Bito Blog

Haloumi is originally form Cyprus and is really easy to make in a few hours, like I did the other evening. The following recipe is cobbled together from several others available on the web. Traditionally Haloumi is made from raw goat or sheep’s milk and does not use a starter. In order for the rennet to act more effectively I use some yogurt as a starter to give it an initial acidity. From  a 2.2 litre carton of full fat supermarket milk you will be able to make approximately 250g of Haloumi.

1. Add quarter of a teaspoon of 33% Calcium Chloride in 1 tablespoon of water to 2.2 litres of supermarket milk
2. Whisk 2 tablespoons of fresh plain active culture yogurt into the milk
3. Bring the temperature of the milk up to 32C
4. Add rennet according to the manufacturer’s guidelines (I use 13 drops of Moorland’s animal rennet in 2 tablespoons of water)
5. Allow the rennet to coagulate the milk for 45 minutes, or until a clean break
6. Cut the curd into 2cm cubes and rest for 5 minutes
7. Stir the curds in the whey for 15 minutes
8. Raise the temperature to 36C and maintain at this temperature while stirring the curds and whey for a further 20 minutes
9. Drain the curds into a cheesecloth-lined colander, retaining the whey
10. Press the curds for 1 hour in the colander with something like a plate on top and a 5kg weight (eg. pan full of water)
11. While the curds are pressing bring the whey up to 80-90C
12. When the curds have pressed, cut them into strips and drop into the hot whey
13. Cook the curds for 15-20 minutes, maintaining the temperature between 80-90C; the curds will initially sink and then rise to the surface
14. Remove the curds to drain and cool on a rack
15. Add 4 tablespoons of salt to the whey to form a brine and cool to room temperature
16. When the curds have cooled sprinkle with salt and dried mint, fold in half and place in the brine
17. Store the brine and cheese in the fridge

Brined Haloumi

The cheese will  keep for a considerable time in the fridge and improves in flavour although may become too salty for some tastes.

Here is a salad recipe that uses Haloumi we particularly enjoy as a starter. The original recipe comes from a book by Michel Montingnac which used goat’s cheese and broad beans:

1. Roast a yellow and red pepper in the oven, cool and remove the skins, seeds and cores
2. Remove the skins cores and seeds from 2 tomatoes (dip the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute to make it easy to remove the skins)
3. Slice the roasted peppers and tomatoes into strips and place in a salad bowl
4. Add 120g of cooked butter beans
5. Add 60g rocket
6. Prepare a dressing made from the juice of half a lemon, 2 or 3 basil leaves, a pinch of black pepper and olive oil (approximately 3 times the volume of the lemon juice)
7. Cut Haloumi into cubes and grill for 5-10 minutes until golden brown
8. Toss the salad in the dressing and transfer to plates
9. Sprinkle the grilled Haloumi on top of the salad

Rocket salad with roast peppers and Haloumi

Succumbing to what is probably the standard problem for all newbie cheese makers, I couldn’t resist it any longer and broke into the cheese I made using the MA400 starter culture that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Basic cheese made with MA400 starter culture

Close up of a piece showing mechanical defects resulting from pressing with too little weight:

Close-up of cheese showing "mechanical" defects

The cheese actually tastes rather good though I say it myself. It could have done with a bit more aging (like maybe another month!), but I am very pleased with the result. The cheese just about melts and was very nice with the starter I made tonight using it to stuff figs wrapped with bacon.

I thought I would document my first attempt at making Cheddar, even though it is not yet ready to eat and therefore have no idea whether what I have made is actually “Cheddar”. Currently it is waxed and aging in my new “cheese cave”, otherwise known as a wine cooler. The method I used for making this batch of Cheddar is known as the “stirred curd” method. Cheddar needs a lot of time to make and you should not embark on it unless you have at least 7 uninterrupted hours you can devote to it.

The night before I got 1 ice cube of the buttermilk starter culture I had previously made out of the freezer and defrosted this in a sterilised container with 3 tablespoons of milk. This is to allow the bacteria in the starter culture to “wake up” and become active. The following morning I placed 4.5 litres of Iceland’s pasteurised homogenised milk into my improvised double boiler and added half a teaspoon of Calcium Chloride solution mixed with 2 tablespoons of previously boiled, cooled water. The Calcium Chloride helps form a stronger, more robust curd when the milk has been pasteurised and/or homogenised. I purchased it from Ascott, but it appears to be the same 33% solution that can be purchased from Goat Nutrition. I mixed the Calcium Chloride into the milk using a whisk before bringing the temperature up to 32C.

Knowing the pH of the milk, whey, and ideally the curd, at various points in the process of making cheese is quite important since the acidity to a large extent determines the flavour, texture and type of cheese. I invested some money in a cheap pH meter that allows me to measure the pH of the milk and whey, though sadly not the curd itself. Meters capable of measuring the pH of solids are expensive.

The pH of the milk before adding the starter culture was 6.60 at 30C (pH varies with temperature). After adding the starter the pH immediately dropped to 6.55, and having incubated the inoculated milk for 1 hour,  the desired drop in pH by 0.1 to 6.50 had been reached. By this point the temperature had dropped to 30.5C and it was time to add the rennet.

I dropped 26 drops of the Moorland’s animal rennet into 4 tablespoons of previously boiled, cooled water, started a stopwatch and stirred it well into the inoculated milk for approximately 45 seconds. Using the flocculation test, the flocculation point was reached after 15 minutes (possibly slightly earlier), and from this the total amount of setting time was determined to be 45 minutes using a flocculation multiplier of 3 for Cheddar.

After 45 minutes, and having maintained the temperature at 30C I cut the curds into 1cm cubes and allowed them to rest and “heal” for 15 minutes. The pH immediately after cutting the curds rose to 6.55, presumably because most of the lactic acid was still trapped inside the curds. After the 15 minutes rest the pH had dropped to 6.48.

Now came the laborious and time-consuming part of the process. Scalding and cooking the curds takes a very long time. First the temperature needs to be raised very slowly to 39C over a period of 45 minutes, amounting to a rise in temperature of 1C every 5 minutes. All the time the curds need to be “floated” in the whey to prevent them from matting, which means stirring them very gently and semi-constantly during this time. By the time the temperature had reached 38.4C the pH had dropped to 6.41. Next, the curds need to be maintained at around 39C for another 40 minutes while being stirred to prevent matting, and the pH should drop further, to around 6.25-6.2. During this phase I managed to keep the temperature around 38.7C and the pH dropped to 6.26 at which point I drained off the whey, first ladling it out into a bucket, then draining the remaining whey and curds through a cheesecloth-liner colander.

Stirred curd Cheddar: Drained curds returned to the pot for cooking

The curds were then returned to my double boiler to be cooked for a further 45 minutes with the temperature held at 39C. The curds were stirred occasionally to prevent them matting and more whey was expelled. At the end of this phase the pH had dropped to 6.02 and I probably should have given them another 15 minutes since the target pH at the end of cooking should be around 5.95-5.90.

Here is a graph of the pH curve during the make from the point of having brought the milk up to temperature through to final draining of the curds before moulding and pressing:

pH curve for buttermilk starter when making "Stirred Curd" Cheddar

For initial pressing of the curds I used a method called “pressing in the pot”:

Pressing cheese "in the pot" to keep the curds warm

This method is useful for maintaining curd temperature during pressing for small cheeses in order to obtain a good curd knit. The curds will not knit together well if the temperature of the curd drops too low. To press in the pot the mould is first filled with the curds and the press set up inside a pot which is immersed in a water bath and covered with a cloth. I used the sink and filled it with water at 29C, set my large pan in the water and the press inside the large pan. If you can fit a lid on top even better, but my press is too high for me to be able to do that so I covered it with a tea-towel to keep the warm air in. The cheese was pressed for 30 minutes at 10Kg (about 1.5 psi in with my press and mould). The cheese was then flipped and redressed and pressed for a further 30 minutes at 15Kg (about 2.2 psi).

Cheese after 30 minutes at 10Kg:

Cheese pressed in the pot at 10Kg for 30 minutes

Cheese after another 30 minutes at 15Kg:

Cheese pressed in the pot at 15Kg

As can be seen the curd knit is good after 1 hour of pressing in the pot. Finally the cheese was flipped and redressed again and pressed at full weight (approximately 22Kg/3.2 psi) for 24 hours at room temperature.

Cheese after pressing for a further 24 hours at 22Kg:

Cheese after 24 hours at 22Kg

Once out of the press I air dried the cheese at room temperature for 4 days, flipping it twice per day, before waxing and then storing in my cave at 13C. first out of the press the cheese weighed 518g and by the time it was waxed it weighed 479g  having lost 7.5% of its weight through moisture loss. It has been there now for 3 weeks, turned daily. I don’t know how much longer I can wait before cracking it open to see what it’s like! The bearest minimum aging is about 4 weeks, so maybe next weekend …

Knowing how long to wait for a clean break after adding your rennet can be troublesome. A good test is the flocculation test which when used in combination with a suitable multiplier (which varies from cheese to cheese) you can calculate when to cut the curd. The test is sometimes called the “spinning bowl test” because it involves floating, then spinning or moving a light weight bowl on the surface of the milk after the rennet has been added. The duration of time between initially adding the rennet and the bowl no longer moving freely is the flocculation time. The flocculation time multiplied by the multiplier for the type of cheese you are planning to make gives you the time at which the curds should be cut. For example, if the flocculation time is 14 minutes and you are making cheddar, the multiplier is 3, giving a rennet time of 42 minutes.

The video below demonstrates the flocculation test:

The picture below shows a test for a clean break after having determined the curd cutting time using the flocculation test above. For cheddar the multiplier is 3, so a clean break should be possible 42 minutes after adding the rennet:

Testing for a clean break

Note that you can see where the small plastic bowl was peeled from the curd after the successful flocculation test in the picture above between the dial thermometer on the right and the knife blade on the left.