Homemade mozzarella

Are you cooking?

All about culinary art...

Homemade mozzarella cheese: Italian chic in the kitchen

Homemade mozzarella cheese is one of those fermented milk products that are prescribed to supporters of a healthy diet. Smooth and shiny, this eternal Italian cheese has long captured the hearts of the Slavic peoples. Now you will learn how mozzarella cheese is prepared at home, what useful remedies you have, and what this product is used with.

Health benefits of Mozzarella cheese

This variety is the best source of healthy protein, which is especially necessary for normal muscle development and sufficient energy production. Previously, Mozzarella was prepared only from dark buffalo milk, but now the shelves are full of a wide variety of equally necessary types from cow's milk.

The benefits that cheese will bring to your body:

protection against rheumatism;
loss of excess weight, the same effect can be caused by the Suluguni variety and the homemade substitute for Buko cream cheese;
breast cancer prevention;
reducing the risk of heart attacks;
purification of blood (the internal environment of the human and animal body) from goods that damage blood vessels;
strengthening the immune system, the same qualities are possessed by the Gouda cheese variety and other homemade types of fermented milk products.

Please note that a salad with mozzarella, even with one salad ball, will saturate the body with zinc for the whole day.

Harm from consuming Mozzarella

No matter how good the product may be, there are a number of situations in which its use is very unnecessary and even harmful.

personal protein intolerance;
hypertension;
renal failure;
swelling;
peptic ulcer.

Remember that real cheese has a very limited shelf life, so before consuming you should make sure that the product is not pre-stitched. Otherwise, poisoning is guaranteed.

Rennet for cheese making

The basis for the production of virtually any type of cheese is rennet. This is a special leaven that is made from the stomach of a young calf or lamb. For this:

Empty the stomach of a slaughtered animal from its contents, bandage the holes, inflate with air and dry in the shade.
After drying, finely chop the rennet into 2-3 g. Pour 0.5 liters of cooled boiled water. After 13-17 hours, strain the liquid.

The rennet is ready. To avoid a similar procedure, you can purchase an enzyme in a store or peptin (a plant-based mushroom enzyme) in a pharmacy. The famous creamy ricotta cheese and the famous caciotta are also prepared on the basis of the starter.

Traditional Mozzarella Cheese Recipe

In order to get 1 kilogram of delicious Italian dairy product, take:

homemade milk - 8 l.;
rennet extract;
a packet of citric acid;
a couple of enamel pans of various sizes;
big colander.

The cooking process is quite exciting:

Pour milk at room temperature (necessarily whole and unpasteurized) into a small saucepan and, stirring thoroughly, add 10 g of citric acid diluted in 100 ml of chilled water.
Dissolve an enzyme weighing 0.1 grams in 100 ml of the same cool water. For the most accurate calculation, take a one-gram packet of enzyme and dissolve it in a small amount of water, pouring out 1/10 of it.
Pour the diluted 0.1 g of enzyme into milk and stir well for 3 minutes.
Place the prepared milk in a water bath, immersing it in a large saucepan of water, slowly heat the bath to 35 degrees, maintaining it at the same level.
After a short time, the milk turns into a jelly-like mass, and a curd clot appears in it. It is strictly not recommended to stir the contents of the pan at this time, because the clot should form perfectly and increase in size.
Take a very long knife and cut a whole piece into 1.5-2 cm cubes.
Without changing the temperature, stir the cheese mixture slowly and carefully so that the cubes do not stick together. If this happens, then the cubes must be cut again.
As the cubes slightly decrease in size and acquire a dense consistency, drain everything into a colander, having previously lined it with gauze.
The whey should drain for about 4 hours, during which time the mass will acquire a suitable temperature and become completely ripe.
Cut it into strips 1-2 cm wide and put it back into a small saucepan.
Add hot (70-75 degrees) water to the cheese strips so that it covers the mixture by 2 cm. Gently press down with a wooden spatula, scroll, lift and lower it for about 7 minutes. When the clot begins to stretch like chewing gum, it means the process is going right.
Remove the “cubes” from the water and form balls of the appropriate size. To obtain a well-known layered structure, place a piece on your palm, and with the other hand, roll the edges of the piece inward a couple of times.
Place the formed balls in a cool, weak solution of salt (1 tablespoon of salt per liter of water) or whey. Place in the refrigerator.

After just a couple of hours, real homemade mozzarella is ready to eat. You can add it to salad, or you can easily prepare Italian spaghetti with cheese.

Quick recipe for making mozzarella

You don’t always have enough time to cook, because the mozzarella cheese recipe involves significant time costs. We offer an accelerated option, in which making mozzarella takes about half an hour due to the use of a microwave in the manufacturing process. Photos of this “spirited” variety are no different from the traditional type, and the taste is even more intense and tender.

village milk - 4-5 l.;
pepsin (fungal enzyme);
lemon.

Scheme for cheese making at home:

Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat on the stove to a temperature of 70 degrees.
While the pan is on the fire, dilute 1/10 of the peptin packet in a third of a glass of cool water.
Squeeze lemon juice into heated milk and stir.
After this, pour in the diluted enzyme and stir.
After adding peptin, the milk begins to curdle. As huge clumps of cheese form, remove the pan from the heat and let the contents cool slightly.
After this, use a slotted spoon to transfer the pieces of mass into a special microwave-safe container.
Drain off the excess whey and place the pieces in the microwave for a minute.
Take out the container, stir, knead the mass, remove excess whey again and put it in the oven again.
Repeat the function again so that the mass becomes plastic and smooth.
Next, form the cheese. Rely on your own taste, because it is difficult to create perfect mozzarella. Knead, stretch, twist the mass. Once it reaches a suitable thickness, finish the process.
Roll into balls of appropriate size and place in a cool brine solution (1 tablespoon of salt per liter of water) to salt for 4 hours.

Video: Cooking Mozzarella cheese at home

How to make mozzarella at home

Nothing is more synonymous with Italy than pizza, spaghetti and mozzarella cheese. But, if pizza and spaghetti are on everyone’s lips, then not everyone will be able to say at least a couple of phrases about mozzarella. So who is he, this mysterious “Italian”?

Origin story

Mozzarella comes from southern Italy. Even the Romans made this cheese at home from sheep's milk , and in the 3rd century the monks from San Lorenzo di Capua (Italian: San Lorenzo di Capua) usually distributed bread and cheese to the needy under the name Mozza (Italian: Mozza) - an abbreviation for the Italian verb mozzare, which means “to cut off.” This is where the upcoming “cheese name” of mozzarella came from. Thirteen centuries later, buffaloes were domesticated in Italy and cheese began to be created en masse from their milk. And only the festive procession across Europe from the mid-twentieth century and the increase in people's love for it forced producers to switch to cow's milk.

If the Romans, without kitchen equipment and the Internet at hand, managed to prepare mozzarella in rather ascetic home conditions, then why don’t we take the risk of creating it?! So…

Recipe

There is one mind-blowing culinary rule: “The most extraordinary dishes come from the most ordinary goods!” Mozzarella, I want to tell you, is no exception to the rule.

The process is quite simple: you heat milk with citric acid, add an enzyme to separate the protein from the whey, heat again, stir, stretch, roll into balls, and then you have mozzarella cheese. It's practically a miracle, isn't it?!

Ingredients needed

To make mozzarella we will need:

4.5 liters of milk;
300 ml water;
1.5 teaspoons of citric acid;
0.25 pills and 0.25 teaspoon of rennet;
1 teaspoon salt.

As a result, we have 0.5 kg of cheese and 30 minutes spent.

Mozzarella is undemanding and does not require a specific type of milk (it can be skim, cow, goat). Naturally, the perfect option is grandma’s rustic.

We recommend subscribing to our channel in Yandex Zen - noteworthy essays about Italy are published there every day

The main condition: milk does not have to be pasteurized! During pasteurization, milk proteins break down and lose their ability to coagulate. The enzyme can be purchased at a pharmacy.

Utensils and tools

To make cheese, we will need a six-liter enamel pan (the enamel will prevent the acid from reacting with the alloy);
Without a doubt, a measuring cup and spoon are needed;
It is imperative to have a clear temperature indicator (to control the temperature of the process), a slotted spoon and gauze to separate the enzyme and cheese;
The final stage of manufacturing will require a knife with a narrow and super sharp blade, a microwave-safe bowl, and, surprisingly, rubber gloves.

Manufacturing stages

While making mozzarella, it is better not to prepare any other dishes. This procedure does not take much time, but it is worth paying maximum attention to it.

First, prepare citric acid and rennet. To do this, dissolve the first one in 200 ml of cool water, and the second one in the remaining 100 ml.
Next, we pour the milk into the pan , stirring, add citric acid and heat to 33 degrees, without forgetting to stir our mixture. If the milk does not begin to curdle, then heat it to 35-37 degrees.
In the next step, we will add the enzyme in this way: remove the pan from the heat and, slowly pouring in the enzyme, mix the milk. After the cup with the enzyme is empty, we slowly count to 30 (with all this, your hand does not have to stop the mixing process), say “Stop!”, Stop stirring, cover the pan with a lid and forget about it for 5 minutes.
Check the contents of the pan. If it looks like custard and you can clearly see the boundaries of the curd particles and whey, you can proceed to the next step. If a miracle has not yet happened, then cover the container with a lid and relax for another 5 minutes.
The curd curd is ready, which means it’s time to take up the knife! Make several vertical and horizontal cuts into the curd, using the blade to reach the bottom of the container. You need to get a sketch of approximately similar cubes.

Place the pan back on the stove and, stirring VERY gently, being careful not to damage the cubes, heat the contents to 41 degrees. Remove the cheese from the heat and stir for another 5 minutes. The longest heating time will make our cheese harder.
Next, separate the curd from the whey using a slotted spoon covered with several layers of gauze. Transfer the resulting curd into a microwave-safe bowl and heat for 30 seconds. While the cheese is heating, we put on gloves to avoid getting burned later. We check the temperature with the temperature indicator, it should be 60 degrees (if you see the lowest number of degrees on the device, then repeat the heating function).
Now we carefully stretch what is left of the cubes and begin to form one large ball or mozzarella balls for one bite, squeezing in our hands and rolling out the mass until a glossy shine appears.
Next, add salt to the cool whey, put the balls in it and put it in the refrigerator for storage. Our miracle cheese may remain uneaten for only a few days, but it is better to consume it as quickly as possible.

When making cheese, a huge amount of whey is released (approximately 3.5 liters). We don't need that much to store cheese. Therefore, the remaining whey can be used when baking bread or buns, replacing the water from the recipe with it. It will give extraordinary softness and airiness to baked goods.

How to eat mozzarella well

Mozzarella cheese is incomparable both on its own and as part of salads. It pairs wonderfully with tomatoes and basil in a Caprese salad.

Don't forget about mozzarella when making pizza. The cheese will give her a unique Italian taste.

And, of course, what would pasta be without mozzarella? Boil the spaghetti, add cooked shrimp and mozzarella balls cut into four pieces, season it all with your favorite sauce, and amaze your family with an unusual and superbly tasty dish.

The nutritional value of 100 g of mozzarella is:

Calorie content 244 kcal;
Proteins 22 g;
Fats 26 g;
Carbohydrates 1 g.

A little about the chemical composition of mozzarella:

Saturated fatty acids 10.9 g;
Cholesterol (an organic compound, a natural fatty, lipophilic alcohol found in the cell membranes of all living organisms except nuclear-free ones) 54 mg;
Mono- and disaccharides 1.23 g.

Now you understand all the secrets of this “Italian”. I hope the ease of production will inspire you to your next culinary feat. Cook with love and enthusiasm.

Homemade mozzarella recipe

What is mozzarella?

Mozzarella is the freshest extracted cheese belonging to the “Pasta Filata” group, which means “strands of pasta”. This group also includes cheeses like Caciocavallo, Provolone, Scamorza, Suluguni and Chechil. Mozzarella is always simply recognizable by its own shape - it always has the shape of a small ball, also by its layered structure.

If you try these cheeses, you will certainly notice that the cheeses of this group are not homogeneous in structure, but are simply divided into fibers and strands. Technologically, this is achieved through the process of heating and then stretching the cheese mass at the very end of the production process of these cheeses. Upon completion of stretching, the melted plastic cheese is immediately given the shape required by the technology and then cooled.

By the way! Traditional Italian mozzarella is made from buffalo milk, which, naturally, is not so easy to get! That’s why mozzarella is currently made from regular cow’s milk.

Fresh mozzarella (Italian giornata) has the most delicate creamy taste, and you can experience it not only under the Italian sun, but also at home .

Mozzarella recipe

Almost everyone is interested in how difficult it is to create mozzarella at home? Believe me, if you have fresh farm milk, rennet and a thermophilic starter, our mozzarella recipe will be a breeze!

So, we will need it:

Milk - 5 l;
Citric acid – 1/2 tbsp;
Rennet – 1/4 tsp;
Thermophilic sourdough (branded sourdough ProCyr “For mozzarella”, Uglich-MSTt, Uglich-TNV or Uglich-TP). Calculate the application rate using a starter calculator.
5 l saucepan. (either enamel or stainless steel; aluminum is not suitable !);
Form for Adyghe cheese or Large Cylinder form;
Temperature indicator for milk.
Calcium chloride (if you pasteurize milk).

Development of mozzarella production:

To make mozzarella at home, you must follow the following recipe:

First, activate the starter. To do this, pour the contents of the sachet into 100 ml of warm water (30°C) and leave for half an hour.
Next, dilute the citric acid powder in a glass of water and stir thoroughly.
Regardless of whether you pasteurized the milk or not, cool it to 14˚C. Add the diluted acid evenly to the milk, stirring it gently. If the acid is normal and the milk is fresh, then nothing should curdle, the milk will only noticeably thicken , you will feel it with a slotted spoon.
While stirring the milk, slowly heat it to 32⁰C.
Pour the activated starter (remember that it had to stand for 30 minutes) into the milk, then gently mix the entire amount of milk with a slotted spoon .
Dilute the rennet in 30 ml of warm (25-32°C) water. Add the purchased enzyme solution to the pan with milk and stir thoroughly.
If you have pasteurized milk, it is better to add calcium chloride. This will help form the most dense and even clot. For 5 l. you need to add 1/8 teaspoon of solution (or half a measuring spoon No. 1).
Cover the pan with a lid and leave the milk until a curd (the milk will look like jelly). This may take 20-45 minutes. Attention! During the formation of a curd, the milk must not be stirred ! You can only carefully “poke” it with the tip of a knife to check the thickening.
Once the clot has formed, check it for a clean break (clean separation). To do this, cut the clot with a knife to a depth of 5-7 cm. If there is nothing left on the knife after this, everything is fine! If there is any left, we wait some more. Look how it looks in the picture ( the picture enlarges when you click)
If everything is in order with a clean break, break the clot with a slotted spoon and slowly heat it to 40⁰C, stirring continuously. During the stirring process, you will see that the curd has separated into two fractions - translucent whey and cheese grain . Knead for 10 minutes . During the kneading process, the grain will become denser and release excess water. What the grain looks like is shown in the picture.
Place the finished grain in a colander and leave for 1 hour to allow the whey to drain. What remains in the colander is the so-called “cheese dough”. It's practically cheese :) Just a little more patience!
After an hour, turn the dough over and let it press in the opposite direction, gaining even more acidity.
Cut the mature cheese into strips, place in a bowl and fill with hot (85⁰C) water. Before our eyes, the cheese dough begins to melt and stretch. The picture shows that I can stretch it more than 2-3 times. We stretch the cheese dough with our hands and fold it a couple of times, we get what looks like puff pastry. Fundamental point! The cheese dough will be hot!
If you are afraid of burning your hands, you can wear double gloves - fabric on the bottom, rubber on top.
Tear the mozzarella balls from the dough and roll them into ice-cold brine (1 tablespoon of salt per 1 liter of water, brine temperature - 10°C). We leave the cheese to salt for half an hour, after which we take it out.

Italian mozzarella cheese at home: recipe and video

The most delicious mozzarella cheese has been around for quite some time. This term was first used back in 1570. Initially, this product was prepared using buffalo milk, since it specifically contains a huge amount of minerals and trace elements.

Obviously, it was not so easy to get this ingredient, because then ordinary cow’s milk was used in making cheese.

Typically, mozzarella comes in the form of balls or spirals. When made correctly, the cheese has a delicate and soft taste .

Ingredients for making cheese

In order to make mozzarella cheese at home, you will need four liters of milk .

It is better to use a high-quality rustic product with the highest degree of fat content.

In addition, you can’t do without citric acid (just take 1.5 teaspoons), 175 ml of water and a special rennet (you can buy it in pharmacies).

Utensils and accessories for cheese production

As for cutlery, you will need a container or other container designed for heating milk.

Please note that there does not have to be aluminum on the walls of this container (otherwise it may interact with the acid contained in the mozzarella ).

In addition, you need to have a cheese mold (it can be presented in the form of a square or circle). At the bottom of this container there should be special holes for the whey to drain.

The presence of a temperature indicator is also essential (it is better if it is an electrical device with the greatest accuracy).

In order to separate the rennet from the cheese itself, it is convenient to use a colander.

Several heavy buckets can be used as a press. Gauze tissue (a medical system of cells and intercellular substance united by a common origin, structure and functions) .

Manufacturing stages

The first step is to dilute citric acid with water . This will help give the mozzarella the desired thickness. In this case, it is necessary to use cool and non-chlorinated water. The required amount of citric acid should be dissolved in 125 milliliters of water.

The rennet should be dissolved in the remaining water (about a pinch of enzyme is enough). The powder must be completely dissolved in water .

In the next step, the milk is poured into a container (its temperature should be 17 degrees). Citric acid is poured evenly into the pan. In this case, the liquid should be stirred.

Next, the container is placed on low heat. To control the temperature, it is better to use a temperature indicator (the milk must be heated to approximately 35 degrees).

At the next stage of production, rennet is poured into the milk and mixed well for 3 minutes. After this, you need to turn off the heat, close the container with a lid and leave for 40 minutes . During this period of time, a clot should form that does not stick to your fingers.

The curd is removed and placed in a colander. The remaining liquid is heated to 90 degrees. Next, add salt to the whey and add cheese to it. To protect your hands from burns, wear gloves .

After 10 seconds, take out the cheese and try to stretch it. The clot should not break.

Dip it into the liquid again and continue stretching and kneading. Wait until the mass acquires a homogeneous and viscous appearance .

If Italian cheeses are your thing, you can also check out the recipe for wonderful mascarpone so you can prepare it yourself at home.

You will find a recipe for making true Italian pasta, as well as useful tips and advice for this dish in this material on our website.

How to Serve Mozzarella Cheese

Ready-made mozzarella can be served on the table as an independent product on a beautiful plate, or it can be used as the main ingredient in making salads.

Thus, there is the famous Caprese salad, also a salad with shrimp and mozzarella.

Please note that ready-made cheese should be stored in pre-prepared salted whey . If the product sits on the plate for a long time, it will simply dry out.

Obviously, mozzarella must be stored in the refrigerator. The product can be left there for a certain number of days, but it is better to use it as early as possible.

Thus, if you wish and have all the ingredients, you can prepare this delicate delicacy at home.

Video on how to make Italian mozzarella cheese at home: