Thursday, May 14, 2009

Curds and Whey...







This will give you a great mental picture of "Little Miss Muffet Sat on Her Tuffet Eating Her Curds and Whey..."

What a learning experience we have been on. This will be cottage cheese - which is superior to anything you can buy at the store and very easy (but time consuming) to make!
In the prairie days they would just leave raw milk in a warm place for several days. As you can see we wrapped our pot...nice pink towel huh! Because of the bacteria present in the unpasteurized milk...remember not all bacteria are bad and if there is any harmful bacteria in the raw milk there is also bacteria that counters it so it is safer than anything you can get at the store...(The Untold Milk Story is an informative book and well worth the read.)

The bacteria will turn into soft, white curd. Then I sliced it in 1/4 inch strips to make squares and set on stove and slowly rose the temp stirring gently till it reached 100. Now I left the curds for several hours at 100 and then let them settle for 5 minutes. The next thing I did was to ladle them into a cheesecloth lined colander and drained them for about 45 min. Then I added salt and...wonderful, flavorful cottage cheese!
You can use store bought milk - but why? The process is a lot more involved and uses some chemicals and a culture...If you want to try it you could order the book Home Cheese Making.

Thanks for stopping by.

Pslams 144:12 -

That our sons may be as plants
and our daughters may be pillars sculptured in palace style.


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