DIY -- cheese

No, seriously. I wrote this post after my first try at making paneer turned out perfectly and I was able to make Jalfreezi paneer right away for 25% of the price some websites charge for the same amount of paneer. But read and heed the warnings at the end of this post. I will not take responsibility for your ignoring them and winding up in the hospital.

This is not exactly the paneer recipe I used but the ingredients and proportions are the same, and with a name like that he ought to know how it's done.  Took me about an hour and for 30 minutes of that, the paneer was under compression and I was prepping veggies for the Jalfreezi.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/aarti-sequeira/paneer-homemade-indian-cheese-recipe-1927608

If you can make paneer, you can make cottage cheese and ricotta.
http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-homemade-ricotta-cheese-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-23326
http://homegrownandhealthy.com/homemade-cottage-cheese/

There are cottage cheese recipes that use rennet but I wanted you to get started without having to buy it. I get mine from
https://www.cheesemaking.com/cheeserennets.html

but here are two more.
https://www.getculture.com/yogurt-culture/
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/

Here's my next target, now that I have my vegetable rennet tablets. (I keep kosher and animal rennet is not kosher in cheese.) Are you a Caprese salad freak? Then you have to try this at least once.
http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-homemade-mozzarella-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-174355

And now the cream of cheeses. Most hard cheeses, like cheddar, need some kind of culture. Here are three recipes. Some people consider them "faux" and I'll show you why in  a moment.
Queso Blanco: https://bitofearthfarm.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/make-the-easiest-homemade-cheese/
Farmhouse cheddar: http://thecheerfulagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/02/homemade-press-less-raw-cheddar-cheese.html
One-hour faux cheddar: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363349698/how-to-make-a-faux-cheddar-in-one-hour

The next recipe is from Amish country; it uses yogurt with live cultures, which means this is basically a thermophilic hard cheese. Your mold should be ceramic or glass and you can use the fake press below unless you decide to go the whole hog (sorry).
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/recipe/cheese-recipes/homestead-yogurt-cultured-hard-cheese/

Notice the promise that you will see moldy spots. If you can't stomach Stilton or Dana-Blue, this might turn you off and then you should probably stick with the quicker softer cheeses.  OTOH, the outside of your Muenster or Brie or Camembert is also mold so either be consistent and ditch those too or just accept that you've been brought up to be too antiseptic. (Which you have if you believe those 99% antiseptic cleaners are good things.)

This is the real deal, cheese press and all.  Unless you decide you want to really go for it, you might shy away from spending up to $300 on a press which, however, you can probably find on most websites that sell cheese-making products.
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/recipe/cheese-recipes/cheddar-cheese-recipe/

Now. You probably have heavy things in your house like coffee table books or large pots. For example, to compress the paneer, I put it on a dinner plate, put another dinner plate on top (painted side up), and stacked other dishes on top of that.

So here are some figures.  A two-gallon jug of vinegar weighs about 18 pounds (I keep a two-gallon jug around because I use it to kill grass and poison ivy) and a two-gallon jug of cooking oil weighs about 16.  An unopened bag of flour weighs five, of course, while nowadays bags of sugar weigh 4. Put a cookie sheet or one-pound book on the cheese and put your weight on top of that.

With cheeses other than paneer, I can save about 50%. Yeah, kosher cheese is expensive. The only cheese-maker that has both kosher and non-kosher product lines, is Tillamook, after Cabot bowed out. So there's a specialty clientele and less of a saving on scale of operation. There can also be issues with supervision but I won't go into that because this post is about cheese not Jewish law.

Now. You may remember my post on breeding my own sourdough yeast using just flour and water, so that I wasn't tied to buying packets of yeast. Wanna do the same with cheese cultures? Here it is.
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/cheese/making-keeping-mother-cheese-culture/

Notice that this is a very exacting process and see the warning about disease-causing bacteria. But if you're willing to obey the instructions, it will be cheaper than constantly going back to buy more packets, paying for shipping every time.

Or to save on the shipping of your FIRST batch of culture, use yogurt. These instructions are for a thermophilic culture that you would use in Parmesan or Swiss cheese (but you also need another ingredient to get the holes). This works because yogurt incubates at about 110 degrees, like a thermophilic cheese culture. 
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=16.0

I haven't found anything like this for a mesophilic culture (for cheddar, for example).

If you tried some of my ideas like making your own lox or corned beef or smoked turkey, cheese isn't much of a leap. TWO WARNINGS.

All of these recipes use PASTEURIZED MILK not raw milk. That's because raw milk is illegal in my state due to the serious illnesses it can cause. YMMV in your state. However, all the recipes say "don't use ultra-pasteurized milk". Pay attention to that. The flavor won't be as good as you expect.

Second warning. Your utensils must be more than squeaky clean. "That's as good as it gets" is NOT good enough. If your pot is old and there is cooked-on stuff even SOS pads won't get out, buy a new pot, and every time you use it, scrub it until your fingers almost bleed. If you're not willing to do that, forget about making cheese.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved