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How to Make Ricotta Cheese
March 19, 2009
Here is the final post in my mini series “What I Can Squeeze out of Two Gallons of Milk”. If you recall…with two gallons of raw milk, I was able to make mozzarella cheese…fresh butter…and now…ricotta cheese!
Ricotta cheese is made with the leftover whey from your cheese making process. It is SO easy. I am so amazed that after I’ve finished making mozzarella cheese…there’s still ricotta cheese lurking in the whey! (What smart person discovered that…I want to know?)
To make Ricotta Cheese:
Pour all of the whey left from making your mozzarella cheese into a large stock pot. Heat it to 170°. Try to keep it right around that tempurature for a minute or so…then remove it from the heat. It looks something like this:
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I apologize for the quality of this picture. It’s…yucky looking. That’s what happens when you stick your camera inside a pot of almost boiling whey. Look closely to TRY to see that the whey is bubbly with a thick layer of white froth on the top. Can you see it? Ah well…thanks for trying.
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Pour your bubbling whey into a strainer lined with a tea towel. (You will put something under your strainer to catch the liquid, right?) Allow the liquid to strain through the tea towel. This takes a little manuevering because the ricotta starts to line the bottom of the tea towel and doesn’t allow the liquid to go through as easily.
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Use a spoon and scrape all the ricotta off of the tea towel.
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Place your ricotta cheese into a jar for storage. Stuffed Manicotti anyone?
So, what do you think? Not too hard, huh?
How to Make Fresh Butter
March 12, 2009
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 I make butter!
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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.
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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.
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Once the fat has been “pulled out” of the cream, it should look something like this…and you can turn off the food processor.
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Pull all the solid pieces and squish them together.
Place the solids in to a clean bowl.
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Run some clean COLD water into it.
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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.
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Squeeze the excess water out of the butter and shape it with your hands.
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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.
Here’s a simple recipe that you can serve with just about everything! Really…these Ranch Potato Wedges are a great side dish with any meat (steak, chicken, hamburgers, meatballs, fish…).
They are a perfect thing to make to go with your lunch…they are a super easy side dish to make with dinner. Good grief…you could even scramble up some eggs with them and serve them at breakfast or brunch.
Like many of the High Five Recipes…this recipe takes just a few minutes to prepare.
Ranch Potato Wedges
4 medium sized potatoes
1 T. mayonnaise (I use Hain Safflower mayonnaise)
½ package ranch dip mix (I use Simply Organic brand)
Scrub potatoes and slice into eight wedges each. Stir together mayonnaise and ranch dip mix in a large bowl. Toss potato wedges in mixture until coated. Lay wedges singularly on a cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes.
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I am SO hungry now for a meatball with Ranch Potato Wedges!
How to Make Mozzarella Cheese
March 5, 2009
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!
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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 t. 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!
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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!
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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.
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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”.
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Use a long knife to “cut the curd” into one inch squares.
Let the curd sit about five minutes.
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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.
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Place a strainer into another large pot and cover it with a tea towel.
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Pour the curds into the strainer/tea towel…straining out as much whey as you can. Save the whey!!
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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.
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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…
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Cut the cheese (oh, my boys think it’s SO FUNNY when I say that…) into 1-2 inch squares.
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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.
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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!)
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After you’ve stretched your cheese and it has formed a big long shiny wad, take it out and put it onto a plate.
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I divide my cheese into three blobs. Squeeze out the excess water and shape the cheese into nice balls.
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Place the balls into a bowl of cold water. This will take out the heat and help them hold their shape.
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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.)
Simple Sourdough Pancakes
February 16, 2009
I’ve really been enjoying experimenting with my new sourdough starter…and the older my starter gets, the better it does! Mmm!
But I keep falling back on my old stand by pancakes. They are SO good and SO good for you and SO easy.
I make them by soaking my flour in buttermilk overnight which breaks down the phytates and makes them more digestible, thus creating sourdough pancakes. Here’s the recipe:
Simple Sourdough Pancakes
1 cup whole wheat flour (or whatever grain you want)
1 cup cultured buttermilk
1 egg
3 T. melted butter (or oil)
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. sea salt
Stir the flour and buttermilk together in a glass bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave on the counter overnight. In the morning, stir in the egg, melted butter, baking powder and salt. Whisk together, adding extra milk or buttermilk for the desired batter thickness you prefer.
Cook pancakes on a well buttered, hot skillet or griddle, flipping once bubbles begin to form. Serve with real maple syrup, applesauce, jelly, or any of your favorite pancake toppings!
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I triple this recipe for our family of six. These pancakes also freeze well. Frozen pancakes reheat great in the toaster!
And…add blueberries or chocolate chips for a yummy variety!
My kids devour these pancakes…and they are hearty enough to keep them full all morning long.
Move over IHOP!!
Kathryn Rem: First Garden sets a good example
By Kathryn Rem
GateHouse News Service
Posted Mar 31, 2009 @ 02:37 PM
For foodies, the best news to come out of the Obama administration so far has to be the decision to create an organic garden on the south lawn of the White House.
A grassroots movement to start a national garden had been growing faster than corn on a hot day after food activist Michael Pollan proposed the idea in an October 2008 New York Times Magazine article.
The burgeoning local foods/organic/sustainable agriculture communities led the charge for replacing some of the neatly manicured lawn at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. with an American pie of a garden.
It will be a living, practical use of space that will not only provide fresh food for the first family and White House guests, but — critically important during these hard economic times — serve as a national symbol of self-reliance.
When Eleanor Roosevelt started growing her own produce in 1943, it spawned backyard Victory Gardens that helped feed the nation during wartime. By the end of World War II, 40 percent of the produce consumed in America came from home gardens.
With food prices on the rise and the nation’s economy in the compost heap, a White House garden is the right idea at the right time.
Ground was broken for the 1,100-square-foot plot by first lady Michelle Obama on the first day of spring. Plans are for the garden to be in operation year-round, with early planting in a few days and the first harvest expected at the end of the month.
Crops will change throughout the year.
The techniques used for extending the growing season into the winter will be especially useful teaching tools, hopefully duplicated by gardeners in cold-winter states who now close up shop at the end of the year.
According to plans released by the White House, spring crops will include spinach, carrots, chard, kale, collard greens, shell peas, sugar snap peas, onions, shallots, fennel, radishes, broccoli, rhubarb and a variety of lettuces.
Spicing up the patch will be herbs: sorrel, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, marjoram, chives, garlic chives, chamomile, hyssop, mint, dill, cilantro and parsley.
Flowers will line perpendicular walkways through the L-shaped plot. Mrs. Obama said she plans to add a beehive so honey can be made.
Some of the harvest will be donated to a Washington, D.C., food pantry.
Terra Brockman of Congerville was part of a group that created a Web site, http://www.whitehousefarmer.com, to allow the public to nominate a White House farmer to oversee a south lawn patch.
“We were thrilled when we heard about the garden. The idea behind the Web site wasn’t so much about selecting one farmer but to bring attention to a White House garden,” said Brockman. News reports indicated that Sam Kass — a Chicago chef brought to the White House by the Obamas — will oversee the project.
I’m not much of a gardener myself, but I do grow tomatoes and peppers in my backyard each year. Occasionally, I try other crops, such as cucumbers, corn or cantaloupe.
Herbs are a must. Some years I put the starts in the ground, and other years I grow them in pots. But I’m partial to containers because I’m lazy. I’m much more apt to use the herbs when I only have to step out onto my deck to cut them and not traipse through the backyard, a playground for two dogs.
Last year, I grew chives, parsley, dill, rosemary, thyme, basil and mint.
Since hearing the good news about the White House garden, I’ve been thinking about ways to grow more of my own food.
I hope you are, too.
Kathryn Rem can be reached at (217) 788-1520 or kathryn.rem@sj-r.com.