To start I chopped up some jalapeño peppers and put them in a small amount of water to simmer for about 15 minutes. Once they had simmered for a while I drained off the water and kept it to add to the milk. I also kept the jalaeno pieces cause who doesnt love some japaeno in their cheese :)
Next was the heating of the milk. One of the things I learned was that when making cheese you often dont make it with direct heat (on the stove). Instead you put your pot in a water bath with hot water and make it that way. So since I went out and got a nice new pot I decided to do this in one of our sinks by boiling water and adding it in slowly along with tap water until I got it to the 90 degrees that I wanted.
Once at 90 I added the culture and let it sit for I think an hour or so. Then it was the usual process, wait until it sets, cut it up, bring the temperature up again, drain off the whey and press the cheese :)
Originally I set it up on some cake tins so it wouldnt drip ont he counter but I was worried I would crush them when I got up to 50 lb of weight so I switched to a collender.
We have ants in our building so to prevent them from getting at the cheese I set it on a place which sits on a stand in a bowl full of water (A cheese castle with a moat around it)
I had it air dry for 3 or 4 days and then when it came time to wax it I decided to try a different shape from last time. Triangles looked nice but when I was cutting them it was odd because I couldnt but pieces that were the same size so this time I decided to pre cut them into rectangular blocks and wax them that way
6 very nice blocks of cheese with the last of the triangle cheese from last time as a reference
This cheese has to age for at least 2 months so after June 20 you can look forward to some pics of jalapeno cheddar
~(' ')~
No comments:
Post a Comment