Home made queso blanco cheese.
Keeping to the theme of springtime delights, here is a recipe that brings a creamy and delicious cheese for lunches or snacks, and protein packed left overs (whey) for smoothies that you and your kids will love. Or you can go one step beyond, and use the whey to make ricotta.
Queso blanco is a mild, creamy white cheese great as a base for dips, fantastic with crackers as a snack, and a deeply satisfying addition to many Mexican dishes, including my flat food pt 2!
In its simplest form, it has a mild and wholesome flavour like bocconcini - but spreadable. It doesn’t melt, however - until it reaches your mouth!
What do you need to make this treasure? Milk, salt and vinegar. And a piece of cheese cloth (muslin). However, if you like a little extra, this cheese comes to new life if you add herbs or spices such as cumin, chives, pepper … hmm. Nice.
You can make this with regular supermarket milk, but it really benefits from good quality full cream milk. Riverina brand is good I think. But any full cream milk will work.
BTW, I like the pic below, because the cheese in its wrapper reminds me of the face-hugger pods in Alien.
Recipe: Queso blanco
Yields
- 400–600g cheese
- 2 litres whey
Ingredients
- 4 litres full cream milk
- 1/3 cup white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 2 teaspoons crushed cumin seeds
- 1 pinch smokey paprika
Method
Heat milk in a pot (start heat low, then increase to medium if you want to reduce your pot-cleaning at the end) until the milk is just about to boil. You can tell it’s close because tiny bubbles start to rise, there is a shimmering on the surface - and it feels really hot to your pinky!
Then pour in your vinegar and gently stir. Here the magic happens, and the curds start to separate from the whey. The curds (from which we’re making our cheese) are lumpy and stringy, and gently stirring will help the separation process. Remember the separation process? Well, this one ends in cheese! And whey.
Stir gently for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat off, then stir gently for another five.
Line a colander with a piece of muslin about 40 cm square, and place over a large pot or dish to retain the whey.
Gently pour the curds and whey through the strainer Occasionally you’ll need to gather the corners of the muslin and squeeze out the liquid a little.
When all the whey has passed through and all that is left only a little puddle that can be contained inside the muslin line colander, it is time to add the remaining ingredients.
Sprinkle the salt and the cumin, and a little pinch of paprika onto the cheese. Tie the quarters of the muslin using some cooking string and hang over to sink for four hours, or up to 12.
Return the remaining whey to one of the milk bottles and place in the fridge this you can use later for really yummy, protein-packed smoothies.
You can also use the whey to make ricotta.
Now, you will find many recipes on the internet for what is basically my queso blanco, claiming this is ricotta. Wrong! Ricotta (Italian for re-cooked) is not strictly a cheese, but a biproduct of cheese making, by using the whey. They ricotta makes use of a different set of proteins than those that form the curds of the queso blanco.
I have never made ricotta (I generally can’t wait to get the bar mix out for those smoothies!) but here are two recipes for making ricotta from whey.
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