Making Cheese: Halloumi

[FrenchTart]

I'm doing a quick test run on some brie today before we make it as a group. I'll hold off on pictures/walk-throughs until the group cheese-a-thon however.

Wish me luck

 

[FrenchTart]

Disaster, I knocked over my very dodgy home made moulds and lost half of the curds

I will get a couple of pics of my failed attempt up later. I have 1.5 small wheels of brie in the moulds now so it's hopefully not a total waste.

 

[FrenchTart]

So.. Failed attempt pictures:

To make moulds as cheaply as possible I used a couple of spare 2l bottles of coke. I also used a 1.5l as I was a bit short on bottles (and wanted to make one brie smaller than the others so it would ripen quicker).

After messing with a pare of scissors and slicing my finger on sharp plastic we have the finished moulds:

I didn't get any pictures of me failing to fill the moulds (and knocking them over repeatedly) as it was too stressful. Once done though I have left the moulds draining for about 12 hours. Another 12 hours and they'll be good to rub in salt and put in a humid environment.

Far from a perfect first attempt so I won't put a big post up about it (and the method/etc). Quite a few things I will change for next time so in a few days I should be able to put up a somewhat more successful attempt

edit:

For anyone interested, this is what the small semi-failed brie looks like when it has been taken out of the mould:

 

[FrenchTart]

It's strangely addictive I'm finding

Here's a pic of the two bries above once salted and then stuck in a humidity-maintaining box thing. The discolourations are due to me using pink rock salt (all I had handy in the grinder).

 

[FrenchTart]

Nicely done

My Brie is way more pr0 than FTs, can't wait til it's ready

Pft. Quite possibly. I think my third batch of it will be pro though I'm going to get some pictures of the mould development soon. Might be good to eat some of it for NYE.

What did the cheese say when it looked in the mirror? ... Hal-lou-mi!

Wow, I get told off for my terrible jokes all the time but that's just....

Okay you guys have tempted me now. I have thought about making fresh paneer for ages and even picked up some muslin online (useful for so many things!) but think i might get some rennet to make halloumi as well, given how it has turned out for you.
I have a water bath, do you think i would gain any benefit (maybe greater yield) if i held the milk at a constant 32C when separating it and then at a constant 90C when cooking the curds?

Keeping the milk at a constant 32C would definitely help speed things along and I'm sure it'd help with the final yield too. I don't imagine that the yield will be insanely higher but it should be noticeable and the quality of the cheese should be better (less whey retention).

 

[FrenchTart]

As there are an increasing amount of people interested in cheese making, maybe we could have a dedicated thread for cheese makers ? Maybe use this thread if FT is happy with that or a new one could be started?

I don't mind this being used.

I was planning on making a new thread with the method we used for making brie though. Just to make it easy to search the forums.

 

[FrenchTart]

This morning I attempted to make some ricotta fromt he left over whey from my succesful haloumi attempt.

It was a really simple recipe I stumbled across while looking up haloumi recipes.

I simply heated the whey up to 90 degrees, then added a tsp of salt and a table spoon of vinegar (the recipe said to use white vinegar - I only had cider vinegar in the cupboard so I used that...) and gave it a stir.

I left if for a few mins and came back to find a nice layer of creamy ricotta at the top of the pan. I then carefully skimmed it off and drained it through some more tights and ended up with about 200g of ricotta which looks and smells rather nice.

I've not tried it yet as I didn't fancy it at 6.30 in the morning but I think it'll probably be pretty good, and great to have as a by product of the haloumi making!

Awesome

We tried making ricotta with our left over whey but it didn't go so well. We ended up with virtually none and it was quite lumpy. Not so good.

 

[FrenchTart]

Looks awesome. I'm just waiting for the train home but once back I'll be posting the Brie details

edit: mind posting a rough guide on how you made that btw?

 

[FrenchTart]

Awesome. That will take 6-12 months to age I presume?

Cheers for the step-by-step above

 

[FrenchTart]

Good plan. I went the opposite route mostly because I didn't trust myself to make the cheese to a reasonable standard without having tried it first. That and the fact that I'm incredibly impatient

 

[FrenchTart]

Completely didn't see your post sorry. Awesome work on the halloumi

You could try making some mozzarella? It has some similarities to halloumi but is a little more involved. I imagine home-made would be good though.

 

[FrenchTart]

Now stop me if I'm being a complete retard, but for some reason I really want to make paneer and put the curds/whey mix through an Aeropress - will instantly formed cheese pop out of the bottom in a nicely formed block?

Ok so just put some Greek yogurt through for the lolz, turns out you end up with a very creamy tubular block, drizzled some honey on top and made quite a nice dessert, haha

Lol. That's pretty awesome though yeah, I think what you are suggesting will kind of work but you'll need to very slowly increase the pressure (*very* slowly - like over the course of hours). Though that would to make a hard cheese so perhaps you can speed it up a little for something softer...