Queso Blanco as base

[Curtis2010]

Planning to get back into cheese making. I live in an area of Panama with lots of dairy poduction. So, Ive got access to lots of good raw milk for making cheese etc, but also lots of queso blanco produced here. I would like to experiment with using the queso blanco as a starting point for making other cheeses. For example, brined/washed/herbed cheeses.

Anyone ever try something like this? Suggestions?

 

[Curtis2010]

Did a little experiment with Queso Blanco....

Started with a very moist version of queso blanco

Chopped it up into kurd like cubes about 1/2" square

Warmed "kurds" in warm water (~90°), my theory being that warmed "kurds" would bond back together better

Drained and tossed in rosemary

Wrapped in cheese cloth and pressed at about 5lbs for an hour, flipped and pressed for a couple more hours.

End result: the "kurds" bonded back together pretty well. The pressing removed some of the moisture and firmed up the cheese. End result is pretty tasty.

So, you can make an "enhanced" queso blanco this way.

View attachment 1444268751840.jpg

 

[Homercidal]

This is on my near-term list of cheese to make. Was going to make something last night, but had to work late then the daughter wanted me to drive her all over town picking up items to cheer up her friend who split with her boyfriend. Then I made dinner and then I took her to dance and THEN I got a beer and sat down to relax and watch Supernatural. It's a family event.

 

[Curtis2010]

Queso Blanco, or the "enhanced" Queso Blanco above, are dead easy. Queso Blanco is a direct acid set cheese so all you need is milk and vinegar (or other suitable acid)...very quick and easy...so you can do it even with your schedule!

Ive got another enhanced Queso Blanco experiment going now ... washed in Leffe Brown and dried pepper flakes added.

 

[Curtis2010]

Next experiment: Enhanced Leffe Brown & Chile Queso Blanco.

Washed "kurds" in Leffe Brown, covered and fridged over night

Did not warm kurds...wanted to see if warming really was important to them bonding back
together

Tossed kurds in flaked dried peppers...a mild local variety.

Pressed at about 5lb for an hour, flipped and pressed for about another hour, then added a few pounds more weight and pressed for a few more hours.

Result: kurds didnt bond or compress as much, but left an interesting marbling/vein structure internally and an irregular texture on the surface. I expect the beer wash contributed to this behavior. But, they did bond enough to hold the cheese together.

The mellow heat from the pepper works well with the cheese/beer.

Next up: I think the veins produced by this could have an interesting effect if inoculated with culture and aged...

View attachment 1444326262465.jpg

 

[passedpawn]

Very cool! yea, they didn't knit back together very well, but I like it. Could be perfect for blue or gorganzola. Unfortunately, large crevices like that are going to attract all sorts of critters. Get some blue mold and give it a shot. You can buy it (penicillium roqueforti) or just set a piece of bread on the counter for a few days and scrape off the blue/green stuff that grows on it.

 

[Oginme]

My wife takes the raw curd from the kettle and mixes in the herbs, spices or other flavorings before the initial hanging. She then hangs the curds for 2 to 4 hours before wrapping in cloth and putting it into the cheese press. Comes out very smooth (kind of like your first experiment above).

 

[passedpawn]

My wife takes the raw curd from the kettle and mixes in the herbs, spices or other flavorings before the initial hanging. She then hangs the curds for 2 to 4 hours before wrapping in cloth and putting it into the cheese press. Comes out very smooth (kind of like your first experiment above).

That hanging time lets the cultures lower the pH significantly, which then greatly improves the knitting of the curds. I've tracked it with a pH meter and it just keeps dropping over time. My best cheeses went from ~6.70 ( typical) to ~6.30 after an hour, then to ~5.50 after two hours of hanging.

This is from Technology of Cheesemaking. It's a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, but the text goes into great detail on the effect of pH on the ability of the rennet to work on the casein in the milk and cause breakdown and gelling, curds!

pH
Changing the pH of the milk strongly affects the renneting reaction. First of all the rate of enzymatic breakdown of
-casein is very dependent on pH (van Hooydonk et al., 1984; Hyldig, 1993). For chymosin in milk the optimum activity is around pH 6.0, and decreasing pH from the natural pH thus increases the rate of proteolysis considerably (van Hooydonk et al., 1986a). The pH also affects the structure of the micelles. When lowering the pH,
calcium phosphate is dissociated from the micelles, and at pH ∼5.7 half of the calcium present in the micelles at pH 6.7 has been lost (van Hooydonk et al., 1986b). However, in the pH ‘window’ used for milk coagulation with most cheese varieties much less calcium is solubilised. Choi et al. (2007) found that colloidal calcium phosphate only decreased slightly by lowering pH from 6.7 to 6.4, while the maximal elastic modulus increased appreciably. Further lowering of pH down to 5.4 led to a decrease in curd firmness due to excessive loss of colloidal calcium phosphate; similar results were obtained by addition of increasing amount of calcium-binding ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid. Salt equilibria between serum and the micellar phase can be computed using a programme developed recently at Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in France (Mekmene et al., 2009). Depending on the temperature, casein molecules dissociate from the micelles upon lowering pH. At 30◦C only little casein dissociate, at 20◦C casein starts to dissociate appreciably when pH is lowered under pH 6.0, and at 4◦C casein dissociation is significant even at small pH reductions (Dalgleish & Law, 1988). The charge of casein micelles is decreased when pH is lowered, and Wade et al. (1996) found a  -potential of −18 mV at pH 6.7 increasing gradually to
∼−11 mV at pH 5.5.

Lowering the pH of the milk leads to a decrease in coagulation time the main effect probably being the increase in enzyme activity, but also aggregation is affected. van Hooydonk et al. (1986a) found that viscosity started to increase when 70 g 100 g−1 of
-casein had been hydrolysed at pH 6.7 whereas at pH 6.2 only 64 g 100 g−1 and at pH 5.6 only 30 g 100 g−1 of
-casein needed to be hydrolysed before viscosity started to increase. They also observed that gelation occurred at a lower degree of
-casein hydrolysis at the lower pH. It is not clear from these experiments whether the rate of aggregation is actually increased at low pH. In terms of the energy barrier model mentioned above, it seems probable that the energy barrier is generally lowered as a result of the decrease in charge, which would lead to an increase in the aggregation rate at a given degree of
-casein hydrolysis. In practice, however, this will lead to flocculation and coagulation at a lower degree of
-casein hydrolysis and the actual rate of aggregation during the initial stages of aggregate and gel formation may thus be affected only little.​

 

[Curtis2010]

Very cool! yea, they didn't knit back together very well, but I like it. Could be perfect for blue or gorganzola. Unfortunately, large crevices like that are going to attract all sorts of critters. Get some blue mold and give it a shot. You can buy it (penicillium roqueforti) or just set a piece of bread on the counter for a few days and scrape off the blue/green stuff that grows on it.

I think one way to innoculate would be to wash the "kurds" in a culture, maybe warm cultured milk, and then press. I plan to give something like that a try with a fresh batch of Queso Blanco.

Warming them should help with the knitting as it did with the first experiment.

 

[Curtis2010]

That hanging time lets the cultures lower the pH significantly, which then greatly improves the knitting of the curds. I've tracked it with a pH meter and it just keeps dropping over time. My best cheeses went from ~6.70 ( typical) to ~6.30 after an hour, then to ~5.50 after two hours of hanging.

This is from Technology of Cheesemaking. It's a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, but the text goes into great detail on the effect of pH on the ability of the rennet to work on the casein in the milk and cause breakdown and gelling, curds!

....

Cool, technical cheese stuff. One of my frustrations with all the cheese books geared toward home cheesmakers is that they are basically just recipe books with minimal explanations of the "whys". Unlike the many technical books out there for homebrewers.

Holy cheese balls batman, this book is ~$160 on Amazon!

 

[Curtis2010]

My wife takes the raw curd from the kettle and mixes in the herbs, spices or other flavorings before the initial hanging. She then hangs the curds for 2 to 4 hours before wrapping in cloth and putting it into the cheese press. Comes out very smooth (kind of like your first experiment above).

Yes, first one was very smooth, boundaries of the "kurds" were indistinguishable.

I assume some function of temp/beer wash caused the second not to knit as well. Need to eliminate one of these variables in a future test and see what happens.

Good news is that both were tasty.