Failing at making "Fast Mozzarella"

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First time poster here. So, I have always been a fan of homemade food and I wanted to try my hand with cheeses.

I live very near a milk farm and I could get some raw milk.

I am posting after 2 failed attempts at getting curdles to form to make quick mozzarella (and even ricotta). I tried making ricotta and paneer in the past and it worked flawlessly. I have another 1.5L of milk available and I would like to succeed with that at least.

Here is my recipe, I'd love to understand what's wrong...

  • 1L Raw Milk
  • 2-3 Tbps Lemon Juice

Instructions:

Heat Milk to 44-46C and add slowly the lemon juice while stirring. Keep stirring until curdles are formed, keep the temperature constant.

That's it! I don't see absolutely nothing happening even after 30min of stirring gently.

I tried adding more acid (like a lot more) and even getting near to boil. I tried adding rice vinegar and red wine vinegar (at that point I didn't care about the taste anymore).

Can someone teach me?



Best Answer

Looks like the rennet is missing in your recipe. You also might want to consider to skip the shortcuts and the vinegar and to start off with a more authentic/original formula as you usually can assume that each step and ingredient in them is there for a reason.




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More answers regarding failing at making "Fast Mozzarella"

Answer 2

Your post was a bit confusing, because you say your recipe is for mozzarella but then you say...

I tried making ricotta and paneer in the past and it worked flawlessly. I have another 1.5L of milk available and I would like to succeed with that at least.

..which I interpreted as meaning you were making ricotta, not mozzarella.

Your recipe does not work for mozzarella nor ricotta. As @FuzzyChef mentioned in the comments, ricotta* is usually made with milk heated to 85C (185F), to which acid is then added to form curds. Mozzarella, on the other hand, uses a smaller amount of acid to enable stretching, then rennet at 30-32C (86-90F) to form curds. You cannot make mozzarella without rennet.

Your milk not coagulating might be caused by the raw milk, method, lack of acid/coagulant, or temperature. Since you brought it to the boil as well as added more vinegar, we can eliminate the last two. There might be something special about (your) raw milk that prevents it curdling (I have read that milk has some ability to buffer pH), or the jumbled method that you used (adding acid at low temperature then boiling with more acid) that prevented it from curdling, but I would expect at least something to happen.

*@rumtscho pointed out that "true" ricotta starts with whey, but most online recipes (e.g. this one) tell you to curdle milk with acid for ricotta, which is the cheese that I call ricotta in this answer.

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