Making Cheese: Halloumi

[FrenchTart]

Today a few of us (including uv from here) made halloumi from scratch. This is our first time making cheese so I'll have to ask any pro cheese makers to forgive us for any mistakes or short-cuts

I also didn't get many decent pictures so I'll have to apologise for any quality issues or missing pictures.

First off, the ingredients. We were making quite a big batch so you won't need quite as much milk as we used

18 pints of full fat milk
Some animal rennet
Sea salt
Dried mint leaves

The rennet is what we use to set the cheese by separating the curds and the whey.

Aside from this, we used the following equipment:

Some big stew pans
A thermometer that can measure 20-100C
Cheese cloth (or, as we couldn't get some in time, some unused stockings...)
Some containers to put the chunks of halloumi and the brine in once complete

Method

Empty the milk into the various large pans.

Using the thermometer, raise the temperature of the milk to 32C. If it goes any higher, wait for it to cool down before going on to the next step. Once it hits this temperature turn off the heat.

For each 4 pints of milk in a pan you will need 1/2 a teaspoon of rennet mixed with 1/2 teaspoon of bottled (or pre-boiled *AND COOLED*) water. Add this rennet/water mix to the milk and stir very thoroughly.

Now you need to leave the milk for about an hour.

Come back to the milk and the curds and whey should have separated nicely. You should be able to run a knife through the curds and make a clean cut whilst doing so. If you can't, leave it for another 10 minutes.

Once the curds and whey are ready, cut the curds into cubes in the pan. Now leave it for another 10 minutes and get your cheese cloth (or stockings...) ready.

Now we spoon the curds into the cheesecloth/stockings and press it down a little until it's roughly the size of two normal blocks of halloumi. Apologies for the poor picture.

Once you've done all this you'll need to hang up the cheesecloth somewhere so the whey can drip out and the curds can set into nice blocks.

After an hour (or longer if you like) a lot of the whey should have dripped out of the moulds and the blocks should feel fairly solid. You'll still be able to easily crush them in your hands but they won't feel like jelly any more. At this point we can remove the cheese cloth and turn the moulded curds out onto a tray.

Now we need to heat up the left over whey to 90C.

...and add the blocks of curd to the whey. Once you do this, turn off the heat and leave them in there for about 20 minutes. The curds should float to the top once they are cooked.

Once done lay out the cooked curds on to a draining board. Sprinkle with fine sea salt on all sides.

Whilst they are cooling off and drying out we now mix up the brine that the curds will sit in for up to a month in your fridge. This is made up of 45% bottled or pre-boiled (and cooled) water, 45% the left over whey and 10% sea salt (*and* a teaspoon of the dried mint leaves). Mix this all together and fill up your containers with it. Then place the halloumi blocks into the containers. This can sit in your fridge for a month (maybe more) and stay fresh. I imagine that the taste is best after at least a week.

We couldn't wait that long though so we made some immediately. Nom nom.

 

[FrenchTart]

This may seem like a lot of effort but it actually wasn't too bad and you end up with halloumi at about 1/3rd the normal price from the shops.

I plan to make some brie soon too

 

[FrenchTart]

The mint went in with the brine solution at the end. Sorry, completely forgot to include that in the writeup. Will add it now.

 

[FrenchTart]

Please post back and let me know if you try it

 

[FrenchTart]

I need to get some starter cultures for the brie and also work out how cold my cellar is as I don't have a 2nd fridge (yet).

Also trying to work out the best way to make cheese moulds. I drink a lot of diet coke so I'm thinking of using those bottles with the tops and bottoms cut off. I'd need to rig up a press too though.

 

[FrenchTart]

I used normal whole milk but I imagine gold top would be better. The fresher, fattier and unpasteurised the better.

 

[FrenchTart]

Just bought the penicillium candidum to make the brie

 

[FrenchTart]

How you storing/maturing them?
I looked at making cambozola but you really need to hack a fringe with temp and moisture control. To get constant and correct conditions. And that's a bit much effort at them moment for me.

Either through uv's new spare fridge or using a combination of my cellar, a peltier, a pid and a home-built fridge

 

[FrenchTart]

Very nice, I'm going to give it a go hopefully this weekend and have some ready for Christmas to impress my parents!

Where did you get your rennet?

I looked around about 10 different shops that I thought likely to have it (health food places, hippy places, large tesco shops (which apparently stock it)) before I gave up and just bought it on ebay/amazon.

 

[FrenchTart]

Hmmm, that sounds exactly like my plan for getting rennet, might just bite the bullet and get it online straight away...

I would do. I spent way too much time fruitlessly searching for it

It was kind of annoying to get online as the postage was as much as the rennet... But I guess it will last for ages so it's really not that bad.

 

[FrenchTart]

I bought 50g of animal rennet and I used so little that it's hard to tell that any has gone at all.

I've not heard of essence of rennet - is it a vegetable one maybe? It's probably fine but might be stronger or weaker.

18 pints of milk made roughly the equivalent of 10 super market-sized packets of halloumi, or thereabouts

I shouldn't browse this forum when hungry, damnit I want some nice over-ripe camembert now, oh nom nom nom. Or a bacon and brie sarnie..oh god.

Yeah, I've ordered the mould culture for making brie/camembert... Should be making some in the coming week with luck Agreed on the nom

 

[FrenchTart]

Halloumi is awesome by itself or in wraps. It's really different to normal cheese. Much more 'bite' to the texture (hence sometimes being described as 'squeaky cheese').

This is the culture I ordered for the brie mould (the white stuff that makes up the rind): http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/350502194686

You will also need another culture to ripen the cheese - you can use yoghurt for this and I plan to use yeo valley as I've heard people have good results with this.

Aside from that you'll need to build or buy some cheese moulds. I plan to build some out of the millions of bottles of diet coke I have. Basically you want a straight tube of plastic with holes cut in it.

Then you'll need a press of some kind. You could probably get away with using a large tin or something - needs to be just a little smaller than your mould so it can fit inside and press down on the curds.

Once you've got all that you can finally begin to make the brie (it's much more effort to get up and running than the halloumi, which is part of why I went for halloumi first).

http://makingsenseofthings.info/2010/12/how-to-make-brie-cheese-at-home/

It may actually be easier to make cheddar. It requires slightly less effort (don't need the culture I got from ebay and don't need to let it go mouldy) but you'll be waiting even longer for it to be nice. I think brie is around a minimum of 4 weeks. I would guess you're looking at at least double that before cheddar is good enough to eat - ideally you'd want it to be more like 4 months or more.

 

[FrenchTart]

Thanks for that. I'll take a look, I reckon I'll do it this weekend tho if I can order some stuff tonight.

I'd want the brie to be well matured, so wont try and rush that in.

I reckon that 45-50 days from making is good for a really mature brie. Unless what I've read is wrong, after 60 days it will be a bit much even for mature brie lovers

I'd love to hear how you get on if you make it. I think we may make it next week or so.

 

[FrenchTart]

Does the milk need to be unpasteurised for the Halloumi?

Or can I give it a go with bog standard supermarket stuff?

I used pasteurised but if you can get hold of unpasteurised you will get better results. It may not be such an issue with halloumi but I imagine the improvement in taste would be more pronounced with brie and hard cheeses.

I like it so you can dip crackers in it and it comes out like melted cheese. Will stick some results in here...

Mm Looking forward to seeing that.

What temperature is ideal for storing the cheese whilst it ages?

I've read between 6C and 8C if memory serves. Most cellars will work okay though I worry about the cheeses getting other mould spores on them. It's probably fine though, especially if you wax your cheese.

 

[FrenchTart]

What is the difference between making cheese this way and getting halloumi, or making any other cheese?

kd

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Do you mean what would you do differently to make other cheeses?

If so, some of the main differences would be:

1) Adding a culture (or cultures) to the milk at the start to help ripen the milk and eventually develop flavour. One example of this is using yoghurt.

2) Not heating/boiling the curds after they come out of the moulds. This is done for halloumi only I think.

3) Much longer pressing/moulding and eventual aging in the fridge. Halloumi needs very little (maybe a week), brie at least 30 days, cheddar and the like needs at least a few months or more.

There are probably more but those are just a few examples I thought of.

 

[FrenchTart]

My rennet has arrived... But they've sent me vegetarian stuff instead of the animal one I ordered! Before I send it back, and will it work the same as the animal stuff?

It says on the bottle to use a drip in cooled boiled water, and that should be added along with the starter, does the animal stuff say the same?

It'll be pretty much the same, especially for halloumi/brie. For really long-aged cheeses you want to stick to animal rennet as vegetable rennet can apparently produce a slight bitterness after it breaks down (takes months and months and months to happen).

In regards to adding a drip to pre-boiled and cooled water, yeah, that's the same for animal rennet.

I would just keep it and use it tbh. Though you could always contact the seller and complain + ask them to pay for return postage. If you're lucky they'll tell you to keep it and send out some animal rennet too.

 

[FrenchTart]

Ah, sounds like the milk wasn't great, yeah. A little calcium chloride should help. I'd also just give it longer and reheat it a little maybe.

 

[FrenchTart]

Just got home after being out rather longer than planned. The batch I hung up is still really wet and squishy, much as it was when i left it.

The other lot is pretty much exactly the same amount of separation as when i left it too.

Might I ask what brand of milk you used? I was using Morrisons...

Just looked at the Calcium Chloride, seems a bit pricy....

I used Sainsbury's own brand blue top milk. I can't imagine that there's that much difference. It could be the vegetable rennet I guess?

When it was in the pan after we'd mixed it a little during the separating process the consistency of the curds was a little like scrambled egg. Possibly slightly more jelly-like in fact. Once it went into the moulds it stayed that way for a good while. Now and again we squeezed it a little whilst in the moulds but nothing major as we were worried about breaking the shape.

Once it came out of the moulds the shape was solid but it still felt like it might fall apart if you didn't handle it very carefully. It was only after cooking and subsequent cooling that it felt like it had any strength to it at all.

 

[FrenchTart]

My curds were more like a yogurt than anything, and not separated from the whey at all really.

I might give it another try but use a tad more rennet this time... Was hoping it'd be nice and simple so I could make some for the my parents for Xmas.

You could always try sticking more rennet in the one you've already made. I did this for one of the 4 pans of stuff I made last time as there wasn't enough in that one.

Even if it sounds like it wouldn't be optimal you've at least then tested it for next time.

 

[FrenchTart]

Glad to hear that you got something close to what you wanted at least And it does sound promising for another attempt.

I'm waiting on a new thermometer to arrive as mine broke. Once it does I'll probably make more halloumi and some cheddar and brie. Nom.

edit: I still have some of the first batch of halloumi in the brine. It wasn't salty enough for me so I ended up adding even more salt. Next time I may try adding salt to the curds before I put them in the mould even though no recipes for halloumi have salt added at that stage.