or 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes
okay so it's almost been 40 minutes I have two containers and water in front
of me they're both 60 mils of water and in the first one I want to dissolve
calcium I get this stuff for my home brewery and it changes the water
chemistry you can also find it in grocery stores in bulk food stores it's
fairly easy to come across if you do pickling you're probably using it
already and it often goes by the name pickle crisp but before you just go and
use pickle crisp make sure that it's only calcium
and in the next one I'm going to dissolve some rennet this is liquid
rennet now the reason we're dissolving both of these in water is you don't want
to just dump them straight into the milk you want to have them partially
dissolved so that it's fully dissolved when you put it in there so give them
both a stir and make sure they are good
okay so I did pretty well maintaining the temperature a little bit of
fluctuation not a whole lot so next up we just want to stir this and make sure
that we've got even temperature inside and then we want to pour in the calcium
now you want to pour it off the spoon just so that it doesn't all land in the
same place and then stir it in and I read a bunch of different things about
stirring it in some people say stir it up and down like this with a flat spoon
now if you have a flat slotted spoon like I do that will work really well and
other people said just to stir it and make sure that it gets stirred in and
don't really worry too much about how you're stirring it so there we go now
this one is the rennet and we want to do pretty much exactly the same thing all
right pour it make sure it gets everywhere and
then stir it in now once this is stirred in we're gonna set the timer for another
40 minutes and we're going to continue maintaining around 91 degrees Fahrenheit
and during that time it should set up completely okay lid on timer set okay
time is up now what we need to do is check and see if the curd is set so what
you're supposed to do apparently is make a small little slit and then put your
knife in and pick and if it's clean which it definitely
looks like it's clean your curd is set we can move on to the next step which is
to cut the curtain now there's a very special contraption for cutting curd it
kind of looks like X's and O's and you stick it in and twirl it around and cut
the curd perfectly if you have a curd cutter in your kitchen that's great
I don't I'm just going to use a knife and so I'm gonna very carefully cut it
in a pattern and then cut on a diagonal and see if we can get this curd cut to
the right shape and size and the idea is you don't want to cut the curd too small
and you don't want to cut it too large
now we put the lid on for five minutes and let the curds heal okay
so now we start to stir the curds gently look at them look at them they look
pretty cool okay so over the next half hour I'm going to stir this gently and
constantly and you need to raise the temperature over this 30-minute period
and you can't raise it too quickly everybody says if you raise it too
quickly there's something about the acidity that develops and it makes it
sour you get off flavors so you need to gently heat it and over 30 minutes bring
it up to 102 degrees Fahrenheit so this is this next bit is a little bit tricky
not only do I have to stand here stirring I have to mind the temperature
very carefully let's see what happens
okay so the timer went off and I've got to 101 degrees Fahrenheit which I think
it's pretty good I didn't overshoot so now I continue stirring and we go
another 40 45 minutes holding this temperature and you don't have to sister
quite as much at this point I've seen people say that you need to stir
constantly and other people say if you stir every 15 minutes or so just give it
a gentle stir you'll be okay so I'm gonna sort of split the
difference in maybe every five minutes give it a nice a gentle stir oh and
there we go we hit a hundred and two so you can see the curds have changed
significantly from what they look like before they've gotten smaller and
tighter the way is more pronounced so we'll just keep stirring and maintain
that temperature okay so there's the timer now this is what it looks like the
curds have gotten smaller much smaller and they're still distinct so here's the
deal now I would say the advice of a lot of the recipes of stirring every 15
minutes is probably wrong you want to stir more often what I found was after
the first 15 minutes they started to clump together and they were stuck
together and everything that I read did say that you want the curd to be loose
in this liquid you don't want it to clump together yet at this point so I
would stir every five minutes or gently stir for the whole time period now we do
want to let this rest for 15 minutes at this point you want it to settle to the
bottom and you want it to start to clump together before we move on to the next
thing which is draining it into a colander
okay so I'm just gonna pull the cheesecloth over top here and we are
going to let this sit and drain for about 15 minutes but I'm going to move
it into this bowl because I want to put the way back in the original pot put it
back in the Ben Murray and raise the temperature to 115 degrees Fahrenheit
okay so this next step is called chattering it's the whole reason cheddar
cheese gets its name what's gonna happen now is I've got the curds in this basket
covered in cheesecloth over top of the warm way and the way is going to heat
and steam just a little bit and the curds are going to drain now four times
over the next hour so every 15 minutes I'm gonna pull the curds out and put
them on the cutting board and I'm going to cut them in half turn one half on top
of the other and then put it back over the pot cover it and let it to continue
draining and the idea is over this time period more of the way is going to drain
out of the curds making them dryer and squeakier
okay cutting and folding and cutting and folding and squeezing so I did squeeze
these while they were resting in there and I think that if you put a plate on
top of some weight you would squeeze out even more of the way and some of the
methods said to do that some of them said not to do it if the objective is to
get most of the way out I would squeeze it or put something
heavy on top of it during that process that we just went through now we need to
cut it into curds I've been in the cheese factory where they cut the curds
and they use a machine and it shreds it it's almost a machine like like a
rototiller for a garden and it shreds it into uneven pieces we're not going to
get that here so I'm just going to cut it and I'm gonna chop it up into smaller
chunks that will be the curds and relax yes I know blue is not the color of
cutting board for cheese but you know it's the one I could find okay the next
thing you want to do is throw them into a container with a lid on a scale
because you want to weigh the curds you want to know how much you've got here to
determine how much salt to put in we have five hundred and fifteen grams so
we need five grams of salt oh five point two that'll do okay so sprinkle the salt
in put the lid on and give it a shake the idea here is that you want the salt
to get all over every piece of curd and that's it well let it sit for about a
half an hour or so and then we'll give it a taste
what have you been doing all day you've been at this for hours all day squeaky
cheese curds when I say all day it was like like nine hours of work yeah like
you got up early and started this and now yes so nine hours that's not a lot
of cheese no it's not a lot of cheese nine hours and like like $40.00 or the
milk so I can hear there the squeaky Fromme here
that's great squeaking hmm one really good cheese curve yeah um did you make
some fresh bread to go with it no no so this will ripen over twelve
hours and so 12 hours from now it will taste it will have a more rounded flavor
okay and it will still squeak 24 hours from now the squeak will be completely
gone because the squeak is caused by proteins long chains of proteins and the
lactic acid in the in the cheese will break up those proteins and it will no
longer squeak it seems your chemistry so 24 hours from now it'll be I feel like
we need to do a taste again then in 12 hours so tomorrow morning when I come
out I'll taste again and I'll report back sorry but at this point you could
put that in a bag stick it by the counter yeah by the six hours for now
it'll be good to go I'm in so I have a question though it took you nine hours
yeah for what we had yeah would it take you to the same nine hours if you were
making three times as much oh no yeah yes it would it would so the time
doesn't get any longer okay with more volume Hey but how are we gonna eat this
in the next 24 hours that's a lot of cheese I think I can get through it good
for you I think I can get through it so if you were going to make put 10 mmm
this is the curd that you need this is and you cannot buy it at the grocery
store here because by the time it gets to the grocery store here it's cheddar
yeah it's a cheddar soak this week is gone people are gonna ask how to store
this on the counter don't put it in the fridge and consume it within 24 hours
everything's fine Oh which is why it's so great to just get it from the corner
store Oh what is that what is that the fairest ketchup yes yes the Feres
ketchup ah yeah everything's ketchup everything's good
yep okay good job so one more scene 12 hours with the lid on
okay so here we are 14 or 15 hours later and we're gonna give this another go now
let's see what happened still super squeaky and the flavors deepened they've
ripened there is a much better depth of flavor after 14 hours on the counter so
I would say then with this experience these cheese curds would be good to eat
as soon as you've made them they are better to eat twelve to fourteen hours
later so I guess the final question is is it worth it if you live somewhere
that you cannot get squeaky cheese curds you can't get cheddar cheese curds then
yes it is worth it to give this a shot it's also worth it if you're on an
exploration of food and you really want to better understand how food gets from
and specifically cheese gets from the cow to the grocery store this will give
you an insight in the entire process and I think that's important too to try
these things to know whether you want to do it yourself or if you want to buy
better quality at the grocery store because you discover that what you've
been buying is hmm maybe not that great so give it a try if you want thanks for
stopping by see you again soon
you