One night after we had gone a date we.......

made mozzarella cheese! So Dan came home on Friday evening with instructions.  Saturday night while out on a date we went to the store to get a gallon of whole milk, rennet tablets, and citric acid.  We were able to get the rennet tablets at Harris Teeter and the milk and citric acid at Wal-Mart. It was a fun experience and now we can say we've made cheese. Here's the process:

1st we dissolved a half of a rennet tab into bottled water.  We couldn't use tap because of the chlorine content found in tab.  For those who do not know what rennet is, it is an enzyme found in a calf's stomach that helps to break the cows milk down

Here's what rennet tablets look like.

Dissolved tablet.

Pouring a gallon of whole milk into our pot.  You have to be careful what kind of pot you use so that it will not react with the citric acid.

Adding the tsp of citric acid.

You then stir the citric acid into the milk.

Once the milk reached 88 degrees F.  You pour in the dissolved rennet and water.

Then you continue to stir is together until the whey and curds separate.

The thermometer broke! Sad day :(

Now is the hard part.  You have to separate all the whey out from the curds.

You then microwave the curds a few times and drain the whey out.

You then have to reheat the whey for the next part.

As part of the kneading, you have to periodically dip it into they whey to keep it pliable.

You also will have to microwave it.  I used a spoon to start kneading it because my hands were getting burnt, the curds have to stay so hot.

And finally, we made them into golf size balls and stored them in salt water to preserve them.

So that's how you make mozzarella cheese balls! It was an interesting and time consuming project.  It made us appreciate just being able  go buy a pound of it at the store.  Would we do it again?  Yes!

We recently made some butter as a family which was fun. I'll make a post about that with pictures as well.