For years I have followed the method in my mozzarella post, to make many pizzas worth of mozzarella. This past year, faced with my highest producing cow yet, as well as a small baby, I knew I had to figure out how to streamline this process. A few things factored into the creation of this recipe.
I did a bonus live video for my insiders club, and it was decided everyone needed to see this, so along with the video, I've written up a printable recipe as well as many notes on how/why I do things how I do.
First- I was also determined not to buy butter;
Which meant every jar of milk that could be skimmed, needed to be skimmed. It turns out, skim milk mozzarella is firmer to deal with and works better on a pizza! This is not a mozzarella I would use for caprese salad and fresh eating. I have tried this method with a 1'ish inch creamline and it still worked great, I'm not sure how it would go with a large creamline.
Secondly, WHY no gloves?
Mid making a batch of mozzarella one day, I discovered my gloves had a hole in them. This was HOT and not a fun discovery. How would I stretch this cheese without gloves?! I pulled out a sturdy wooden spoon, and discovered I could stretch it with that! No more gloves off and on, dealing with kids while stretching mozzarella.
Last, but definitely not least, what if I didnt strain the curds out?
What if I just left them in the pot, to heat up while the whey heated up for stretching? Well my friends, this is where the magic happens. Less dishes, less steps, less whey spilled on the floor! (I am not capable of straining cheese without getting whey on the floor)
This batch is written kind of loosely, without exact temperatures and times.
I do this, not to confuse you, but to assure you that I have made this recipe over and over again, successfully, with very loose timelines and temperatures. Its not as high maintenance as people make it out to be.
I make this at medium heat, this is reliable for me without being too high maintenance/hands on. If you're in a rush and willing to stay close to the pot, I've made a one gallon batch at medium high heat, and went from flour and milk to pizza into the oven in half an hour. It was a feat even I impressed myself with. I wouldnt try that on your first go, but know that its possible.
Now- you're going to need a sturdy spoon to stretch it with. This could be wood or metal, I tried with a plastic spoon at a friends house once and it was just not working. You'll see mine in the video.
This second video is a follow up of a couple questions I got-
Big Batch Streamlined Mozzarella
Ingredients
- 1 gallon skimmed raw milk
- 1 ½ teaspoons citric acid
- ¼ teaspoon calf rennet I find vegetable rennet unreliable
- ⅓ cup non-iodized salt
Instructions
- Skim your cream to make butter or whatever else makes your heart sing. Warm the milk in a pot on medium heat.
- Stir occasionally. When it reaches 55F, dilute the citric acid in ¼ cup of cool water (If making a larger batch, do ¼ cup water per gallon batch), pour it into the milk, and stir in both circles and up and down for 10 seconds to distribute it. If it accidentally got a bit warmer, thats okay. Up to about 65F youre fine, if its warmer than that, take it off the heat and let cool.
- Continue heating milk until it hits 88F, then dilute the rennet in ¼ cup cool water (again, multiply this water by gallon batch) and add to the milk, stirring in the same fashion. If it got a bit warmer, up to about 95F, you can still proceed. If its warmer than that, take off the heat and let it cool some.
- Turn off the pot, but leave it on the element (If you have a gas stove, its okay, just keep going with it) for 10 minutes. Its okay if you forget about it an hour. It happens. After ten minutes, check the curds, if you stick your finger or a butter knife in at a 45 degree angle the curds should "clean break" over your finger/knife. If not, leave another 10-15 minutes.
- When the curds are firm enough, stir them with a big spoon to break them all up into smaller pieces, roughly 1" cubed or smaller. Turn the heat back on to medium. If you are making larger than a 2 gallon batch, pour off whey down to about 2 gallons worth, but save that whey for garden/animals/baking! I heard its good for marinating meat as well.
- add ⅓ cup salt to the whey.
- Stir every couple minutes, you'll notice the curds starting to stick together and be less poached egg whites and get firmer. Sometimes they will look a boogery. Have faith, keep going! As they get warmer, they will start to stretch a bit too. Keep trying to encourage them into one big ball, it will take until around 120F for them to hit this point. See about minute 51 for this.
- Using your sturdy spoon, lift the whole ball up out of the whey, letting it droop down over the sides of the spoon. If its not drooping at all, it needs to be hotter, around 135-140F for me. If its drooping/stretching well, You can lift it up, let it droop down, put it back in the pot, pick it back up again in the middle, let it stretch more. See about minute 53 in the video for this step.
- As you stretch it using this lifting method, the ball will go from lumpy to smooth. Once you've got a couple good stretches with it all being shiny and smooth, feeling pillowy soft, put the ball of cheese into a rectangular container.
- The reason I do this instead of forming balls, is my end goal is grated mozzarella, and I can cut the rectangular block of cheese into chunks and grate it easier than I can balls. You could form it into balls and plunk them in ice water for them to hold their shape if you so wish.
- Eat fresh, tearing off pieces and salting, stuffing your mouth, until you have satisfied your craving, then put it in the fridge for 24 hrs. If you need to use it ASAP for pizza night, you can simply tear strips and lay them on your pizza. It looks artfully beautiful.
- You can also pull off little strips, twist, salt and put on a tray to cool in fridge to make cheese strings!
- Once its well cooled, grate the cheese, put in bags or containers and into the freezer. Mozzarella does NOT keep well in the fridge. You can just freeze balls of it, but do your future self a favour and pregrate it now, its so convenient to have waiting for you!
- To use- go lighter on a pizza or lasagna than you would with store-bought cheese, this goes farther and you could drown a pizza. Sprinkle a little salt on top of the mozzarella, it really needs it and you'll be disappointed without it.
Video
Notes
- This batch is written kind of loosely, without exact temperatures and times. I do this, not to confuse you, but to assure you that I have made this recipe over and over again, successfully, with very loose timelines and temperatures. Its not as high maintenance as people make it out to be.
- I make this at medium heat, this is reliable for me without being too high maintenance/hands on. If you're in a rush and willing to stay close to the pot, I've made a one gallon batch at medium high heat, and went from flour and milk to pizza into the oven in half an hour. It was a feat even I impressed myself with. I wouldn't try that on your first go, but know that its possible.
- Now- you're going to need a sturdy spoon to stretch it with. This could be wood or metal, I tried with a plastic spoon at a friends house once and it was just not working. My husband carved one for me as you'll see in the video.
Nutrition
Want more dairy- centric recipe?
Karen
This was such a fun post! Making cheese sounds easier than i thought!
katehosie
If you can make your way around the kitchen with cooking or baking, you can figure out cheesemaking! Its really not ridiculous, just a different process than we know
Robin
This worked great! Thank you so much for posting. I tried to do mozzarella once before with a much more complicated recipe and less-than-fabulous results. This was so doable! I didn't take time to watch your whole video but I really appreciated you adding the time to the recipe instructions so I could look at the relevant part and make sure it was on track.
kateschat
I personally rarely have the opportunity to watch an hour long video so I knew I needed to write it all out. I'm glad you liked it!
Brianne
Hey! This recipe is great and I love making a simple large batch. The only issue I'm having is that after my cheese is chilled it is still pretty wet and soft- difficult to shred, it doesn't really look like yours shredded. Any ideas for why this would happen?
kateschat
Is it really high fat milk? I've never had it happen.
Julia Neff
This recipe makes making mozzarella less intimidating. Thanks for figuring out how to streamline the process.
Tracey Ann Solberg
You are fantastic to watch. You make the video fun. I tried the mozzerella 3 times and bombed all three. I did not take my time. I just went and got my milk and I will follow you in this video. Thanks. What fun. I'm stoked. Way up at the top of Wisconsin...Ashland Wi.
Kaitlyn Huff
Just made and turned out great! I have a couple questions though... even with an end result that was great my curds never actually rose to the top so I could do the finger check, I had to find them at the bottom of the pot and see if they were firm enough which they were after 10 minutes, but any idea why they wouldn't have rose to the top? Other question - I grated it after cooling off to room temp but it all kind of molded back together when I put it in the freezer bag, do you think it was too warm?
kateschat
Sinking curds- this happens sometimes, you could probably check/proceed after less time, but its just fine how you did!. I chill the cheese before shredding and i havent had it mold back together
Rebecca
I love how simplified this recipe is and it makes tasty cheese! I just need to work on shaping now.
Katrina
My go to when I have too much milk in the fridge
Arlene Schaap
Does this work with raw goats milk?
[email protected]
Really not sure. We haven't tried. Let us know if you try it.
Lindsay hayes
I love this recipe and make it once a week with milk after skimming it for butter. I love that I can do more than one thing with the same gallon of milk. I have never made less than 4 gallons at a time and really appreciate that I can use so much milk to clear jars for the next milking. We love the end product and the process is easy as well.
Ruth
What can I use if where I lived I can't find raw milk 🙁
Erin
Easiest mozzarella recipe I’ve ever used. My kids loved eating it warm too.
Abby
This blew my mind. Fantastic recipe and tutorial!
Alicia Stelling
I love how simple this recipe is to make. I am going to make it again next week.
Nikki K
I make this almost weekly. I love that I can use up 2 gallons of milk at a time and have cheese the same day.
Tip, definitely get the whey higher in temp (145ish) when stretching or it will not stretch as easily. Once it hits that nice warm spot, it stretches so smoothly. I have to say, I tend to prefer the gloves. It’s just easier than trying to hold up the wooden spoon and move it around without hands, but it is nice to be able to use the spoon sometimes. I use the spoon to get it out of the whey (super hot) then stretch with gloves.
Freezes nicely.
Kristin
My first time making cheese and I used this recipe! So easy to follow and it's almost like Kate is holding my hand through the process! Has the perfect salt ratio...so delicious!! This will be my go-to recipe going forward.
Audra
So delicious!!!! We only had access to store bought milk and it came out so good. I wish I had a cow so that I could make this more often!!
Christy zimms
I was just browsing the comments to see if anyone had used store bought milk. We have a local dairy that sells milk but they do pasteurize it. And wanted to try it with A2 milk. Thank you for saying you used store bought milk! That is so helpful!
Angie Webb
It seems a bit rubbery after I'm done stretching. Am I doing too much stretching or not enough?
[email protected]
Yes, it would have been stretched too much
Kayleigh
Say I wanted to swap out citric acid for vinegar of lemon juice - what amount would I need to use to substitute?
[email protected]
I asked Kate and she's not sure on amount to substitute. You might be able to do a search and get a approximate amount.
Kayla Peters
Thanks for this post! Last time I tried to make mozzarella it didn’t work out super well and I ended up making basically ricotta.. still good, but not what I was trying for. I also burnt my hand like three times ?????.
I’m going to try again this way!
Jen
Made this (or any cheese for that matter) for the first time. It was so easy! Thank you for your video instruction. Is there any way to make this with pasteurized milk? My raw milk provider is $14 a gallon ?
[email protected]
You can make this recipe with pasturized milk, just not 'ultra pasturized'
Littlefarmhouseonfelton
No need to mess around with a small batch of cheese, just dive in with this big batch method!
Leatha
Can you remind me of the website where I can get the calf rennet? Thanks!
[email protected]
It's called Glengary Dairy
Angela
Thanks for sharing! We make personal pizzas every Friday and this would be such a fun addition! Where can I find animal rennet? Also have you ever tried substituting lemon juice or vinegar in place of the citric acid? Thanks!
[email protected]
You can find animal rennet in Canada from Glengarry Cheesemaking Supplies and they ship to the states. As well New England Cheesemaking. We've used lemon juice instead of citric acid but it was harder to make and you need to use a different recipe than this one.