How Can I Make Homemade Cheddar Cheese?

Surprisingly, making homemade cheddar cheese isn’t difficult; you just have to have the right tools and ingredients. Once you get those, making cheese of any kind from home is a piece of cake. To make cheese, you need to have milk, rennet, cultures, cheese cloth, and possibly a cheese press. You will also need a good pan that will heat up slowly, is non-stick, and will be able to hold the contents of everything that you are cooking. Once you’ve gathered those ingredients, follow these steps to make some great homemade cheese.

Step 1
Sterilize Everything

When you are making cheese, the most important thing is that you have everything clean and sterilized. You want to be sure that you are starting with a clean pan that has nothing in it that can taint the process. If you don’t have something that is sterilized, there is a chance that the cheese will not form properly.

Step 2
Prepare the Milk

The first step to actually start making the cheese is that you bring the milk you are using to a certain temperature. With the milk, you have a few different options as to what you can use. There are some people that use whole milk and others that use a skim version. Whatever you use, it is important to add the right ingredients to it. You can also use cow’s milk, goat’s milk, buffalo milk, or even sheep milk to make your cheese. Once the milk has been heated up to temperature, it is time to add the starter. The starter is generally a bacterium that will break down the milk sugars and convert them into lactic acid, it is these bacteria that generally shape the cheese and make it the flavor that you enjoy so much.

Step 3

Coagulation

Cheese doesn’t form on its own, no matter how long it sits. It requires something to actually curdle the cheese and create the curds. This is called rennet, and is what you should add to the milk after you have brought it to temperature and have added the starter bacteria. From here, the rennet will start to form the milk into curds; the curds will form as everything is cooked once the rennet is added. You can buy rennet online or sometimes in your grocery store in a specialty aisle.

Step 4
Separation

Once you have added the rennet and the curds have formed; now it is time to separate the whey and curds. Drain the whey from the curds and let them set. They will either need to be pressed into a cheese cloth or they will need to be pressed with a block. Generally with cheddar, you want to press it with a block. The cheese is then ready to age, wrap it tight and let it sit. The longer cheddar sits, the sharper it gets.

-Written by Viktoira Carella