Roaring Brook Dairy Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit

Over a decade ago, I found a recipe online for making homemade mozzarella. I've wanted to make it, but it called for cheese curd and I didn't know where to find it. Now I find out you can make cheese curd easily at home.I first heard about Roaring Brook Dairy's kits on the Woot website, where I purchased their butter making kit. It was so easy and made excellent butter, so I ordered their Mozzarella Cheesemaking kit from Amazon soon afterward.The Roaring Brook Dairy Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit comes with almost everything you need to make mozzarella: a thermometer, citric acid, rennet tablet, salt, and a pair of gloves. All you do is add milk and you are set! With the exception of the gloves, the kit can be reused up to four times since the recipe calls for only one quarter of the rennet tablet and has plenty of citric acid and salt also. The gloves are just surgical gloves, which can be easily purchased from any pharmacy.Today I made my first batch of mozzarella. I was moving slowly since I was learning, but it took less than two hours from start to finish. More importantly, it was fun doing it.You start by dissolving ¼ of the rennet tablet in some water. Then you dissolve some of the citric acid in water. Meanwhile, you warm a gallon of milk on the stove, keeping close tabs on the temperature with the provided thermometer. Once it has reached certain temperatures, you add the citric acid, and later the rennet. Let that mixture sit for about ten minutes and you are ready to start removing the whey from the curd. After you have removed most of the whey, you are ready to add your salt or other herbs and start stretching the mozzarella. This is the hardest part, simply because the curd needs to be very hot to stretch properly. That's where those gloves come in - they make it a little bit easier to handle the hot curd.When the stretching is done, you have mozzarella, which you can shape into one ball or several. I refrigerated mine for a few hours before preparing it with fresh basil and tomatoes as a Caprese salad. Yum!My mozzarella was not as soft as I wanted it to be, but was still very good. Looking at the handy dandy troubleshooting steps in the kit's instructions, I believe I may have stretched the curd a little too much. I think this is something you will develop a knack for as you repeat the process. I definitely plan to make some again soon.The instructions are easily to follow and have plenty of great tips, variations, and troubleshooting steps. I would highly recommend this kit to anyone who wants to test their hands at making fresh cheese.

If you want to try making mozzarella at home, but don't want to commit to storing tons of citric acid and rennet, I highly recommend this kit. It is not the most cost effective way to do this, but I appreciate that I can make my four batches and not have leftover materials just sitting in my pantry if I don't like doing this. I did change the instructions a bit because I had cheesecloth. I prefer that as my method of straining the cheese because you can ball it up and press out the whey. I found this easier than palming it in a strainer (although that is TOTALLY fine). Also, if you like the balled cheese you buy in a store or want to slice the cheese, make sure you fold and fold and fold!Also, don't forget to look up ways to use your leftover whey - I always use it to make ricotta cheese!! It's super easy, just reheat the leftover whey to about 200*F (right as it is about to simmer) then remove from heat. Let it cool to 140*F and strain through cheesecloth. Hang it up inside the cheesecloth to drip-drain for about 8hr and it's ready to eat or store in the fridge.

I gave this to my husband for his birthday and that day he was so excited that he made his first batch of cheese. My mother in law and our three year old joined us as well and we had a lot of fun pulling out the ingredients and following the steps in the instructions. We were very prepared to lament the loss of a full gallon of milk when our first foray into cheesemaking went awry. However, it turned out beautifully!The cheese was delicious, creamy and slightly firm (firmer than the usual fresh mozzarella you get at Whole Foods). We divided up the cheese in half and kneaded in about a half teaspoon of basil flakes to one half. We put some on our salad for dinner and we all absolutely loved it. The next evening we had it with crackers and Sauternes and enjoyed it tremendously.My mother in law liked it so much that she ordered one from Amazon to take back to England with her to give it as a gift to another family member.Overall, it was a wonderful gift, provided lots of entertainment for us, and it was delicious!

Using diligence in carefully following the very detailed and comprehensive instructions, my mozzarella cheese came out near perfect the first time around! Apparently, the process is somewhat forgiving as I made 2 major errors, 1 was in using a plastic measuring tablespoon, instead of a teaspoon during the adding of the citric acid, which I caught in time to pour off half and added back half of plain cold water before disaster, and the other mistake was to knead the curd/cheese too much, making it a bit too rubbery. I discovered that using a pastry/dough roller to flatten out the cheese and then cutting into small rectangles or cubes with a rotary pizza cutter works amazing in producing a well-distributed cheese batch for pizza. All in all, a great first try and it tasted great on my home made pizza!!! If you have a bread machine, buy the Hodson Cheese and Herb Bread Mix and make pizza dough of it for the pie. (on an unrelated aside note, I just felt and saw my room shake on a 5.9 on the Richter scale earthquake and I am on the 21st floor, so... more than my building is shaken!!!!!!!!!!!!!)