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30 Minute Mozzarella

Source: Cheese Making at Home by Rebeccah Durkin with Lisa French.

Ingredients

• 2 gallons whole milk
• 3 teaspoons citric acid powder
• 1/4 tablet rennet, dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
• 4 teaspoons salt

Directions

1. Dissolve rennet in water.
2. Pour milk into a large pot. Sprinkle citric acid into the milk and stir to mix. The milk needs to be cold or it won’t work as well. Bring the milk to 88°-90° over medium heat, stirring the milk a few time while heating. It usually only takes about 10 minutes to reach this temperature. Stir the milk to get an accurate temperature reading. If you accidentally overheat it, let it cool back down to beween 88°-90°.
3. Pour the dissolved rennet into the milk while stirring.
4. Keep stirring slowly, and after a few minutes, the milk will begin to thicken and clot. Globs of white curd will separate from the whey (the clear, yellowish liquid).
5. Turn heat to high. Once the temperature reaches 110°, place a colander over another pot and dump curds and whey into it. Return the whey to heat. Press why out of the mass of curds in the colander. Place mass of curds into the pot of whey.
6. Continue to heat the whey. Once it reaches about 120°F you can start stretching the mozzarella. Use your hands or spoons to lift the mass of curds up. Let it cool off for a few seconds if you need to, then begin pulling and stretching it into a rope. (You can wear clean rubber gloves if the whey is too hot for your hands.) If the cheese isn’t hot enogh, it will break apart when you try to stretch it. Just stick it back together and put it back into the whey to heat up.
7. After you’ve stretched the cheese into a rope, drop it back down into the hot whey. Let it heat a few minutes, then stretch it again. Work out the lumps as you go. It should be ready by the time the whey reaches 150°-160°F, but you may have to heat it as hot as 170°F. This process takes about 10 minutes. Your goal is a soft, stretchy, smoooth, shiny rope of cheese. If the whey gets too hot, the cheese will melt into it. NOTE: if you are using store-bought milk, stop stretching the cheese around 160°F because it could turn grainy like ricotta cheese.
8. Once the mozzarella has been stretched enough, let it sit in the hot whey until it gets nice and hot throughout. Sprinkle the salt onto a work surface. Pull the mozzarella out of the whey and place it onto the salt. Knead in the salt. Work quickly because once the cheese cools, it won’t readily absorb the salt. Place the cheese back into the whey for a minute to get hot, then place on a table and roll it into a log or a ball.
9. Wrap the mozzarella tightly in plastic wrap or put it into a food storage container and refrigerate it for up to a week. It’s at its best eaten fresh.