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Has anyone attempted these? I have found a few recipes on the web, they don't look too hard apart from flipping them (I found a tip to put them into cheesecloth to make that bit easier to manage). I have everything I need for ingredients other than milk.

You can't get them in FL, and my Dad loves them because he grew up in upstate NY where they are popular. Since I was in the hospital for his 80th birthday I was going to give it a try for Fathers Day.

Thanks,

--Lisa

Lisa,

I'd trust cheese making.com: http://www.cheesemaking.com/Recipe_CheeseCurds.html

Yes, that is the page I found, with the added idea from eGullet that I am going to do the milk double-boiler style with my circulator. That should make it easier to maintain the temperature.

What the heck, it should be an adventure, right?

--Lisa

Lisa,

The problem I've found doing double-boiler is that it takes forever to get the milk up to temperature.

Josh,

Thanks for the warning, that does make sense. I haven't made anything that mozzarella, so this should be interesting.

--Lisa

Lisa do you have an Instant Pot? I was thinking that since you can make yogurt and ricotta in it, this would not be a stretch.

No, I have a regular electric pressure cooker.

Reporting back: not bad. I would make adjustments to what I did if I do it again. The recipe has a lot of play in it ("cook 30 to 60 mins depending on how dry you like your curds" and "press for 1 to 3 hours"). I cooked for 45 mins and pressed for 2 hours and my curds are not nearly dry/hard enough.

I took note of Josh's comment about the double boiler taking a long time to get up to temp so I devised my own hybrid cooking process. I boiled some water in my stockpot and dumped in a cooler (thereby both heating the cooler and sterilizing my pot), and then used the pot to bring the milk up to temp on the stove. While that was happening I got the water in the cooler to about to about where I wanted it (96 degrees) with additions of cool tap water). Once the milk was ready, I put the stock pot in the cooler and used the Nomiku to hold the temperature at 96 for the 2 hours for the scalding and culturing process. I moved it back to the stove when it I was ready to cook the curd and raise the temperature.

All in all, it was a good experience for my first real cheesemaking experience. I have made mozz and mascrapone, but nothing like this. It was fun. I hope Dad likes it, but the curd is pretty soft and more like a queso fresco that a true northern style cheese curd. And, no squeak! I will probably try again.

I also dropped my Thermopen in the cooler. <sigh> If any one sees the next sale, let me know, please.

--Lisa

Lisa,

Sounds pretty good for a first experience. My first experience involved making cheese from expensive organic raw milk, and the faulty recipe I used (from Saveur) resulted in only 2/3 lbs cheese from 2 gal of milk (for $18). The cheese was delicious, but ...

For the curds you have, I might suggest air-drying them, then doing the full three-layer batter, if you're going to fry them.

They have already been delivered and dad intends on sharing them with his buddies over beer. I will pass along your comments regarding frying tonight at dinner in case he wants to try that but I rather doubt he will. He was pretty tickled to get them because he hasn't had them since the last time his sister visited four years ago. It was a fun present. (And the Dolphins Tickets went over pretty well, too.)

--Lisa