Home Made Cheese 5: Queso Fresco

Cheese making is the art of removing whey from curds. There are a million ways to do that, which is why there are a million types of cheese.

Queso Fresco, a moist, fresh cheese that melts beautifully and is easy to make.

Say you want to make a cheesey cheese that can be grated to melt in quesadillas, or you want to make a killer grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. If you think you need traditional hard cheeses like cheddar or monterey jack, you might be disappointed to learn that those cheeses require a cheese press, a cheese cave, and a long aging time.

Queso fresco shines because it has a nice dense texture, super melting qualities, and mild flavor that marries well with many dishes, but it does not require a press, a cave, or long aging. It does use a cheese cloth, cheese mold and follower (lid), bacterial culture and rennet. It's basically the beginnings of a hard cheese that doesn't need to age.

This Latin American cheese is perfect for real live people who want cheesey cheese but don't have tons of money to devote to fancy cheese making equipment and hours out of a day to do nothing but focus on cheese making.

• If you eat it soon after make, queso fresco is a high moisture cheese and for the first couple of days is a little squeaky.

• If you let it sit on your counter for a few days, the squeak goes away and it isn't as moist. It resembles normal hard cheese a bit more.

  
  

Both ways are good.

(Some people make a cheese that they call queso fresco, but it is what I would call queso blanco, which is the same as whole milk ricotta. They are quite different cheeses. It doesn't matter what you call it, as long as you are clear about which recipe you are using and what the results will be. The one that I call queso blanco, or ricotta, is a pastier cheese that does not melt--it's not a cheesey cheese. It is made by heating milk to 180F and adding vinegar. What I call queso fresco here is made by warming milk to 90F, adding bacteria and rennet, and results in a cheese that is reminisent of a soft, moist cheddar. It melts really well.)

This is the first cheese in this blog series that uses a mold. You can buy a two pound mold on any cheese supply website. Get a mold with a follower (lid) because you will place a weight on the mold to press the cheese and it needs a lid for that. You can use a sterilized rock for the weight.

A home made mold and follower. Note that this particular follower was made from the bottom of another bucket, not the lid of this bucket. A gallon sized bucket works as a mold for cheeses made from 2 to 4 gallons of milk.

If you have 1 gallon size buckets kicking around, like if you buy peanut butter in bulk, you can make your own mold. Clean the bucket well and remove the label. Drill holes every couple of inches around the sides and bottom of the bucket. Make a follower out of the lid by trimming the outer raised portion away so that what's left is smaller diameter and will fit down inside the bucket. If you have a second bucket that is the same size, it makes a great weight for pressing the cheese. You can fill the second bucket with warm water, and once your cheese cloth and curds are arranged neatly in the mold, place the second bucket on top of the cloth in the mold. (In this scenario, you don't need the lid follower, as the second bucket doubles as a follower.)

As stated in my previous cheese blogs, the "cheese cloth" you can buy in a hardware or grocery store is way too flimsy to actually make cheese. Get real cheese cloth or butter muslin from a cheese making supplier. A clean piece of fabric from a pillow case also works. This recipe, which has more consolidated curds than previous cheeses in the series, can also use a "cheese sock" which is a stretchy type of cheese cloth that I really like.

If you have been following along in this series, then you are familiar with bacterial culture, rennet, and raw milk for cheese making. If you want to hop back and read about them in previous posts,

• see the post about labneh for a discussion about bacterial culture,

• the post about feta for a discussion about rennet,

• and see the 30 minute mozzarella blog for the importance of using raw milk for cheese making.

A word about sterilizing equipment:

The cheeses that we made previously in this series were not particularly susceptible to contamination. Queso fresco is.

Officially, for liability's sake, I am telling you that you should sterilize your equipment. That includes the pot, spoon, thermometer probe, mold, cloth... anything that comes in contact with the milk and curds.

I will be honest, though... I do not normally sterilize my pot and utensils before making cheese with them. I DO make sure that everything is clean. If anything has been sitting around collecting dust for a time and I have doubts about its cleanliness, then I will sterilize it by putting a half inch of water in the pot, put whatever else (like spoons, etc.) in there, put the lid on it, and boil it for 10 minutes to sterilize it.

In my experience the most important aspect of safe and successful cheese making is starting with milk that is clean--which happens at the dairy, long before I bring it in the house to make cheese. No amount of sanitizing equipment can make up for dirty milk. That is why you must be careful whose raw milk you use. Not everyone who milks a cow or goat produces clean raw milk.

Queso Fresco Recipe

It takes about 2 hours to make queso fresco (plus 8 hours of pressing), but you can do other things during that time. You just need to give it your attention every few minutes, not for the entire two hours.

You can make this cheese out of just 1 gallon of milk if you prefer. Cut the amounts of starter, rennet, and salt in half. You can make a smaller mold out of quart yogurt containers.

It turns out that my rennet had reached its shelf life when I made this cheese! The curd did not set properly. I was still able to make cheese, but it had a lower yield and took longer than it should have. Rennet lasts about a year in the refrigerator. Also, stay away from North Mountain brand rennet--I have heard from multiple people that it does not work well.

The yield for 2 gallons of milk for queso fresco should be about 2 pounds. (In this case because of my old rennet, my yield was a little less.)

Ingredients:

2 gallons of clean, raw milk

1/16 tsp mesophilic culture

1/4 tsp liquid rennet

2 tbs non-iodized salt (not himalayan salt, which makes the cheese gritty)

Equipment:

2.5 - 3 gallon pot

thermometer

slotted spoon

a clean place to rest your spoon like a plate or spoon rest

knife with a clean, straight edge

2 pound cheese mold and follower (lid)

cheese cloth or cheese sock

8 - 10 pound weight for pressing the cheese

large bowl

Pouring milk into the cheese vat.

1. Heat milk to 90F on medium heat. While it's heating, sprinkle the starter culture over the surface. Let the culture rehydrate for a couple minutes before stirring it in.

2. Once the milk reaches 90F, take it off the heat if you have an electric stove (if your stove is gas, just turn it off) and stir in the rennet for about 30 seconds. Remove the spoon from the milk (or it will be hard to clean later).

3. You want to maintain the milk at 90F as closely as possible while the rennet works. Sometimes I overshoot the temperature by a couple degrees, in which case I leave it on the stove with nothing to keep the warmth in because it's ok if the temperature falls by a degree or two. However, if you hit the temperature perfectly, put a lid on the cheese vat while it sits. If it is very cool in your house, wrap a blanket or towel around the pot so it doesn't lose its heat. Please MAKE SURE that the stove is turned off and no longer hot before you do this!!!

4. Let it sit and flocculate for 30 - 45 minutes. During this time the milk will magically transform from liquid to something like jello that is firm to the touch.

This curd has not reached a clean break. Notice how soft the edge of the curd is, and how the whey is milky colored rather than yellow.

5. At 30 minutes, test for a "clean break". You do this by inserting a knife or spoon into the firm curd and push it to one side. It should break cleanly and leave yellow whey in the gap. If there is any mushiness to it, give it another 5 minutes or more until it reaches clean break. (Mine never achieved a clean break this batch because of the old rennet.)

6. Once it has a clean break, cut the curd in a checkerboard pattern in 1/4" cubes with your knife.

7. Turn the heat on low and gently stir the curds. For the next 20 minutes, keep an eye on the curds and temperature. Stir them every few minutes and don't let it get warmer than 95F. If you have an electric stove, be mindful that the heat from the burner will continue to heat the curds for a little while after you have turned it off.

8. Let the curds sit for 5 minutes, then pour off most of the whey, leaving about an inch of whey in the pot.

After pouring most of the whey and adding salt, continue to stir the curds.

9. Add the salt. Continue to stir the curds every few minutes for another 30 minutes. The curds will shrink considerably as they expel whey and firm up. They will also form clumps. Break up the clumps into 1" pieces as you stir.

10. Line the mold with the cheese cloth and place it in the large bowl to catch whey. Scoop the curds into the lined mold. Pull up gently on the cloth around the outside to eliminate any folds of cloth stuck in the curds. Fold one end of the cloth over the top of the curds as flat as possible.

A cheese sock lined mold, sitting over a bowl, filled with curds.

11. Place the follower over the cloth, and the weight over the follower, Or, if you are using a second bucket as your weight, place the bucket filled with warm water over the cloth.

12. Let it press like this for a half hour. Then remove the weight and follower, pull the cheese wrapped in its cloth out of the mold, unwrap it, flip it, wrap it again, put it back in the mold upside down from how it had been the first time, make sure the cloth is folded over the top of the cheese, and continue pressing it for 8 hours.

13. Your queso fresco is now ready! It will last up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

If you want it to mellow out a bit, place it on a clean towel on your counter for a couple days, turning it occasionally so that both sides dry out and form a rind. It will lose its squeak and be less moist after this.

If you want to try it both squeaky and moist, as well as mellowed out, go ahead and cut the wheel in half and try it both ways!

This is really just the beginnings of a hard aged cheese that hasn't aged yet. You can experiment with making aged cheese, if you like. Vacuum seal a portion of the piece that has developed a rind, write the date on the package, and let it sit in your fridge for a month. Its taste and texture will develop during that time. It's fun to compare an aged cheese to what the cheese was like when it was fresh.

Skimming ricotta curd off of hot whey.

Bonus: Save they whey to make ricotta! Traditional ricotta is made by heating warm whey from rennet cheese to almost boiling, add 1/4 cup vinegar per gallon of whey, let it sit for 10 minutes, then skim the light and fluffy curd off the surface. Drain it in a cheese cloth until it stops dripping.

Don't let the whey boil over!

Just the right amount of ricotta for a lasagna!

Because my rennet has gone bad for this batch of cheese, the whey is milky colored (rather than yellow) and the yield for the queso fresco is not as high as it should be. However, I can still capture that curd by making ricotta, and my ricotta will have a higher yield than normal because of the milky whey!