How to cook mozzarella at home

We all know the mozzarella cheese. This very tasty and healthy product is made from cow and buffalo milk. It has a pure white color and an elastic consistency with a smooth thin crust. Unlike most cheeses, you can easily prepare mozzarella at home. Use it as you can for a sandwich, and as an ingredient for a variety of salads and pizza. So, we suggest to learn how to make mozzarella at home.

Ingredients

In order to prepare mozzarella at home, we will need the following products: four liters of pasteurized milk, liquid rennet enzyme - half a tablet or half teaspoon, distilled water - 175 ml, citric acid - two teaspoons, 2.5 tablespoons of salt .

Making mozzarella at home: milk and rennet

Fill a large pot with water, put it on a stove and bring it to a boil. In a separate container, mix half a tablet or a half teaspoon of liquid rennet with a quarter cup of distilled water (cold). Stir until the enzyme is completely dissolved. We set aside the capacity for a while.

Separately mix 2 spoons of citric acid with 120 ml of distilled cold water. We mix it well. Pour into a pan of 6-8 liters capacity four liters of pasteurized milk. Sterilized (ultra-pasteurized) milk should not be used, as it does not curdle during cooking. In the same pan, pour water with dissolved in it citric acid. Gently mix. At this stage, you can see how the milk begins to slowly curdle.

Clotting

Preparation of mozzarella at home by the next stage involves the process of coagulation of milk. Heat the saucepan over low heat until the mixture found in it has a temperature of 31 degrees Celsius (use a thermometer). Do not forget to stir the milk constantly so that it does not burn. To do this, you can use a spoon, a whisk or a heat-resistant spatula. At this stage, the process of coagulation of milk begins. After the mixture in the pan has reached the required temperature, we add distilled water with the rennet enzyme dissolved in it. Thoroughly mix the contents of the pan for 30-40 seconds and reduce the fire to the very minimum. Continue cooking the milk mixture until its temperature reaches 40 degrees Celsius. Remove the saucepan from the fire and leave it to stand for a quarter of an hour. At this time, the coagulated white mass (essentially cottage cheese) will separate from the whey. As we see, while the mozzarella recipe at home is not anything complicated. Therefore we continue.

The next stage is work with the curd mass

Without taking the cottage cheese out of the pot, cut it with a knife into cubes with a side of about 2.5 centimeters. For convenience during cutting, you can hold it with a large spoon or ladle. We install a piece of gauze or colander over a bowl. Then, with the help of noise from stainless steel, we shift the cut curd from the pan to a colander or cheesecloth. Allow the serum to drain into a bowl. If you used gauze, you can hang it in mozzarella to drain for three to four hours. In this case, your cheese will turn out harder.

Formed in a bowl, pour the serum back into the pan. We return there and a colander with cottage cheese. Then add half a teaspoon of salt. We repeat the procedure for rearranging the cottage cheese so that the serum from it again. The more times you do this, the drier will eventually be your mozzarella.

Again, heat the water in a saucepan. When its temperature reaches 76-80 degrees, shift cottage cheese into it. A third of the total mass should be put into the pot at a time. We put on thick rubber gloves or take a noise and, having compressed the curd mass into a single whole, we lower it into hot water.

We make mozzarella at home: the final stage

We extract cottage cheese from hot water. In this case, check whether it is stretched, since the consistency of it should be sticky and uniform. If cottage cheese crumbles, then check if there is enough hot water in the pan. If necessary, heat it and keep the curds in it for some time. Stretch and fold your already almost ready cheese several times. When you are convinced that he has acquired the necessary consistency, roll it into a ball.

Now you can go on to prepare the pickle. To do this, mix two cups of serum with two tablespoons of salt. There we add a few ice cubes. In the resulting brine, you must put the finished cheese. In it, it must be before cooling down. Then the prepared mozzarella can be extracted from the brine.

In order to properly store the cheese, it must be wrapped in a food film, and then closed in an airtight container. Thus, you can keep it in the fridge for a week, and in the freezer - for a month.

A few tips

- If you decide to make mozzarella cheese at home, then before starting this process, make sure that all kitchenware and utensils are clean. After all, fresh cheese very quickly spoils, if it was exposed to bacteria.

- If fresh mozzarella was too soft to grate it, you can freeze it beforehand.

- The whey that is left from mozzarella can be used to make ricotta cheese.