How to Make Cheese at Home (the easy way)

You can make cheese using ingredients and equipment found in most kitchens. This heated milk, acid-precipitated cheese is known as paneer (from Northern India) or other names from different cultures like Wara (from Nigeria). If made with carabao milk, it’s called kesong puti. Most cheese involves bacterial acidification, rennet coagulation, and pressing!

Ingredients

2 cups of milk
4 teaspoons of vinegar/lemon juice
cheesecloth or handkerchief
spoon or mixing spoon
saucepan

1 Pour the two cups of milk in the saucepan, then slowly heat the milk to 80C/175F while stirring constantly. It is very important to constantly stir the milk or it will burn.

Make Cheese at Home Step 1 Version 2.jpg

2 Turn the burner off once the milk is at 80C/175F, but leave the saucepan on the element or gas grate.

While stirring add 4 teaspoons vinegar to the hot milk, at which point the milk should turn into curds and whey. Curds are the solid part, whey is the liquid part.

Continue stirring with spoon and let it sit on the element for 5-10 minutes.

Pass the curds and whey through cheesecloth or a handkerchief–or use a wide draining spoon in lieu of cheesecloth, in which case you’d loose some curds–to separate the curds from the whey. The curds will be the cheese.

Drain and press the cheese using the cloth to get most of the moisture out.

Open the cloth and add a pinch of salt if desired.

Mix the cheese and salt and then press again to remove any extra moisture.

Put the cheese in a mold or just leave it in a ball type form. Leave it in ball form for putting in fresh green salads and in a mold to make sliced cheese for example.If you put it in a mold do it fast so that the cheese will mold easier otherwise it will harden and not mold as easily.