Making Cheese: Halloumi

Probably it's your acidity that isn't right. That's why you initially need a culture on most cheeses to break down milk and produce acid. Rennet is more to firm up the curds. You can make cheeses like paneer with just milk and lime or lemon juice to provide acid.
 
After a loooooooooong time of leaving the second pans worth of curds to dryout (I'm talking from Sunday evening to Monday evening...) did produce a decent fairly firm cheese like lump, I heated the whey and added the curds lump in, once it floated to the top I took it out and let it dry off.

I fried up a little piece and gave it a chew ( I didn't want to eat it as everything had been out for so long) nd the texture was just as it should have been. Obviously a lot of the flavour would come from the brine so it didn't taste of much but it has encouraged me to try it again this weekend!!

I think this time I will use a little more rennet, I will make sure the temps are spot on again and I will get some tights as I feel the muslin I was using probably held too much moisture for the curds to dry nicely, and also it relied entirely on gravity and gave no pressure to help drive the whey out.

I'm hoping I get a better separation this time to make it a little easier to scoop just the curds out which will hopefully also make the drying out process a little better.

I will post back with results.
 
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.
 
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After a loooooooooong time of leaving the second pans worth of curds to dryout (I'm talking from Sunday evening to Monday evening...) did produce a decent fairly firm cheese like lump, I heated the whey and added the curds lump in, once it floated to the top I took it out and let it dry off.

I fried up a little piece and gave it a chew ( I didn't want to eat it as everything had been out for so long) nd the texture was just as it should have been. Obviously a lot of the flavour would come from the brine so it didn't taste of much but it has encouraged me to try it again this weekend!!

I think this time I will use a little more rennet, I will make sure the temps are spot on again and I will get some tights as I feel the muslin I was using probably held too much moisture for the curds to dry nicely, and also it relied entirely on gravity and gave no pressure to help drive the whey out.

I'm hoping I get a better separation this time to make it a little easier to scoop just the curds out which will hopefully also make the drying out process a little better.

I will post back with results.

As you said, try slightly more rennet next time and also try bringing up the temp to 32degs slowly and then drop the pan into a water bath at 32 so it maintains a steady temperature insread of cooling down. Its probably not so important if you are using a heavy cast iron pot but if you are using a thin pot that loses heat easily then use a water bath to help maintain temperature.
 
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I was using one of my encapsulated base stainless pans which might not have helped matters as the base holds so much heat that the temp was still increasing after I'd turned the gas off and I fear it may have meant the milk got too warm and didn't help the rennet...
 
just had some after a week and a bit in the saltiest salt/mint bath - delicious :)

The extra time in salt has really helped!
 
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 :p
 
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.
 
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).

coke_bottle.jpg


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

cheese_moulds.jpg


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.

failed_brie_draining.jpg


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:

failed_brie_out_of_mould.jpg
 
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It's strangely addictive I'm finding :p

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).

brie_salted_ready_to_go_mouldy.jpg
 
I said I'd give it another go and this evening I did...

I made sure the temp was right and added more rennet. I also covered the pans this time to keep the temp up a bit longer while the rennet was doing it's job.

The curds separated much better this time so it was much easier to minimise the amount of whey that ended up in the newly acquired tights which in turn meant the draining was much better and quicker too.

I now have three very nice looking lumps of haloumi sitting in my fridge in the brine where they shall stay until Xmas eve!

I'm really pleased that it's worked this time and will definitely make it again!

I'm also investigating making ricotta from the left over whey which I saw mentioned in a recipe I found somewhere...
 
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?
 
Nicely done :)

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

Pft. Quite possibly. I think my third batch of it will be pro though :p 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!

:o

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

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).
 
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?
 
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.
 
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! :)
 
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.
 
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