I
made Feta at the weekend … I am AWEsome!!! Ha, it’s actually not that
hard to make but I have this massive sense of achievement like I have
just climbed Mount Everest or something J
I’m not normally so self-congratulatory, honest, but I am just that
impressed with myself. The best bit is that it tastes like Feta cheese
too, not sure what I expecting it to taste like?!
Like
I said it isn’t hard to make and there aren’t many complicated steps to
it, but it is a bit time consuming, it does take a good half a day of
fussing over a bowl of milk, which I guess is why people don’t make
their own cheese more often. So choose a day when you have got things
to do round the house so that you can do other things and flit back and
forth between other chores and the cheese, that way you don’t feel so
much like you’ve just spent all afternoon doing one thing!
I
got a cheese making kit as a present for Christmas, I’ve made Halloumi a
couple of times before and that has been so delicious and a bit quicker
to make than this feta. I’d definitely recommend getting something like
this for first time home cheese makers, it came with everything that is
needed, all I needed to buy was the milk (unhomogenized milk works best, I bought the silver top Farmhouse milk in the supermarket). Mine is a Mad Millie fresh
cheese kit with an incubator, it also comes with some really good clear
recipes as well.
 |
| The Mad Millie cheese kit - and it comes with these really cute measuring spoons! |
Though
it does take a while, it is so easy to do. You heat the milk to 37
degrees, add some rennet and cultures and keep at 37 degrees for 90 mins
in the purple incubator. You have to check it every now and then to
make sure that the temperature is kept at the right level, topping up
with hot water if not. After 90 minutes the milk has semi-solidified in
to curds which you slice in to cubes. You then have to keep at 37
degrees for another hour. Then comes the hovering part, stirring
every 5 mins for half an hour. Easy so far, right? It’s pretty much
done, spoon the curds in to the little feta baskets and leave to drain
for 3 hours, flip and leave to drain over night. You put some salt and
boiling water in a feta sized tub and leave to cool in the fridge
overnight too to make a brine, then in the morning your feta is ready to
pop in to the brine. You have to leave the feta in the brine for at
least 5 hours so that salty flavour can develop. At this point I was
getting pretty impatient!!
 |
| Stirring and waiting - one plain and one herb feta - quarter of a block of ready feta!! |
It
makes the equivalent of 6 of those small 150g packs of feta you get in
the supermarket for the cost of 4 litres of milk ($10) . Admittedly the
cost of the cheese kit should be factored in but I got it as a present,
so persuade someone to get you one for your birthday or Christmas J
Once you’ve got the kit, the refill ingredients for things like the
rennet tablets are very cheap indeed and don’t add much to the cost of
the cheese making. Bargain I’d say.
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