You’ve probably recited “Little Miss Muffet” countless times, but have you ever wondered what curds and whey are?
Without curds and whey, we would never have the delicious cheeses you love to share with your family, and it all begins with a special ingredient called rennet.
What is Rennet?
Rennet is an enzyme that comes naturally from calf stomachs, helping young calves digest their mother’s milk.
At Clover Creek Cheese Cellar, we honor tradition by using real animal rennet in our cheesemaking process.
While vegetable rennet (from a genetically engineered fungus) exists, it often gives aged cheeses like ours an unpleasant bitter aftertaste.
Our process starts with carefully monitoring pH levels to ensure our added cultures properly acidify the milk.
You can learn more about this in our previous post.
Once the milk reaches the right acidity, we add rennet to coagulate it—transforming liquid milk into a firm, yogurt-like consistency.
We pour the rennet across our cheese vat, gently stir it into the milk, and then patiently wait for the magic to happen.
Within about thirty minutes, the milk solidifies completely, ready for the next crucial step.
Cutting the Curds and Whey
This is where our special tool comes in—the cheese harp, which looks similar to the musical instrument but features a stainless steel frame with thin wires.
We use two different harps depending on the cheese we’re making—one with wires spaced one inch apart for softer, moisture-rich cheeses and another just 3/8 inches apart for our harder varieties.
Watch us guide the harp through the solidified milk in three directions, creating a mesmerizing pattern of small cubes.
And just like that, we’ve created curds and whey—the small cubes are your cheese curds, and the yellowish liquid they float in is the whey.
After cutting, we give the curds a brief moment to rest before we begin stirring and gradually heating the vat.
This careful stirring ensures even heating throughout, helping separate more whey from the curds and controlling how our beneficial cultures develop.
While these initial steps are similar for all our cheeses, the process begins to differ dramatically from this point forward depending on which cheese we’re crafting.
We’ll continue this series by showing you how we make our popular Clover cheddar—one of our most complex and beloved cheeses.
But first, we’ll have to do something with all that whey so we can collect just the curds for cheese.
Have you ever tried making cheese at home with your family?
What surprised you most about the cheesemaking process?
Share your experiences in the comments below!
0 Comments