Episode 37.
How Are Different Cheeses Made? (Part 1)

Question:

How are different Cheeses Made?

Key Points:

  • We did an overview of Last Week's episode
  • WARNING: You may not want to know how the sausage is made
  • WARNING: Cheese is in this boat; you may get grossed out and not want to eat cheese again
  • Eating just the cheese curds, which have not been made into cheese yet, makes your teeth squeek
  • Main Steps to make cheese
    1. Prepare the milk
    2. Add a Lactic Acid Bacteria
    3. Add a Curdling Agent
      • There are different types of curdling agents
      • The most common curdling agent is animal rennet, which is an enzyme extracted from a sheep's stomach
      • This ends up creating Curds and Whey (which is sometimes called Cottage Cheese)
    4. Drain the Whey
    5. Make it Your Own
      • This is where a lot of differences are in making different types of cheese
      • The standard things to do are to salt the curds and heat them up so that they can be formed into a shape (which is the next step
      • This is also the step where most flavored cheeses have things added to them
    6. Shape and Mold
      • Cheeses are traditionally made into "wheels", but they can be pressed into whatever shape is desired
      • The shape ends up somewhat contributing to the taste of the cheese
      • "Molding" does not mean putting it in a mold. It means applying mold to the outside of the cheese (like bread mold, but a different type of mold)
    7. Aging
( 8. And then Eating )