#107 – Easy Dairy Products to Make at Home

It’s almost May, the month which the early medieval Anglo-Saxons called thrymilce, because according to the Venerable St Bede, “in that month cattle were milked three times a day.” We don’t know if you’re milking your cow three times a day, but ‘tis the season for lots of fresh and available milk. What to do with all that milk? – and if you don’t have a cow, what to do if you have access to raw milk and want to make staple value-added dairy products in your home, like cottage cheese, sour cream and yoghurt?

The dairy products in this episode are all delicious, high-value, low failure-risk, and don’t require expensive equipment, multiple gallons of milk or a cheese cave. Almost all the recipes can be made with a low-heat, vat-pasteurized milk, as well as with a raw milk. We’ve linked every recipe we talk about (and more!) in the show notes, and as an extra “thank you” for keeping us on the air we have created a PDF in the downloads section for podcast supporters at the $12 and above levels, with all these links and some additional recipes as well. Take a seat on the milking stool, get a glass of fresh warm milce, and let’s talk home dairy.

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One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here.

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To enter our liver capsule giveaway (US only), sign up for our newsletter at ancestralkitchenpodcast.com (at the top of any page) and One Earth Health’s newsletter at oneearthhealth.com (after a few moments on the site a popup will appear). Competition open until close of day, May 13 2025.

Resources:

Podcast shop

Alison’s shop

(Shop either one – Alison’s has a more complete list!)

realmilk.com

WAPF.org

eatwild.com

Crowdfarming link mentioned by Alison (you’ll get a 10 euro credit)

Alison’s 10 Tips for Creating and Maintaining a Sourdough Starter course – $5 course but FREE with code STARTER100 (a VERY well written and well loved course!)

Other Episodes:

53 Raw Milk: Our Ancestral Heritage

68 Naturally Fermented Dairy in the Home with Robyn Jackson

102 The Guide to Getting Out of Supermarkets

13 The Secret Life of Chocolate

60 What Fermented Drinks Can I Make?

Books and Resources:

Top Pick: The Art of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher

Milk Cow Kitchen by MaryJane Butters

The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley

MaryJane Butters: her story

WalcoRen, natural rennet supplier in Canada

Available from New England Cheesemaking Co

Robyn Jackson

As soon as we recorded this episode, we learned Robyn Jackson is launching her first book, published by Melissa Norris’ publishing house. Robyn was mentored by David Asher and her methods are approachable, useful, applicable in a home kitchen, and natural. Cheese from Scratch: The Complete Guide to Natural Cheesemaking from Home

Recipes:

These all link you to Andrea’s Plan to Eat app recipes, which is an app used for managing recipes and planning meals. You can view recipes in Plan to Eat without having a membership! Note that if the recipe belongs to another creator, while you are browsing recipes the Plan to Eat app will re-direct you to that creator’s website for the recipe instructions.

If you have a Plan to Eat membership, you can scroll my saved recipes and add them to your own recipe files in the app, and add to your calendar and meal plan.

You can also view my Home Dairy collection in Plan to Eat, to see other simple and regional cheeses we enjoy making at home.

My Favorite Cream Cheese (Farmer’s Cheese that is HALF cream)

Cottage Cheese

Milk Kefir

Messmor

Quark

Ricotta

Schmierkase

Yoghurt – started from prepared yoghurt, not a powdered culture

Grandmother Bread

Extras:

Ice Cream Cake from Anita

Lacto-Fermented Ranch Dressing

Just for you, Leah! Egg Yolk Smoothie

PB&J Smoothie

Tapioca Pudding

 

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Transcript:

Andrea:
It’s almost May, the month which the early medieval Anglo-Saxons called Traymilka, because according to the venerable Saint Bede, in that month cattle were milked three times a day. I don’t know if you’re milking your cow three times a day, but tis the season for lots of fresh and available milk. What to do with all that milk, and if you don’t have a cow, what to do if you have access to raw milk and want to make stable, value-added dairy products in your home, like cottage cheese, sour cream, and yogurt.

Andrea:
The dairy products in this episode are all delicious, high-value, low failure risk, and don’t require expensive equipment, multiple gallons of milk, or a cheese cave. In fact, you can even make all of these recipes, or almost all of them, with a low-heat pasteurized milk, as well as with a raw milk. I’ve linked every episode we talk about in the show notes. And as an extra thank you for keeping us on the air, I have created a PDF in the download section for podcast supporters at the $12 and above levels, with all these links and some additional recipes as well. Take a seat on the milking stool, get a glass of fresh, warm milka. And let’s talk home dairy. Welcome to the Ancestral Kitchen podcast.

Alison:
I’m Alison, a European town dweller living in England.

Andrea:
And I’m Andrea, living on a family farm in Northwest Washington State, USA.

Alison:
Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating, cooking and living with ancestral food wisdom in a modern world kitchen.

Music:
Music

Andrea:
Hello Alison, how are you?

Alison:
Hi Andrea, I’m good, yeah. Excited to record again. It feels like we haven’t recorded for ages.

Andrea:
Well, yeah, when did we, I mean, we’ll have like a meeting or something and then, and then, uh, so that’s a bye week, I guess. So then, yeah, it does make it feel, well, we get really used to talking to each other.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
Um, but I, as much as we’ve already talked this morning, I don’t actually know what your lunch was. So this will be a surprise for me. So what did you last eat?

Alison:
Yeah um oh we had a really nice lunch really nice um i had some big liver pate which i’d made a couple of weeks ago in the freezer got that out yesterday a bit of frost and then some rye sourdough bread which um we fried in um suet we got a massive lot of suet from albert the guy who we get our meat from at the market a couple of weeks ago and i actually rendered it rather than just crumbling it into, you know, puddings, I thought, no, I’m going to render this. So we rendered it. It produced the most amazing tallow, just really hard, really kind of flaky, you know, rather than lard. It kind of flakes off. And also just not tasting or smelling of cow at all, really kind of pure. Even though I didn’t wet render it, I rendered it, wet render, that’s quite hard to say. I rendered it without any water, but it came out just really not tasting like cow at all and so because we’ve got so much in our freezer I’m trying to make room in the freezer because this week I’m getting a beef heart and I’m getting some bones and I’m getting some more suet so I’m trying to make room in the freezer to kind of get everything out and eat it this week so I thought I’d better start using that suet a bit more so because it’s hard and you can’t spread it I’ve taken just frying our bread in it Oh, it’s doing delicious. It goes crunchy.

Andrea:
That sounds so good.

Alison:
Yummy. So I spread the… Go on.

Andrea:
The suet specifically. It’s not just tallow.

Alison:
No, it’s the suet. I don’t know what you call rendered suet. Just call it suet. I don’t know. I guess. Is it a special name? I don’t know. Rendered suet rather than non-rendered suet. It was the suet, definitely. I think that’s why it’s less kind of cow smell, you know, because it’s the suet which is considered a kind of a finer version of the fat. Um so yeah i spread my liver pate on my fried suet rye sourdough and then the salads are coming back slowly at the market and we have a lady called ros who gives us veg and she does kind of salad greens so had some greens grated carrot and gable made a dressing yesterday with lots of different things in so we had that over it and then at the end of the meal i had half an orange gosh oh wow we that’s

Andrea:
A big leap from where you were when i first met you and you.

Alison:
Couldn’t have absolutely you know and just it’s so exciting in two two different ways because firstly the apples are on out of the market they kept going and going and going and then the last week came and i’m like we’ve used all our apples up we won’t have anything now until the plums in June so um one of the UK supporters of the podcast had told me about a company called crowd farming and we actually talked about them in our getting out of supermarkets guide right and I thought you know what I’m going to get some olive oil um not from a supermarket I’m fed up with these horrible olive oils and I’m fed up with going into a supermarket to buy them since we moved here we were so spoiled in Italy you know we could just get local amazing olive oil and so I decided to have a look at their olive oil supplies crowd farming sell directly from regenerative farmers or farmers who are trying to go regenerative in the process of going regenerative to direct to consumer all over Europe

Alison:
And they transport, never buy air, and they try to kind of put things together so the transport is as minimal as possible. And they put money into kind of regenerating the soil. They’re just supporting regenerative farmers throughout Europe. So we bought some olive oil from them. And in doing that, we added on a box of oranges as a treat, I guess, for us until we have some fruit back again. And the boys have been eating them and I’ve been thinking oh there’s going to be no oranges left by the time I get around to having one and so today I thought you know what I’m still a bit hungry after lunch gonna have half an orange and as you talked about just a few moments ago I’m people who listen to the podcast will know I don’t really eat sweet things and so I’m slowly reintroducing sweet things into my life and seeing how i’m getting on with them so half an orange was an incredible treat and it was so delicious and so thirst crunching and just beautiful really really lovely what a pleasure was it was how about you what have you eaten have you eaten today well i

Andrea:
Haven’t eaten breakfast but actually to that point i was realizing i should tell you what i did have, because it’s a kind of a nice thing if you aren’t able to eat breakfast right away, which in my case was only for the sake of time, was the raw milk warmer in nourishing traditions. I now know, Alison, from the read-along, that there’s an older, like the first edition of the nourishing traditions, and it’s slightly different, and it doesn’t have all the recipes. So if somebody’s looking for something yeah i didn’t know that until now or you know a couple weeks ago so if somebody’s looking through when we’re talking about a recipe and they’re like what are you talking about check the copyright date and see if you have the first or second edition, But I don’t think the raw milk warmer is in the first edition, which is why I was saying that. But it is, it’s a really nice drink. Sally Fallon uses carob. I’ve done it with either carob or cocoa. Hash.

Andrea:
But the, what I do when I make it is I make twice as much. And then I put half of it in a bottle in the fridge. so that then the next day or the next time, in this case, this morning, I wanted very quickly something that I could have. I heated that on the stove and then had this warm drink. It has the raw milk. This one has cocoa powder in it. There’s maple syrup, nutritional yeast. So there’s some fat, some carbs, some little bit of protein to sort of keep my system going until we finish.

Alison:
I think it’s absolutely fine to have cocoa. You know, we’ve had Marcus Patchett on the podcast, who’s a cocoa guru, if you look back in the annals of our wonderful episodes. That is an early episode. And we will hopefully have him on later in the year. And there are incredible benefits to chocolate, which we can utilize.

Andrea:
But what would he say to me putting it with the milk? I don’t know.

Alison:
Yeah, he probably won’t like that. I love that. Listeners, we’ll have to listen to the episode later in the year to find out why.

Andrea:
I’ll be so convicted. I’ll go back to just the carob version.

Alison:
The other thing I wanted to say that I forgot a minute ago was I have a voucher for crowd farming. And if anyone uses it, they get 10 euros off their next order. So if anyone’s listening in Europe and wants to investigate crowd farming, I will put a link in the show notes to the voucher thing that I have because, you know, it’s a benefit.

Andrea:
Oh, yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Okay, well, this is going to be a really great episode, Allison, but let’s get through a little bit of housekeeping on our way to the episode. So, this month that this episode is going out is April. Wait, did I get that right?

Alison:
Is it going out in April? Yeah, you did.

Andrea:
As soon as I said it, I panicked. So, it’s going out in April. And there are five Tuesdays in April. And we have an episode that comes out on the first Tuesday and the third Tuesday of every month. So when there’s a fifth Tuesday, we actually don’t have an episode drop that day. So you’ll have two-week wait. But if you just cannot get through another week without Allison and myself in your ear, we do have a bonus podcast called Kitchen Table Chats, where Allison, you and I have created, and then we have had lots of our guests have helped us create tons of content on there. But we have a bonus episode going out on the fifth Tuesday of April. A full episode is going out on that podcast where I talked with Leah, a friend of mine who was visiting from Alaska, and she wanted to understand how I use the Plan to Eat app and how I schedule my meals. And the way that I schedule our meals right now, actually, you could do it without the app too, if you wanted.

Andrea:
So, we went over meal planning together, and it was kind of a miracle because between the two of us, we have seven children, and some of them are quite small, and there was naps to negotiate around for, I think, three of the kids, and we somehow managed to line everything up the last day that she was here visiting so that we had a free hour. I know, they all kind to come in towards the end so you’ll hear them come in and start saying excuse me what are you doing so they come in at the end of the episode but um but other than that we are mostly uninterrupted and for her 10-day visit that was the only hour that she and I were without the children are you.

Alison:
Saying that that’s are you saying that that’s going up on the um private podcast

Andrea:
Yes that will We’ll go up on the KTC. Yep, yep. So there’ll be a little bonus. So if you want access to that, and I think there’s over 100 other episodes on there, and well over 100 now, then you can go to the show notes and just click our podcast website, AncestralKitchenPodcast.com, and join as a supporter at the $12 and above level, and you will get that. And a lot of those extra episodes also have downloads and PDFs and e-books and stuff that go along with them. So you’ll just get all of that. Okay. And speaking of Alison, can you tell me where is our production team on the process of building us our own processing platform?

Alison:
Oh, they’re downstairs typing away manically. Better be. Our production team, in other words, Rob and me. We are in the process of taking the management of our community off of Patreon. We’ve talked about this before. So if you’ve listened to any of the episodes in the last few months, you might have heard us mention it. We’re doing that and we were kind of pushed to make that decision because of apple increasing charges using their app store so you as an end user could charge 30 percent more than we are setting and that money would go straight into the pocket of apple which we don’t like so we are taking the management of our community back to us to ourselves and kind of losing patreon the first stage of that is almost complete so we’re keeping our discord server because we absolutely love it it’s because if

Andrea:
You take it away i will have a tantrum.

Alison:
Well exactly yeah exactly what would you do i don’t know it’s um user friendly really a wonderful place to interact no ads no feed no anyone else other than the people who have elected to come and be part of our community so supportive so we want to keep that but we’re going to manage that discord server ourselves and that’s the first stage which we’re almost we’ve almost done after that is um in the bag shall we say we’ll be setting up our own systems so that everything will go through ancestral kitchen podcast.com so if at the moment you want to join and you’re on apple don’t use the app store if you go to your computer and use a browser instead you will be able to join without that 30 percent in the future that won’t be an issue because once we swapped it to us managing the whole thing then there won’t be any extra money going anywhere else other than towards keeping us going with this podcast

Andrea:
Which we thank you for. You guys, seriously, there’s no way we could do this without you guys. Like, this is so wonderful having all of everybody’s help getting this show on the air. And it feels, Allison, a little bit like our process that we did with food, where, you know, we started the podcast and we were using this, you know, bigger systems and they supported us and helped us get on our way, like Patreon, etc. And now we kind of want to do it ourself. And I remember Rob did talk about that from the very beginning, but it would have been more challenging to do then because we had no resources and now we have everybody helping us. They’re literally helping him build it with their memberships. And so now we have the resources to be able to pay him to do all that tons and tons of work so and.

Alison:
Make it better yeah exactly yeah

Andrea:
Yeah so um another thing that will be as we get into this episode this episode is all about milk and dairy and things like that and i’ve created, a pdf with some of what i talk about not all because a lot of these are not my recipes so i’m just linking you directly to the creators of these recipes but some of them i’ve been able to put into a PDF for you and you can download that in the show notes. And I’ve also dropped all the links to the recipes in that PDF. So you can find everything that I talk about here in one place and tuck it into your cooking notebook or whatever, if you like. And so that PDF, as a supporter, you, Alison, tell me you would go to the website and there’s the download section. And then when you click on it, it’ll say you need to log in. Yes. Some of them we have available for everybody at the top. But then if you click the like supporter…

Andrea:
Download once, then you’ll log in. Okay, great. Allison, also you have, I wanted to say, I actually thought about this in January and I put it in my calendar for today because I was like, I will forget between now and then. But Mother’s Day in the U.S. is coming up. And so I wanted to tell everyone, if you want to, Allison’s courses, you could hint to your family. And by hint, I mean, send them the link and tell them, excuse me, I want this chocolate episode or you all want rye bread. Get me the rye course.

Andrea:
You can send them that or Allison at my request, Rob has set up a gift card option. And another option would be if you really want our cookbook or the cookbook and the spelt cookbook you could ask your family to get you those.

Alison:
From Mother’s Day so we have gift cards for the cookbooks on Ancestral Kitchen Podcast so someone can do it kind of as a surprise I also have gift cards like you said for the Bose course on my website and then if you’re buying one of my courses that’s on the fermentation school That’s the rye course and the suins course. Or your sourdough starter course,

Andrea:
Honestly, which there’s a code to get it for free. So just get that one for free.

Alison:
You can get that one for free, exactly. Then also, if you’re buying one that you have to pay for, there’s a tick box on the checkout which says this is the gift. And the same thing happens. You’ll get it kind of surprise sent to someone. So, yeah.

Andrea:
Awesome. I’ve got the link to that, the shop, in the show notes. And I put your shop and the podcast shop. But if you guys buy from either one, it all goes to the same place. So it doesn’t matter. And then I will put the, I want to put that sourdough starter course in there with the code so that if anyone wants to just get it for free, you can get it for free. It’s only $5. Yeah, excellent. And then you guys already heard me announce to you a little bit ago about the liver giveaway, which is so cool. I think it’s our first, we’ve never done a liver giveaway, have we?

Alison:
No.

Andrea:
No. Okay. So can we call it organ donation? So there’s a liver giveaway, which is completely and entirely sponsored by our amazing podcast sponsor, Fassel, over at One Earth Health. So we’re very thankful to him for putting together this awesome promotion. So, check the show notes for the links to that. You’ll get his newsletter and our newsletter. And you will also be entered to win three bottles, I think it is.

Alison:
Yeah, three months.

Andrea:
Three bottles. Yes, which I am taking those religiously every day right now. I am. I just… I need them. So I’m a number one fan.

Alison:
You can’t tell what you’d feel like without them.

Andrea:
No, that’s true. But here’s the thing. I got four hours of sleep last night, and that’s par for the course right now. I need all the help I can get. And I am that rat swimming in the barrel from the study, Allison. I am the rat swimming in the barrel that needs the energy from the liver. And if you guys don’t know what we’re talking about, there was a study where some studiers, scientists put these rats in a barrel, and the rats that didn’t have the liver tapped out very quickly, and I’m abbreviating the study very shortly. This is not a scientific summary. And then the rats that had liver kept swimming for so many hours that the researchers just had to take them out of the barrel because they didn’t have time to keep standing there and waiting for the rats to get tired. So liver has what’s called like an unknown factor for energy. Nobody knows exactly what it is but it gives you more energy which is why it’s so popular with bodybuilders and in my case mothers with children that think midnight is a delightful time to get up and play so um yeah swimming around okay so.

Alison:
Let’s let’s go into the contest actually i should say the contest is only for u.s residents i have to say that oh yeah

Andrea:
Oh sorry i forgot yeah my.

Alison:
Yeah Let’s talk about the episode. I totally forgot that. Because we have some very exciting things to talk about with milk today. So tell us who this episode’s for, Andrea.

Andrea:
Okay, perfect. I’ll do that. I’ll give a brief intro and then why don’t we take a break for a minute and then we’ll get right into the content. Okay, so this episode is for anyone who wants to know how to make some very useful and staple home dairy products. These are not necessarily considered advanced, like an aged rinded cheese or something like that. But these are absolute staples of a home dairy. And even if you were making advanced products, you’d probably still be making these as a baseline all the time because your family will be asking for them and they’re just part of everyday life for a lot of people.

Andrea:
The recipes that I chose were… Are also related to who this is for. So I am making the assumption that probably the most of you don’t own a cow. I know some of you listening do own cows. Jess, I’m looking at you and I’m waiting every day for a text that your cow has had her calf. But some of you own cows, but I’m assuming you don’t all own cows. And so I chose dairy items that were not only at the peak of what we use a lot of, but also very economical in terms of milk used. So the amount of milk that you put into this product is either totally or very close to how much finished product you’ll get out. And then everything involves the tools and ingredients you would either already have, because if you don’t have a cow, you probably haven’t invested in like a cheese press or something, although you may have. And then there also will be some things that you can typically get a hold of very easily, but no really expensive gadgets. But of course, I know a lot of you may end up owning cows very soon, so that’s fine. I will also put in a few ideas, Alison, for how to use some of the different types of whey that are produced in these products. So even when there is, you know, a little leftover material, it’s like, it’s like when people ask about that.

Alison:
I know so many people have asked about that. I’ve seen them. Yes. But this is really useful.

Andrea:
Yeah. There’s no waste needed when you make anything dairy. There just isn’t. And all the recipes I’m about to share can be made with low heat or vat pasteurized milk, as well as with raw milk. I have exclusively used raw milk for all of this, so I really will give my personal experience to that. But all these recipes are, can be done with a low heat pasteurized milk.

Alison:
Right.

Andrea:
Okay. Let’s take a quick break and then I’ll get into the subject. So Allison, we have been enjoying our raw dairy for, I think this month will mark 14 years from when I switched from low heat pasteurized to raw. And then we’re using the low heat pasteurized before that, maybe for two or three years. So Yeah. We’ve owned a cow the last few years, but I sold her, and we only had her out here for one year, but I sold her when I was pregnant with the baby. And how long have you guys been drinking raw milk?

Alison:
Oh, a long time. Since the very early days. I think it was one of the first things that we did when I found Nourishing Traditions, which I think we’ve talked about before for us, was 2010, I think. Um i we were in italy and i found some raw goat’s milk via a buying group and started making kefir with it straight away um you know we’ve lived in lots of different places and we’ve had sometimes easier sometimes less easy access to raw milk and it’s been more difficult without a car because we can’t just go and pick up a bunch of raw milk although rob can carry a lot you know we can’t cart so much milk back um so sometimes we’ve had it sometimes we’ve not been able to access it here since coming to um back to england i haven’t been able to source it here yet i know it’s here but it’s being sold over the farm gate and i can’t get to the farm gate so um we haven’t got it yet but i’m hoping we will do soon great

Andrea:
Can gabe have the milk.

Alison:
Um yeah but he we don’t really milk ever straight so okay we always have it pasture and we always have it sorry fermented into something so although he couldn’t at the very beginning he is now having goat’s milk that’s been fermented into Kiefer mostly but he seems he seems okay on it I’m not 110% sure I’m kind of still tracking him but I feel much happier that the milk that we’re giving him is goat because he’s kind of had less problems with that and I also feel really happy that we’re doing something with it like you’re going to talk about today we’re processing it and we’re using fermentation to change its structure so it’s kind of accepted differently by his body

Andrea:
Great in the u.s you can check realmilk.com which i will link in the show notes and you can also ask if you have a local weston a price foundation chapter and you just look for that on their website that’s in the links also and you can also find milk sometimes through eatwild.com which i think is where i found our cow share when we lived in virginia and i will recommend listening to episode 53 if you haven’t already that is a raw milk our ancestral heritage episode that is.

Alison:
One of our most downloaded episodes it’s such a good episode andrea that you put together

Andrea:
Great well that’s in the show notes also so um you can listen to that if you want to learn more about why we would even consider drinking raw milk and what that really means, So the accessibility and price of milk varies from place to place, which is also another reason why I wanted to circumspectly put together these recipes that were fairly foolproof so that you weren’t inadvertently, shall we say, wasting product with something that maybe wouldn’t turn out to be what you were going for. Allison, the accessibility for milk in the U.S. is getting better every day. How is accessibility in the uk.

Alison:
It’s not bad it’s not really you know like the states where it’s per state a region there are some producers online and you can get it shipped across the country if you want um i’ve talked to a quite a few patrons about this and they they sometimes don’t actually love doing it that way because it’s not supporting a local farm and also in the shipping there’s usually lots of plastic packaging so it’s really hard to ship things in glass so they kind of try on a way up well do we want to support a local farm is there a way that i can find this locally so it doesn’t involve all this plastic um some producers as i said will sell it over the farm gate but not at a market so i mean it’s kind of reasonable if you want to get some you can definitely get some but if you want to get it locally it’s a bit more difficult it depends on kind of a network and who you’ve got around you okay

Andrea:
Well that’s good and the more people listen to our podcast, the more accessibility will grow because more people will be able to, you know, there are farmers who would love to be selling raw milk, but there’s not the market for it where they are. So as the market emerges, the supplier also emerges and they kind of have to grow hand in hand. So shipping your milk across the country in the plastic maybe isn’t the most ideal, but it could just be a stopgap measure that shows those farmers, hey, look, it’s really popular. This is a market I should get into. So it is getting better, I think, in many places. So that’s good news. All right, Allison, I’m also going to define some of these dairy products as we go. So you have probably noticed this if you’ve read The Art of Fermentation and some of these other books that talk about different ferments, that across many cultures, you will find many similar products with different names so this applies to a lot of things like fermented fish sauce i know we’ve talked about that many different cultures coastal cultures have their version of that um flatbreads everywhere you go in the world you can find a flatbread with a different name and um they aren’t all quite the same they have their nuances and their differences even when they share the same name.

Andrea:
So, farmer’s cheese and cream cheese, for instance, are virtually the same thing and often even defined the same, but it depends on which definition or recipe you are using. The idea we have that farmer’s cheese looks like this and cottage cheese looks like that and sour cream is like this is an idea that came from the industrialization and homogenization of food. So when a, like in our country, pretty much all of our food is controlled by three big companies. And so, you know, you could go into a differently named grocery store in any one of the 50 states and find the exact same product from the exact same factory that you could anywhere else you lived. And that isn’t true for every single product, but for a lot of products, that’s true. And so if you get butter, it’s going to look like the standard. If you get cottage cheese, it’s going to look like the standard. And with true regional and cultural dairy, it’s going to be a little bit different. A lot of people start their dairy journey with trying to replicate the store products identically.

Andrea:
And there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily. But over time, you will find that you may actually evolve and say, you know, our family actually prefers it this way. Or what’s easier for me with having seven children and not the time to do that little thing is to make it this way. Or I don’t have that piece of equipment, so I do it like this. So you will find that some things may change over time, and you might not actually want it to be the exact same as the grocery store version you grew up with. So just be open to those nuances in dairy as we go. I’m going to drop a couple dairy resources here also, which are in the show notes and also in the PDF that you can download that accompanies this episode for supporters, if you like. Cheesefromscratch.com. I think it is. This is Robin. She has a wonderful Instagram account, also cheesefromscratch, and her website cheesefromscratch. And she puts out a yearly ebook, which I believe goes out in August every year, that you can buy called The Christmas cheese board book and she has a timeline for you to follow beginning in august where you will if you just follow her schedule then by christmas you’ll have a full cheese board with your homemade and different cheeses isn’t that such a clever idea yeah.

Alison:
It is yeah i love it

Andrea:
Yeah, you’ve got to start some stuff early. I suppose we might end up with a calendar like that one day with your gingerbread and things on it, you know. Yeah, that would be really nice.

Alison:
Yeah, Christmas pudding, mince pie, all that stuff. Yeah.

Andrea:
So I talked to Robin on episode 68, which is called Naturally Fermented Dairy in the Home with Robin Jackson. And I’m not going to go into detail in this episode talking about clabber because she did a really good job discussing it in that episode way more thoroughly than I could do it here. But clabber is an important element of dairy to learn about, and you can hear her wax eloquent on it on that episode. Also, I will recommend David Asher, another Canadian. He has a website, milklab.ca, and he was Robin’s mentor, so you will see shades of his influence throughout her work, and she does mention him from time to time, and I think she also referred to him during our episode recording. So he has a website. He has a number of books. The book I have of his that is sitting right here next to me is called The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. And as the name implies, he focuses on you using natural cultures instead of Allison. He is opposed to the little packets of culture, as I know you are also. I’m not in.

Alison:
My own heart.

Andrea:
Yes, for many reasons, but not the least of those being flavors and variety. And he has recipes like junket pudding, which is an old-fashioned pudding concept. He has a recipe that I love the name of called You Can’t Do That With Pasteurized Milk Cheese. And he has more complex cheeses like blue cheese and rinded cheeses in here. So if you want to give yourself a solid education on all things natural cheesemaking, you could just read this book. And for all my homeschool and Charlotte Mason moms listening, it is an absolutely living book. And it is from stem to stern packed with the most stunning full picture photos you have ever seen. And somebody who just passionately, passionately tells you what he loves about this and why it matters so much. So if you want a book for your kids to read and narrate to you, they could read this one.

Alison:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
Another book that I have sitting here, which is the first, I think the first dairy book I ever bought. So I will say it’s the one I’ve used the most and the longest, but is much more simple, doesn’t have pictures, just has very short, simple recipes, but taught me a lot of basic principles is The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell Kingsley. And especially if you feel like you get overwhelmed by dairy things, this would be a great book because she just is very clear, very clean. And I have had only successes from this book. So that’s a great one as well. And the last one I will say is Milk Cow Kitchen by the appropriately named Mary Jane Butters. And this book is more so aimed at somebody who wants to own a cow or does own a cow.

Alison:
Ah, I remember you saying about it before now.

Andrea:
Yes. I found it enormously helpful when I was preparing to bring our cow home because she has a lot about, you know, cleaning and milking and things like that. And her story, Allison, her personal story is so interesting. I’ve actually thought of sending it to you before for you to read. So I’m going to link it in the show notes. So Allison, if you visit our own show notes, you can find that link. Thank you. I think you would find much resonance with her story and her mission.

Alison:
Wonderful. Those books, are they in our bookstore that we have for the podcast?

Andrea:
Yes, I’m pretty sure they are all linked in the bookstore. I will confirm, but I feel fairly certain that I put them all in there, either when I was writing the show notes or when I did the, yeah, I’m looking now and I see bookshop links for everything. So yep they’ll all be in the wonderful.

Alison:
So if you purchase them via our bookstore you and we’ll be supporting local bookshops even though you’re shopping online and you’ll also be supporting the podcast a little bit as well so

Andrea:
Yep okay so i just talked a lot i’m about to talk a lot again so i’m going to take a break have some tea and then let’s go into easy ferments after that great, All right, some easy ferments. So I brought in some ferments that I think are very core to the home dairy experience. So the first, and I think the one that I get asked about the most is sour cream. So sour cream is exactly what the name implies. It is milk that has soured, or cream that has soured, I should say. The first time I made sour cream was inadvertent. I had left a full half gallon with the cream on top, tightly sealed in the refrigerator in Virginia, and flew to Washington and visited my family for unspecified amount of time. And when I came back, I opened the fridge and said, oh my, there was milk in here the whole time. I took it out and I opened it, and I was fairly new to raw milk, and I thought, oh no, this is just wasted now and i opened it and the cream on top was the best sour cream i have ever had it was so good do.

Alison:
You think though that that’s because that was raw milk do you think you can also do that with pasteurized milk

Andrea:
I don’t know if that would work with pasteurized milk because they’re i’m not sure i’m not sure that it would my inclination would be to say no, because in pasteurizing, you are killing the bacteria that did the sour work. So that’s one way to do it, but it does take four and a half weeks or five weeks or however long it was on that trip. So there’s another way. You can add a culture to a sour cream, And the culture can be clabber, which is, in brief, you would take clean, fresh milk, put it in a jar, put a cap on the jar, put it on the counter, and leave it there and shake it every once in a while when you go by for a couple days or until it is a nice, sour, thick yogurt texture. That is clabber and clabber is essentially sourdough starter but for milk so you can feed it just like you would feed you know so you could pull out most of the clabber add in fresh clean milk this is a bit easier to maintain when you have a cow and you have fresh milk walking in your door twice a day every day or once a day every day depending on your cow and.

Alison:
Again a clabber

Andrea:
Really only works successfully.

Alison:
Only guarantees work successfully with raw milk.

Andrea:
Correct. I cannot imagine it working with pasteurized milk of any type. So clabber is the most native, organic, and natural way to culture many things. If you don’t have clabber yet, and if that is a barrier, I don’t think you should stay out of the dairy game simply because of that reason. I think it is perfectly reasonable for you to at least start exploring things with, I’m going to say it, Allison. Packets and isolated bacteria because you will get very comfortable working with it. And it’s kind of like starting with a yeast bread. Very quickly, you start to say, ooh, I want to explore some more flavors. So I personally think it’s okay to begin there because I know where the evolution takes us. And I am a big acceptor of small beginnings. And part of that is because I also know when I say, well, I’m not going to make sour cream until I can make it in a hand-turned-wooden-bowl with a linen dress on, then it’s never going to happen. And then guess what? I’ll be in the grocery store buying sour cream. So it’s a—because we all know there is just no existence for me without sour cream. So I have to start, you have to start somewhere.

Alison:
I think it’s different than if you’re making sourdough bread because, you know, with the clabber culture, you have to have raw milk. So if you just can’t access raw milk, then, you know, you don’t have that option available. And in that case, then you can step in with some really good quality milk and make something at home for cheaper and, you know, supporting potentially a local dairy rather than going to a supermarket. Yes. So I’m all for that too.

Andrea:
That’s another great point, Alison, that a lot of people look for dairies to produce value-added products for them, but that’s a very high barrier for legal reasons for a lot of dairies. So you may very easily, and even sometimes economically, be able to get access to good raw milk in your area, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that farmer is able to sell value-added products. Some cases they may not even be allowed to separate the cream.

Andrea:
So being able to do it at home then becomes a bit of a more pressing demand in that case. Yeah, yeah. So that’s part of why I wanted to cover staples today, because I know that’s the case for a lot of people in America, especially as raw milk dairies are slowly coming back into our American agrarian landscape. So sour cream can also be made with buttermilk you can culture your you can put sour cream or sorry you can put cream in a jar and add a tablespoon or two of cultured buttermilk which, you can you can use a warm warmed okay that’s not the right word pasteurized like a low temp pasteurized milk to make a buttermilk culture by buying a buttermilk culture.

Andrea:
And culturing some of that milk. You don’t have to make butter to make buttermilk, by the way. It’s a story for another day, but buttermilk is multiple things. It doesn’t always mean the way after you make butter. But you can take just a low-temp pasteurized milk, add what’s called a buttermilk culture, and it will get that sour, tangy tartness, which is actually basically just clabber. Except you made it in the controlled environment by reintroducing the bacteria to the milk. You could also do this with raw milk. If you, you know, I think a lot of people that I know who are buying raw milk are paying $20 and up for a gallon or even in one case I know $22 for a half gallon. And the thought of putting it on the counter and possibly it not clabbering right could be nail biting for them. And you can give yourself some assurance with the culture and then, you know, when you feel more comfortable, go for it and try other versions. But if you make yourself that cultured buttermilk, you can keep it in the refrigerator and you can bring it out and feed it every couple days some more milk and put it on the counter just like you would a kefir.

Andrea:
So you can then take a few tablespoons of that and add it to some cream and ferment the cream on the counter and get a sour cream you could also use kefir to make a sour cream which i i have done and i know katie in our discord uh also loves doing and she said that was brilliant she said that you could serve it poured over berries for dessert in the summer. And I am going to be doing that this summer because ever since you said that, I’ve thought about it.

Alison:
You said a couple of spoons of a culture to how much cream?

Andrea:
Let’s see. I would probably do like a pint of cream with, actually, I’m going to look in Kathy’s book and see what she says. I can tell you more exactly what she says, but I would do a pint of cream with a couple tablespoons. Let’s see. She does one cup of heavy cream. No, that’s not the one I did. Okay. She does, yeah, she does two cups of cream with two tablespoons of buttermilk. So we see where my influence came from.

Andrea:
She also has another version where she uses cream, half cream, half milk, and a half a cup of cultured buttermilk. So that is another option. And then I’m going to present a third, I don’t know what number we’re on, fifth, third, second option for sour cream, which is that you can ferment your kefir and then let it, pour just regular kefir, like made with milk and everything like that, and pour it into butter muslin, maybe two layers of butter muslin over a mesh strainer over a bowl and let the whey drip out overnight. And then the resulting kefir cheese, which we will touch on in a moment again, is the perfect consistency. You know, you can pull it off when it’s the right thickness that you like for sour cream. And we often serve that for sour cream because it is so perfect.

Andrea:
Okay. And I’ll just add that if you like Mexican sour cream, which is something you can buy at most grocery stores in the U.S., or at least where I live, you can, that is a thinner sour cream. So it’s actually closer to a homemade sour cream and you can pour it. So it’s still very thick, but thin enough to pour. And you can approximate that if your sour cream is too thick by whisking in some milk. Okay.

Andrea:
All right, Alison, yogurt versus kefir. Which one do I prefer? I prefer kefir. What about you?

Alison:
Yeah, we don’t make yogurt. I made yogurt maybe a decade ago. I had a yogurt maker. But I just find kefir, kefir, so much easier. And I know that the range of cultures that develop in kefir, using the scobies, the kefir grains, is much broader. So as a probiotic, it’s a broader probiotic. We like the flavor of it. we like the strength of it i like the kind of slight fizziness so we don’t make yogurt we just we’re kefir fans over here definitely

Andrea:
Great i prefer the taste of kefir i think it’s one of those things where i just you know you start once you start chasing that sour high you go for sour and sour yeah so then yogurt kind of feels bland next to that yeah um my kids like them both but i I think if they were to eat, if they were to have their druthers, they would probably say they preferred yogurt, but they just kind of get what they get. But I wanted to use these two to illustrate mesophilic versus thermophilic terminology.

Andrea:
So thermophilic, if you are up on your ancient languages, you are recognizing the word thermo for the heat, the temperature in there. So thermophil, meaning love. So it’s a warm-loving bacteria.

Andrea:
Mesophilic, meso being more middle and temperate, is a room-temperature-loving bacteria. So if you have ever read a recipe or looked at a packet and it says mesophilic culture, then you know it’s one that you can let sit on your countertop at room temperature and let it ferment. Kefir is an example of a mesophilic culture.

Andrea:
Most, if not all, true yogurt ferments are thermophilic. I don’t actually know if they all are, but all the ones I know of are. They are thermophilic, meaning that they have to stay very warm and cozy or they will refuse to do their job. So those are where you refer to a yogurt maker. You can get these things that hold temperature. I do not have a yogurt maker. I have never had a yogurt maker, and yet I have made a lot of yogurt. And the way I do it without using any power, I got this from, I’m pretty sure it was Kate on Venison for dinner, showed a picture of her doing this once. But I just take a regular cooler like you would pack lunch in, and I put my prepared yogurt in there. And then I take a mason jar and I pour in boiling hot water and cap it and tuck it in next to it, close the lid, go to bed, and then when I come out in the morning, my yogurt is done. So that is how I create a warm environment for thermophilic-loving cultures. Do we have an episode, Alison, where we said how to make kefir? I’m pretty sure we did. I feel like we’ve done this like four times.

Alison:
Maybe the what-vented drinks can I make, possibly.

Andrea:
Yeah, possibly.

Alison:
It’s quite a while ago, but it’s simple. Buy some grain, put it in.

Andrea:
Yeah, why don’t you say how you make kefir?

Alison:
Yeah, so we have some milk kefir grains, which are different to water kefir grains.

Alison:
They generally aren’t interchangeable. We could talk about that. But no, buy milk kefir grains if you want to make milk kefir. And get your milk, put it into a jar. We usually do a pint at a time. So make sure your jar is clean. We don’t sterilize ours. Put your kefir grains in, stir them around a little bit, put a loose lid on, and then put it to the side. And then depending on your ambient temperature just check it and you can stir it around and taste it if you like it less kifford you can pull the grains out earlier if you like it more sour you can leave it sometimes if you leave it long enough it’ll separate which can be sometimes difficult to get the grains out of the bit at the top if you’ve got thick milk you know if you’ve got really kind of gold top milk um but again it’s still good to eat that way um and then when you have got it to the taste that you like um get another jar put we do this way put a funnel and rest a sieve on the top of it people say to use plastic not metal although if you read and all cats this book the art of fermentation he says there’s no evidence anywhere saying that you shouldn’t choose metal um but people generally say use plastic pour the milk and the kefir grains through the plastic sieve down through the funnel into the new jar and then you’ll have your lovely milk kefir in the jar and you’ll have your grains which you can then use again in milk kefir in the sieve.

Andrea:
Great. And it’s such a simple process.

Alison:
That was like milk kefir in one minute without hesitation.

Andrea:
It’s like auctioning up the, who will take the milk kefir? So the simplicity of that and the ease of it is why I used to just make, when it was just me, I would make a pint every day. And then the morning I would strain it out and use the pint for my smoothie and then start the next batch and it would sit for 24 hours until the next morning again. Um okay yogurt is really simple also and i’ll see if i can do it as fast as you did that okay you take your milk you heat it to 185 degrees fahrenheit this is so that your proteins, unravel and your yogurt actually sets firm the way you want it to then you have to let the milk cool back down to about body temperature so 98 to 110 degrees and then you add in the bacteria Just remember, bacteria is like you. It goes really slow when it’s cold and it dies when it gets too hot. So you don’t want to put it in something too hot and it doesn’t do much if it’s too cold. So put in your yogurt culture, whisk it in, and then put it in a clean but not sterilized jar. Cap it and put it in the cooler with a jar of hot water to keep it companion. Close the lid and then in the morning, pull it out and your yogurt will be fully set. Did I do it?

Andrea:
Okay. So either one of these, kefir or yogurt, you can take and pour into butter muslin over a clean linen towel, or I don’t find cheesecloth to work that well because the holes are too big. My stuff just runs right through, but you can pour them into one of those fabrics. I’ve also just use a clean napkin from the drawer and let it strain overnight. The thick solids will stay in the top and the whey will drip out the bottom. And then you’ll have whey that you can use to ferment things and you’ll have a thick either yogurt cheese or kefir cheese on top. I’ve also, when I ferment my kefir, Allison, I intentionally pour in quite a lot of cream and I don’t stir it while it ferments. And then I just scoop the cream off the top and I keep it in a separate container from the rest of the milk kefir so that I can use it.

Alison:
But don’t your grains get stuck in the cream?

Andrea:
Yes, I strain them out. Yeah, they do get stuck in the cream.

Alison:
We find

Andrea:
That hard because.

Alison:
They get stuck in the cream. And then if you try and put the cream through a sieve, it doesn’t really go through. So you have to end up picking the kefir grains out. Don’t you find that?

Andrea:
I just, no, I have not had a problem with it. I don’t know. I just mash it. Just mash it.

Alison:
Just destroying a sieve while you’re mashing it through.

Andrea:
Is that why my sieve’s misshapen? You know, Alison, the first time I taught a kombucha class, I showed everybody, oh, here’s a scoby. I passed one around. I don’t use it for fermenting after we pass it around. But I always tell them, to pass the class, you have to touch the scoby. And a lot of people are like, okay. But then I show them, look, you can tear it in half like this and divide it between different jars. And then you can, you know, throwing it all over the place, doing things. And then a gentleman came up after one of the classes and told me, you know, I took another class on a kombucha making at this other place. And the lady was taking it out with tongs and like dealing with like sterilizing scissors. And she’s like, he was like, you’re just throwing it all over the place. He said, I thought it was so delicate. Use this for your kefir cream. Allison, you can churn it and make butter out of it. So you can have kefir butter or yogurt butter, I suppose, if you fermented just the cream. I add it to our baby’s milk bottle when I warm him eight ounces of raw milk. And then I add in a tablespoon of the kefir cream. You could serve it on berries, as Katie suggested. You can eat a spoonful, which is what I do after I make the baby’s bottle. I was thinking, Allison, on your spice cake or the gingerbread, it would be really good. Mm-hmm. You can use it to make tvorog, which is the Russian cheese, and that is really good in blinis.

Alison:
It’s really nice on pancakes for a special kind of weekend breakfast. Yeah. To make some pancakes and kind of spread it over the top and then put whatever you actually want on the top of it and then roll it up. That’s really good.

Andrea:
Yep. The whey from kefir or yogurt is active. This is different than the way you will get from making cheese in the next section so, this active probiotic way you can use to ferment drinks and we do cover that allison in our episode on drinks which i’ll link in the show notes but you can just freeze that way in ice cube trays and then pop those frozen cubes into jars or vacuum sealed bags and use it to make your drinks all summer long all right and there’s one more recipe allison that i won’t go over here but if you can tell people where to find it.

Alison:
Ah yeah yeah sorry um and i remember now it is the lacto fermented ice cream in our cookbook and i have not made it yet but so many people have made it and have told me how wonderful it is so if you haven’t bought our book yet the shop link is in the show notes to the podcast website um and do check that out and perhaps make it and dip the um fermented oak cookies that are in there as well into it which would be really nice okay um on that note let’s take a quick break and we will come back and talk about some easy homemade cheeses

Andrea:
Okay, not to make a cheese pun, but we’re in the homestretch now. So, soft cheese, easy cheese. I’m going to bring to the table today a few old-fashioned farmhouse cheeses, plus a surprising way that I found, Allison, to use up weeks-old milk, like the one I referred to finding in the fridge. Even milk that is starting to separate into curds and whey. So the ones I chose to share here are what I think of in my head as foolproof cheeses. It’s really difficult to mess these up. When you are buying in milk and it’s so precious, I think it’s a great idea to start with milk recipes that will give you a high yield of product and a low failure risk while you get your cheese feet under you. There is a lot of nuance, touch, smell, taste, be aware that comes with cheese making that I think is good to practice in the early days and is hard to write down in a recipe.

Alison:
I don’t know if I’ve got any cheese feet. I’m wondering now, looking at my feet, have I got cheese feet? Could you talk to the kind of the simplest cheese? Because some people seem to call it kind of farmhouse cheese, some people call it farmer’s cheese. And I don’t think we really know exactly what that means. Could you help kind of unravel all that, please.

Andrea:
Yes. So…

Andrea:
The farmer’s cheese and the farmhouse cheese is the simple, I’m just going to give you my definition, the simple cheeses that you can make in your farm kitchen. And if you’re listening to this from your apartment in the city or a house in town and you’re making your sourdough bread or you’re growing herbs in the windowsill or you’ve bought the art of fermentation, I’m including your kitchen in my description of a farmhouse kitchen. A farm kitchen in this context is a productive kitchen, which you can have anywhere in the world. So these are cheeses you can make without a lot of specialized equipment, often without special cultures, and without five gallons of milk per batch. Because there are some cheeses I have made where you start with five gallons, and that’s a commitment for someone without a cow. Someone with a cow says, oh, please give me that recipe. I’m trying to use the 40 gallons this week. So you will expand your kitchen cheese options thousand folds by adding rennet to your repertoire. This is not necessarily an ingredient that everybody is familiar with. In fact, in the ancestral world, it wasn’t an ingredient at all. It was a process, but I’ll explain that in a minute. So I keep a little container of rennet in the fridge in the kitchen.

Andrea:
And I’ll be completely honest, Allison, I have used rennet multiple years past the best by date on the bottle, and I’ve never had a problem. So I’m not saying I recommend that. I’m just telling you my lived experience. So a note on rennet. What rennet is, is coagulating enzymes that typically come from the fourth stomach of young ruminants. So this could be lamb. This could be beef. And it can also be made from some plants. It is not like gelatin because this is enzyme activity, not gelatinizing activity. Um, rennet that is manufactured. So, so a once upon a time, Alison, what you would do is you would put milk in that fourth stomach, but that means you had to have just butchered something, which a lot of us haven’t this morning. I wonder who discovered that first. There is a myth.

Alison:
You poured milk into his stomach.

Andrea:
Actually, and David Asher talks about this in his book as it happens. But you know that there’s lots of myths in different cultures about where did music come from? Where did cheese come from? You know, this is one of those. And the myth is that a young sheepherder girl was taking her milk with her to go, you know, watch her sheep for the day. And she, you know, put it in the stomach as, you know, everybody’s heard, you know, Bible verses about putting wine in wine skins and things like that. You know, animal stomachs were often used as bags for things. And so she put her milk in the bag. And then when she got out, when she got around to drinking her milk, it was cheese to her surprise. And lo and behold, the townsfolk liked it.

Alison:
It was a woman.

Andrea:
Drank, ate cheese henceforth from that day. So rennet that is manufactured can be and often is GMO. And it doesn’t have to be labeled as GMO. So if you want to avoid that rennet entirely, David Asher suggests avoid any rennet labeled as 100% pure chymosin.

Andrea:
Or, and I don’t know if I said that right, I’ve just kind of pretended I knew how to say that. And, or, with the brand name Chi Max, or just generally avoid any rennet that says microbial rennet, which is either genetically modified, or if it isn’t itself genetically modified, it’s made by companies like DuPont, which make a non-GMO rennet. But they produce genetically modified seeds. And you and I know how we feel about that. That’s a problem. We don’t want to support that. So you can, I’ve linked in the show notes, you can actually buy great rennet in a lot of places. It is not a problem to find good rennet. So there’s no reason to have to use the bad stuff. And you are getting your precious raw milk. Don’t put the GMO rennet in it.

Andrea:
So this rennet can be either from plants, which I think Yeah, you can get the plant one, I suppose, non-GMO, but I just use animal rennet, which I’ve linked in the show notes where I buy that. Okay, farmer’s cheese or cream cheese. There’s a thousand different variations of this, and almost every recipe you pick up will be different. The recipe that I make follows this approximate pattern. I warm milk, and this is out of the Kathy Farrell Kingsley book. I warm milk, a gallon, in a pot up to 95 degrees. So I’m just warming it back to the temperature that it came from the cow. If you were milking your cow, just have your pot ready in the kitchen and just bring the milk in and start your cheese right away. Okay.

Andrea:
Then I dissolve rennet, the rennet amount required, which is always specified in the recipes, in a small cup of water. And the reason you do this is because the second rennet touches milk, it starts its enzyme activity. So if you, and dissolve a tablet in water or dilute liquid rennet in water, then you can basically disperse it across more milk faster the second it touches. So I take the milk off the heat, I pour in the rennet, and I stir gently from the bottom up, and then I just put on a lid and I let it stand, until the curds form, which the last two times I made it, I just put the lid on and went to bed, and then the next morning I dealt with it. Or sometimes it shapes up in an hour or two or three hours. Then I use, well, I have a cheese knife type thing now, but I’ve used a ruler or like a butter knife to just cut the curd into one inch pieces, like you’re just cutting down to the bottom of the pot. And then I heat it gently over a low, low, low temperature. It takes a long time if you go nice and slow.

Andrea:
Up to about 120 degrees. And then, oh, and I wanted to give a little side note for all my Tudor Monastery Farm obsessed friends, of which we are legion. And the episode where Ruth makes the cheese and runs her hands through the milk curds to break them up, and you just need that sensory experience in your life, you can do that instead of cutting it with a cheese knife. I do that. In this cheese. Yeah. Oh, it is the most satisfying thing you’ve ever done. You get to a point where you’re like, I should probably stop now. But you break up the curds and then you pour it into a colander lined with butter muslin. And then you let it drain for an hour. And I sometimes just leave it in the strainer. Sometimes I hang it off of the handle of my kitchen cupboard.

Alison:
Then why are you heating it up again after the curds have formed? I’m trying to understand the kind of science behind that. And I don’t

Andrea:
I don’t know. Hmm.

Alison:
That’s interesting. Okay. Yeah. Should we look that up?

Andrea:
It’s, I know from the behavior standpoint of the curds that it does, like, the curds hold together better. So something along those lines. Otherwise, it might just be like yogurt almost. I mean, it’s not really like yogurt, but it might be too yogurt-y to become a cheese.

Alison:
Something to bind it.

Andrea:
Okay. Yeah. And it’s something that sort of pushes the way out a little bit. So I don’t know, though. So then you can put your cheese into a hand-turned wooden bowl, obviously, and salt it. And you could also mix in herbs if you liked at this point. And then taste it and salt it again. And then salt a little piece and taste that piece and try to save some for everyone else. Then I like to, well, you can actually use it just like that. But you can also fold it between the butter muslin and press it with like a cast iron pan or you could use a cheese, a true cheese mold if you wanted. I’ve put it into like cans with the top and the bottom cut off and there’s different ways to press it down. But just get it to squeeze out more whey, basically. And that can just sit in the fridge overnight.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
And then you can use it the next day. So you can, depending on how pressed you got it, you might be able to slice it. Or you would have like a crumbly, you could have a more crumbly cheese if you like. So simple cheese.

Alison:
So that can be done with pasteurized milk or raw milk.

Andrea:
Yes, you could use. I don’t know that ultra-heat pasteurized one would work, but a low temp. Yep. And if you’re somebody who has a really hard time accessing the raw milk or the raw milk is extremely expensive, you know, read through the recipes. And if you’re going to be making yogurt or something and you’re going to heat it to 185 degrees anyways, you know, maybe use your vat pasteurized milk for that. Another interesting recipe I wanted to share with you, Allison, which I thought with your love of not wasting things you would just find so delightful is, sorry if I’m not saying the name right, but it’s schmeerkasse. And maybe Katie can tell me if I’m saying that right, because I believe it is German.

Andrea:
But in this recipe, which I have linked in the show notes, you would take clabber, or in my case, I had two gallons of milk that were in the refrigerator. And when some milk was put in by my willing subjects, they did not rotate the milk. And so it got pushed into the back and wasn’t pulled forward. And so I found that it was four weeks old. And so I decided to use it like clabber, even though it had been refrigerated this whole time and hadn’t separated. So I poured it into the pan and warmed it slowly up to about 125-ish Fahrenheit. And because it was so old, as it warmed, it thickened into a yogurt consistency. And from there forward, I made the schmear casa cheese, which is, I mean, if you’ve ever seen…

Andrea:
Like queso type cheese that you can pour. It’s exactly that. And it’s so good. So I heated it and then I poured it into the butter muslin lined colander and I let it drain for a couple hours. And then once the curds were, they were fairly dry by that point, then I dumped them back into the pot and I sprinkled a little baking soda on them. And I wish I could tell you exactly what that does, but it’s some kind of strange alchemy where the cheese started to look like it was melting almost, the curds. And so I let it sit for about half an hour and then I added in some butter, some salt, and a little hot water. And then I whisked it over low heat, stirring, stirring, stirring, stirring, stirring while everything melted and got smooth. And then it was the most delicious delicious cheese and i made two batches of this and in one of them i whisked in some diced peppers and some seasonings and made it kind of like a dip and then the other one i just left plain and we’ll see how oh.

Alison:
That could be magic that one

Andrea:
It is totally magic.

Alison:
Powder whisking and oatmeal magically creates.

Andrea:
Right, yeah. I mean, you have to say some spells too, but yeah.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So the way from these cheeses is not going to, I don’t, well, I don’t know that it would ferment your drinks necessarily. If you used clabber, I guess maybe it would, but I heated them pretty hot, so I don’t know. So you can use it to make, here’s another word, I don’t know if I’m saying it right. And Alison, I went all over the internet and I couldn’t find anything but dumb AI robots telling me how to say this. But if we have any Swedish speaking listeners, please tell me if I’m pronouncing it right. Mesmor, Swedish whey butter.

Andrea:
This is delicious. It’s so good. So you take your leftover whey from making cheese. And I found that the whey from the schmear casa is much more sour. And it’s different. It’s not bad. It’s different. And then the whey from the farmer’s cheese, which was much sweeter and different tasting also. So you put the whey in a pot and then you simmer it for basically eight hours while you stir it every time you go by. And it simmers down.

Andrea:
I had, let’s see, almost a gallon of whey in the pot and it simmered down to be very, very thick-ish. And then I added a cup of cream and then continued simmering and stirring and simmering and stirring and whisking until it got darker and darker golden. And I was basically caramelizing all the sugars in the whey and the cream. Then Allison, oh Allison, I was thinking the whole time, oh man, Allison would love this so much. The entire almost gallon of liquid filled an eight ounce jar when I was done. That’s how reduced it got. And so I, this would be perfect to do if you had a wood stove going, because you just got to simmer it forever. Yep. But even on the stove in the kitchen, it was so low, it was almost a pilot light. You know, it’s a really low, low heat, because you don’t want to boil it.

Andrea:
And then I put it into the container. It is so sweet. You would think that I had sweetened it with sugar. It’s insane. Yeah. When I tasted it, I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. This is so good.

Alison:
And then- It’s going to be great on pancakes. I mean, it’s wonderful.

Andrea:
Oh, I didn’t even think about that. The next day, my sister and brother-in-law came over and they brought a loaf of sourdough bread and we ate it on that and it was so good. It is also used in a whey butter ice cream, which I have never made, but I imagine would taste almost butterscotchy because of the way the—I know. I know. You could use this to make the lacto-fermented ice cream, and you wouldn’t even have to sweeten it. There’s also a recipe in David Asher’s book, and I had read about it online before as well. It’s another Swedish recipe called a mesost or a whey cheese. So mez must be whey, I guess. I don’t know.

Andrea:
And I’ve never made that, so I can’t tell you how to do that. But I just want you to know that that is out there. Quark is another simple farmhouse cheese which follows almost the same, basically the same pattern. It’s another one that you can break up like the Tudor Farm Kitchen, and it’s another one that you’re going to find a million recipes for. But it’s the same simple thing. Except you’re going to, in this case, you could add, with the farmer’s cheese, I added in yogurt, as you’ll see in the recipe. But in this one, you could use an actual mesophilic culture if you wanted. But the link is in the show notes for the recipe if you want to browse it. And that is what you use to make cottage cheese. So if you make a farmer’s cheese, and you remember how I said you break up the curds and then you simmer them, or not simmer them, but you bring them up to 120 degrees and then you strain them. If you wanted to make cottage cheese, you would break up the curds to the size you wanted-ish. They will shrink as they cook, and then you’ll actually heat them longer, as you’ll see in the recipe in the show notes. The, I’m actually just pulling up the recipe right now, so I don’t mistell you.

Andrea:
Heat them up to 115 for, taking an hour to heat them up to 115 degrees. And the curds do shrink. And if you like larger curd versus smaller curd, you know what to do. Just keep your hands in that pot longer and break it up more before you start. And you can strain that and salt it or herb it. or you could drizzle on olive oil or, you know, whatever kind of struck your fancy. The last cheese I want to say is probably my favorite. And this is ricotta cheese, which is Italian for twice cooked. And at least that’s what I’m told, Allison. But I do not live in Italy like some people.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
So ricotta cheese is such a win because you already have everything you need to make it in your house right now. Well, assuming you have milk, you will pour your, and the show notes have my recipe for this. So you will pour your milk into a large kettle. I mean, I use a gallon or two gallons at a time. So it’s kind of large kettle. And then you will warm it up to 185 degrees. And remember, this is important for the protein. So we do want to heat it up to that temperature.

Andrea:
And you can add salt at this stage, or you can add the salt later. I’ve done it either way countless times. Once it is 185 degrees, you will turn off the heat. And then I like to use a combination of vinegar and lemon juice. You could use either one. I just like the combination because I feel like then neither flavor really stands out too much, and just the milk itself can shine through. But you will take this acid and you’ll pour it in and stir for just a few seconds to incorporate it. You’re kind of using it like the rennet and then let the pot sit with that acid in the warm milk and the curds will begin to separate from the whey. If they don’t separate, just add a little bit more of the acid and let it sit another few minutes and just watch it. Then you’re going to pour this into your colander again lined with your butter muslin and let it strain for a few minutes or until it’s the dryness that you like i like my ricotta to stay pretty wet but it’s kind of personal preference for each person and then then you’re done you can just put it into your containers or stand there and eat it because hot ricotta is so good and.

Alison:
It’s one of those

Andrea:
Cheese that I’ve learned.

Alison:
From being in

Andrea:
Italy. Unbelievable.

Alison:
There’s just such a difference between eating ricotta that’s just been made and ricotta that’s been made a while ago or packaged in the supermarket. It’s like a different food.

Andrea:
Oh, it’s not the same thing. My goodness, Alison, when I was a kid, I thought I hated ricotta cheese. I will say the first time I made ricotta, I don’t think I’ve ever bought it ever since. And that was 13 years ago. It’s really hard to go back to anything from the store once you’ve had a homemade ricotta. Um, the whey from ricotta cheese has the vinegar and the lemon in it, so it isn’t really much use for fermenting drinks. And I actually did try to simmer it down into the mesmore once. Nah, don’t do it. But you can use it to make something called grandmother bread, which I have not done, but I linked the recipe in the show notes. It’s basically a bread. It’s kind of like a false sourdough in a way. The recipe that I linked has yeast in it, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t make it with sourdough starter, which is what I pretty much do to every recipe. I just put sourdough in it instead and let it sit in my fridge overnight and then bake it the next day. I have up until this point pretty much always fed the ricotta whey to my chickens because it does have a decent amount of protein in it and it’s warm when it goes up to them. So in the wintertime, it’s a great little snack for them. So, Alison, when you get to that garden fence, do you envision yourself making any of these cheeses? And if so, or any of these things, which ones would you want to make?

Alison:
I, you know, I would like to have another go at ricotta. I’ve tried making ricotta before and I try to make it from whey because that is how it is made in Italy. and there are instructions online for how to make ricotta with whey. And I’ve tried to do it twice now. And both of the times I’ve tried, it’s been not a cheese. There’s been tiny, tiny bits of curd come up. And then I’ve been standing there with a thermometer and the stuff and I’d use citric acid with it not doing anything and thinking, well, how does Italians make this lovely cheese out of this whey when nothing happens for me? So I think I’d have a go with whole milk because that’s got to work because it’s got some of the curd stuff in it still. And I should not be put off by my failed whey-only attempts at ricotta. I just get some whole milk and try it that way, I think. Thank you.

Andrea:
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. And I think it’s one of those things where the more time you spend around cheesemaking, the more I realize, like, whey is one of those things. There are very specific types of whey. And whey is a catch-all word, but my goodness, we should probably be more clear about this is whey from Parmesan cheese. This is whey from kefir. You know, they’re not the same thing. It’s kind of like, you know, saying, you know, this is a dog. Well, you mean a German shepherd or a toy poodle? You know, it’s quite different things. And they behave differently. And so I wonder, do you know what type of way they used for these, the ricotta? Because also different types of cows give different yields. I think a recipe.

Alison:
That I read originally was sheep milk.

Andrea:
Oh, interesting. I’ve never worked with sheep milk.

Alison:
Yeah, because obviously there’s lots of sheep milk in Tuscan.

Andrea:
I have to send you. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, you guys were really spoiled on the pecorino there, weren’t you? I couldn’t wait to tell you this morning, but I was going to wait until the episode to tell you that yesterday, actually, while I was recording with Megan, the kids came downstairs and told me, There’s three baby lambs. So our sheep had her baby lambs. So technically we have sheep milk on the property, but we don’t get any of it. It’s all for the babies.

Alison:
Yeah, for the little ones. Yeah, well, they take it.

Andrea:
Yeah. Well, Alison, this episode was fun. Really fun to research.

Alison:
Yeah, thank you. You’ve informed me a great deal of things that I didn’t know. So thank you very much.

Andrea:
Yeah, and it just makes me think of all the fun that you and I have with being creative in the kitchen and how, you know, this is, it does produce our family’s meals and the things we need and stuff that you and I feel is so important for our health, but it is a very much creative outlet and a source of satisfaction for both of us in our work, I know. And this is just another fun example of how you can bring something into your home and give yourself both an enjoyable eating experience and some great nutrition, but also, the satisfaction of making something and trying something new.

Alison:
Absolutely. I know that so many people have contacted me like over the last three or four months saying, oh, I want to start dipping my feet into cheese making. This is where I’m going next. I want to start some simple cheeses. And so I think this episode is going to be extremely helpful and encouraging for those who have just been teetering on that edge trying to do something to give them the kind of the skills they need to go and start flying with so thank you oh it is

Andrea:
Great fun well allison until next time.

Alison:
Stay cheesy I will.

Andrea:
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