Happy Cheeseday!

Making cheese at home is much easier than you think. You’ve probably already got most of the things you’ll need in your kitchen. You might need to find a thermometer and some hoops and cloth for draining the whey from the curds. You’ll also need some rennet and some different types of cheeses require cultures, moulds, lipase and other ingredients, but Haloumi is an uncultured cheese.

Here’s a New Zealander called “Guru Ted” making Haloumi in his kitchen.

When I did the ‘Hard Cheeses’ workshop with Siggi and Gustav of Cheese 4 Life we used 3 liters of unhomogenised, organic milk with 1ml of a liquid, non-animal rennet and kept it at 32°C during the first heating rather than the 34°C that Ted uses. We also only let it set for 40 minutes rather than 45 minutes and then left it in the hoop/mold under pressure for ~ 2 hours. If cheesecloth is hard to find where you live or prohibitively expensive, it can be replaced with chux and Ted looks like he’s made his own ‘hoop’ by drilling lots of holes in a plastic container.

Australians can get rennet, cheesecloth and cheese hoops, as well as all sorts of other cool stuff by mail-order, from CheeseLinks or Green Living Australia.

Happy Haloumi making… 🙂