Queso Fresco

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 Gallon of whole milk
• 2 tablespoons of salt
• 1/2 cup of white vinegar
• 1 very large pot
• 100% cotton cheese cloth
• 1 large colander
• Binder clips (optional)

Preparation & cooking

Dump milk into large pot, add the salt, stir gently (or violently if you want to make your kitchen messy).

Heat milk on the stove at medium-high setting for approximately 15 minutes.  While the milk is heating, prep the colander with the cheese cloth.

Lay out approximately 6 inches of double layered cheese cloth, cut, and place inside the colander.  Using the
binder clips, secure the cheese cloth to the colander with several clips around the edges of the colander. The cheese is fairly heavy and will pull the cheese cloth off the sides and into the middle of of the colander if not secured with clips.  Set the colander/cheese cloth off to the side for now (mine is placed in a mixing bowl in the picture on the right)

Return to the heating milk, check the temperature (by this time it should be fairly hot) if at 190 degrees, remove from stove.  While stirring, add the white vinegar to the milk.  Immediately the milk will curd (felt like a science project), and will separate from the whey.  Let this stand for 5 minutes

Once 5 minutes have passed, place your cheese-cloth-wrapped-colander in the sink.  I recommend using a small mixing bowl to place underneath the colander as what we're about to do is in a sink (dirty).  Pour the milk/curd into the colander.  The cheese cloth will separate the cheese from the whey liquid.  You may have to dump out the whey at the bottom of the mixing bowl a couple of times.  Let the cheese/curd drain for 15-20 minutes so all of the whey is off of the cheese..

Place the cheese into a medium sized tubberware.  Using a spoon, compress the separated curds until it resembles something that is more solid looking.  The cheese will have a consistency similar to goat cheese, crumby, dry but rubbery.

Notes:  This was my first attempt at making my own cheese.  My first reaction was "I am going to make a great  queso dip!" Problem is, this "cheese" doesn't melt, it just gets softer.

So what do you do with it?  Well you can eat it plain, but it won't have a lot of flavor as this cheese isn't aged nor did we add anything special to it.  I read you can light fry it, which is fairly good, or you can use it as a cracker spread, bread spread, taco garnish etc.

I will come back to this cheese with some ideas i've written down to flavor this up and give it a true use.  For now, try to make this for fun. One thing I would change, add some salt after you pore the liquid into the colander.