Queso Mess-o

I tried my hand at making some queso blanco today. It is a pretty simple cheese to make. Just a gallon of whole milk, a 1/4th cup of vinegar and some cheesecloth – that’s it. You heat the milk to 180 degrees add the vinegar and stir for about ten minutes. After that you pour the milk into a strainer lined with cheesecloth and let it drain for several hours. Well, I didn’t have the cheesecloth – I tried looking for some kaasdoeks but no place around here had any. I thought, coffee filters should do the job and gave it a go. Now let me just say right now that the cheesecloths are just as important as the milk in this recipe. Trying to strain a gallon of hot milk and whey though coffee filter after coffee filter was quite an unpleasant job. The recipe worked out just fine and it was quite interesting to see the milk fats separating from the milk but I’m not too sure about trying again for a while. You need a reliable way and place to hang the cheese to drain and, most definitely, some cheesecloth to hold the formed cheese, and I didn’t have either. One chalked up for experience.