Making Cheese: Halloumi

Glaucus said:
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.
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I bought a wine cooler. I've set it at 55 degs f and there is a tray to put water in to control humidity and its sitting around 80% +
 
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?
 
Mr Jones said:
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?
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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.
 
valve90210 said:
Hmmm, that sounds exactly like my plan for getting rennet, might just bite the bullet and get it online straight away...
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I would do. I spent way too much time fruitlessly searching for it :p

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.
 
Just ordered it, I was trying to think where I might get it, but like you my options were only really Tescos and Holland and Barrett...and I couldn't be bothered to do any phoning around or traipsing about for it and by the time I'd paid for parking etc it'd probably be about the same as getting it online!
 
It looked to me like he made 5 filled stockings worth with the 18 pints. 18 pints sounds a lot but when you think it's only 3 of the big bottles from the supermarket which cost less than £3 is not bad really!
 
Cool, I'm just trying to work out how much Rennet to get. 25g will be enough then for a couple of stockings worth as a trial.

Also, is there a difference using essence of rennet vs animal rennet?
 
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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.
 
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 :)

godinman said:
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.
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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 :)
 
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I might do this over christmas, got a link to the stuff you ordered so I can have a look? Shame it's too late to have some ready for christmas.
 
I was looking for places to buy Rennet and apparently Lakeland and Waitrose does it but sold as Essense of Rennet, so a little dubious if it's one of the same. Might risk it when I head into Leeds this weekend, pop into Waitrose for some. Postal and packaging maes the rennet cost too much for an experiment...

godinman said:
I might do this over christmas, got a link to the stuff you ordered so I can have a look? Shame it's too late to have some ready for christmas.
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Do it this weekend and it'll be ready for Christmas!
 
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.
 
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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.
 
godinman said:
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.
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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 :p

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