How to Make Organic Mozzarella at Home

Homemade Organic Mozzarella 

This weekend we tried our luck at making our own home made Mozzarella cheese from organic whole milk. I am an avid cheese lover and this was an easy "YES!" to our list of kitchen experiments. We followed the steps, it took us about an hour, and one gallon of milk yielded 5 medium sized balls of additive free organic salty heaven!
The ingredients you will need are as follows: 
Equipment/Ingredients:

•  8 quart pot (or more, I used our biggest spaghetti pot) 
•  1 Digital Kitchen Thermometer
• 1 large knife 
• 1 big strainer or colander
• 1 large slotted spoon
• 1 large mixing bowl 
• 2 smaller bowls 
• 1 gallon of organic whole Milk (Do not use ultra-homogenized milk or ultra-pasteurized)
• 1/4 teaspoon liquid Rennet 
• 2 teaspoons Citric Acid divided. 1 teaspoon is dissolved in water and the other one is sprinkled directly into the milk.
• 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup of water (Distilled)
• 1 - 2 teaspoons salt.

Instructions:

1. Measure out 1/2 cup of water. Stir in the citric acid until dissolved. Measure out 1/4 cup of water in a separate bowl. Stir in the rennet until dissolved.

2. Pour the milk into the pot and slowly stir in the citric acid solution. Set the pot over medium-high heat and warm to 90°F, stirring gently and checking the temp with your digital thermometer. 

3. Take the pot off the heat and slowly stir in the rennet solution. Check the temp, stop stirring and place the cover on the pot and leave it alone for about 5 minutes. 

4. After about five minutes or so the milk should have set, you should be able to cut it and not have it stick to your knife or "clean break". If it is still gooey, re-cover the pot and let it sit for another five minutes. Once the milk has set, cut it into uniform curds: make several parallel cuts vertically through the curds and then several parallel cuts horizontally, creating a grid-like pattern. Make sure your knife reaches all the way to the bottom of the pot.

5. Turn on the burner and reheat the pot to about 105°F. Stir slowly as the curds warm, but try not to break them up.

6. Remove the pot from the heat and continue stirring in a smooth light motion for another 5 minutes.

7. Grab your larger bowls and use the slotted spoon to scoop the big somewhat solid chunks of curd from the yellow liquid (the whey) into a bowl. The most uniform curds can easily be scooped, the rest needs to be strained through the strainer from the whey. 

8. Continue this process until you have fully separated all of the curds from the whey. 

*(We kept the whey in the gallon that the milk came in to make ricotta from it later)

9. Microwave the curds for one minute, and drain the rest of the whey into your container or down the sink. Use your hands to fold the curds over on themselves a few times. At this point, the curds will be a cottage cheese texture, very separated. We used an additional strainer to squeeze out the liquid before we returned it to the microwave bowl. 

10. Microwave the curds for another 25-30 seconds and check their internal temperature with your thermometer. If the temperature has reached 135°F, continue with stretching the curds. If not, continue microwaving in 30-second bursts until they reach temperature. The curds need to reach this temperature in order to stretch.

11. Sprinkle the salt over the cheese and squish it with your hands it will start to become the texture of "cheese" you would expect, add enough salt to taste and continue stretching and squishing and form the desired size and shape of your mozzarella ball. 

12. Mix a teaspoon of salt with a cup of cool whey and pour this over the mozzarella. Cover and refrigerate.