Today, We Made Cheese!

             In today's lab, we made cheese! Knowing that cheese is a staple in French cuisine, I found this lab to be very eye opening to our upcoming food experiences in France. For those of you who do not know, cheese is a fairly complex structure based on milk. Going by the outcomes of some of our unsuccessfully made cheese, I'd say it is very complex for some of us!



Hannah adding skim milk to the buttermilk already in the pot.

To begin the lab, the class broke up into groups of three, and my group members were Hannah and Ashley. We were assigned to make a successful cheese using the lemon juice procedure . Our group decided to use skim milk to create the cheese, while other groups used anything from Vitamin D milk to goat's milk. We were a little hesitant at first because what kind of good cheese is low in fat?!



French chef in the making!

            The first 20 minutes of the lab were spent hovering over the stove top, stirring a mixture of skim milk and buttermilk and waiting for it to bubble and curdle. As soon as this happened, we added a small amount of lemon juice and precipitation occurred! My group almost instantly had curds form from the whey. We were surprised by how huge the curds ended up becoming, and when we dumped out the curds and whey into a the colander , it looked like a mound of ricotta cheese . While we were making our cheese, another group was making theirs using the goats milk, and unfortunately they were not as successful as we were. The successful and unsuccessful cheeses made for a good picture though right?!


Our curds in the whey.

         The next day, after the cheese chilled in the refrigerator, we were able to alter their taste by adding salt, pepper, and herbs. My cheese was very cold when it came out of the fridge and a little hard to manage, so we only added salt. However, other groups spiced up their cheese by adding different combinations of these additives. I didn't end up tasting any of the cheeses, but I heard that some of them did actually taste pretty good.


The two different outcomes.

So far, the cooking experience has been a success in itself. We are all getting to know each other very well by spending so much time with each other and by interacting in the kitchen. Based on our dishes thus far, we are making great improvements. When we head to France in the next few days we will be quite at home!