Feta Cheese

I started making feta cheese a couple years ago after I bought a cookbook at Homestead Heritage. It has so many wonderful recipes for several different kinds of cheese and looked way too easy; I had to try. I have made this recipe a couple dozen times now with raw milk and pasteurized. It turns out with either, but Raw milk is better. If you don't have a source for raw milk, go ahead and experiment with pasteurized.

Feta Cheese

• 1 Gallon milk

• 15 drops of liquid rennet, or 1/8 rennet tablet, dissolved in 1/4 c water

• 1/4 cultured buttermilk (I've heard that you can use yogurt)

• 3-4 TBL coarse salt

• Warm milk to 86 degrees and add buttermilk. Cover pot and allow to rest for 1 hour to ripen.

• 

I like to use this style of thermometer because of it's accuracy.

• Stir rennet into milk. Cover and allow to sit one hour or longer to coagulate. Do not disturb during this time. You can check to see if it is ripened enough by sticking the tip of a knife into the curd and lifting up. If you get a clean break, then it is done. If it is more the consistency of yogurt, then allow to set a bit longer

• Cut the curd into 1/2 -1 in cubes, creating a checkerboard pattern in the pan. Allow to rest a few minutes and you will see the whey(greenish, yellow liquid) separating from the curd.

Gently stir every few minutes for 15 minutes, expel the whey from the curd. You need to keep the cheese at 86 degrees.
This is after about 7 minutes.

At 15 minutes.

• Line a colander with cheesecloth and set inside a large bowl. (If you want to keep the whey use a bowl, if not you can place colander into your sink). Drain the curds into the cheesecloth.
• Tie up the 4 corners and allow to hang for 4-6 hours, or until whey is no longer dripping out. You should have a nice ball.

• Untie your cheesecloth and cut your ball into slices about 1/2-3/4 inches thick.

• Place your cheese slices in a casserole dish, sprinkle with the 3- 4 TBL of salt, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rest for 24 hours. (I like to use half the salt, wait about 12 hours, flip the cheese over, and then use the remaining salt.) There will be even more whey expelled at this point so expect there to be liquid in your dish.

Notice the whey at the bottom

• You can store you cheese two different ways: either in a salt water brine, or in oil. I prefer to season it with basil and pour olive oil over mine. If you would prefer a brine, you use 1 quart of water to 1/4 cup salt. Feta will keep for 2 months in the brine solution, and 5 weeks in the oil.