# how to make cream cheese?????



## hime (Jan 14, 2007)

i have been serching ow to make creem cheese in yahoo , but almost all recipes need Rennet which not on sale in my country, so my question is how to make fresh cream cheese with out Rennet or any chemical ingredients ????

also my other question is, if you making your own cream cheese can it still be use for making cheese cake????

thxs :lol::lol::lol:


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## izbnso (May 12, 2007)

My cheese making experiences are limited, but I do have some. Rennet is pretty much (as far as I know) a must have when it comes to any cheese that calls for it, which is most cheese with any amout of "body" to it. The more rennet, the firmer the cheese.

Off the top of my head: I would have to refresh my memory on cream cheese, but as I recall, it is fairly simple and shouldn't be too tricky.

I can not imagine that rennet is illegal or prohibited where you are (I'm not sure where that is) and there are plenty of places on line that you can order rennet in liquid or tablet form shipped directly to you. Do a google search for cheese making supplies and you will find that you can order rennet with out ordering kits, cultures or other supplies.

And in answer to the question about cheese cake, yes. You can use homemade cream cheese in cheese cake.


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

About rennet. 
Rennet is something from the stomach of some animal (google it if you want, i don;t feel like) so it's not a chemical at all. It's a natural substance. The story i read is that cheese was invented (discovered?) by nomads who carried liquids in bags made from stomachs of animals. When carrying sheep's milk, the residual rennet in the stomach mixed with the milk and the moving along banging at the side of the camel or whatever made it turn into cheese. This is the story i read once. It makes sense, though it may be like the story of the chicken coop burning down and the farmer grabbing his burnt chicken to lament the loss, and burnt his hand. When he put the burnt hand to his mouth he said, "hey, that tastes good". Probably unlikely stories. But anyway, rennet is not a chemical substance. It is, however, an animal substance and some rigid vegetarians won;t eat cheese with rennet but will only eat cheese with a non-animal rennet substitute (sold as "vegetarian cheese"). 

Now what i know, in my very minimal knowledge of cheese-making, is that the thing that makes warm milk into cheese is the acid (of the rennet, but can be other acid). I've made "cagliata" which is curds and whey, like a soft cottage cheese, (caglio meaning rennet in italian), and have used , at different times, rennet, vinegar, lemon juice and actually sour milk without anything added. The point being that what makes cheese hard is the interaction of acid and milk, curdling the milk, and coagulating the protein (certainly there are enough chemists here on the forums to explain this). My guess is that you can make cream cheese with vinegar as well as with rennet. I'll wait for the experts to come along to confirm that or to tell you how. 

Maybe you could google "vegetarian cheese making" or something like that. 

That said, i would like to try making cream cheese myself. can you post the recipe?


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## izbnso (May 12, 2007)

Alright, I dug out my cheese making literature.

Acid separates the curds and whey and so does rennet but rennet provides firmness that acid doesn't. Different cheeses call for different combinations of acid, rennet and cultures. Sometimes just acid, sometimes just rennet sometimes both and no culture… you get the idea.

 I still have a big bag of citric acid that can be used to make Mozzarella and ricotta. (I also use it when making lemon drop candy to oomph up the sour.)

Here is a link to a cream cheese made with no rennet (no promises on if it's good or not):
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/75/Homemade-Cream-Cheese76184.shtml

When I ordered cheese making kits I got a Mozzarella and ricotta kit, a basic hard cheese kit, and a goat cheese kit. 
I made a lot of ricotta (no rennet just acid) and mozzarella (acid and rennet) because they are easy and quick. I still have rennet tablets that I keep stored in the freezer and occasionally make mozzarella. I even use chocolate molds to shape it while it is still warm, which makes for attractive display. (Remember I'm a caterer and it looks super snazzy to have individual bite sized fresh shaped mozzarella on a platter with a tapenade.)

 I tried my hand at hard cheese. When I set the cheese out to dry before I waxed it, my then two year old (now eight year old) annihilated it. I then turned up pregnant again and was told by my doctor that the live cultures used to make cheese are dangerous to the baby. In fact, if you didn't know, pregnant women should not eat any cheese with live bacteria like brie and there is another one that I can't remember the name of but is a Mexican cheese, it can lead to still birth. Since I'm a breeder my cultures that I ordered expired before I was done being in a perpetual state of pregnancy. I keep meaning to get back into experimental cheese.

I never could get proper goat's milk to try the goat cheese. One of the things that my kits talked about was never using ultra-pasteurized milk or cream because it has been heated too much to make cheese. After months of searching for pasteurized goats milk and even trying to special order it (it arrived very expensive and still ultra-pasteurized) I gave up. I couldn't even get some local goat people to supply me with fresh to pasteurize myself. Apparently selling unpasteurized milk is a huge NO NO and could get them into a legal bind. So until I got a goat myself (or found someone who didn't care) I gave up on goat cheese

www.cheesemaking.com
The above web-site is where I got my kits. I found all of the kits to be easy to use (any and all problems were with finding goat milk and heathen children interfering with the process). They have a lot of good information on their site. Since I am not a master cheese maker (check out the special guest forum with the master cheese maker here at ChefTalk) I can not attest to the technical information. However, in all that I did I never found that they had steered me down a wrong path.
They also have recipes for a variety of cheeses on their site. Some of them require no rennet or culture, just stuff you could find at the grocery store. If you are interested in cheese making it is a good place to start.

BLESSED ARE THE CHEESE MAKERS!:chef:


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## susachef (Apr 1, 2013)

Actually, you can make milk curdle by leaving it at room temp. for 1-5 days...  as for making cream cheese, well, I'm experimenting with that.

If I find anything new I'll post it here.


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## karonadams (Apr 5, 2013)

I make a simple cream cheese quite often and you probably have the ingredients in your kitchen. Take about a gallon of milk (of course, you can make less but, this will make you a decent final amount of cheese). Bring the milk up to around 80-100 degrees. Don't let it go much higher. Then, add Lemon juice. stir until the curds form and separate. pour through a lined colander and strain off the whey. You can keep the whey for making bread.  The final cheese will have a citrusy taste to it. I like it with a touch of dill. makes a fantastic cucumber spread for cucumber sandwiches. and I LOVE Cuke sandwiches with plain, southern white bread, rich lemony cream cheese with dill and shredded cukes in the cheese. absolutely delish!!


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## ed buchanan (May 29, 2006)

To expensive to make, more perishable then commercial style phili. Good yes, but unless you make loads of it cheaper to buy.


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## karonadams (Apr 5, 2013)

it is always cheaper to buy cheese, even good quality cheese. I like learning to do anything I CAN learn. and I have learned some rudimentary cheese making.  but, unless you have plenty of space to press and age cheese, making it for home use is just WAY too expensive to be seriously worthwhile. nto to mention that most milk is so pasteurized and homogenized to a fare thee well so it makes it nearly impossible to make cheese! I wanted to make some mozzarella JUST for the fun of making it, last week. I made a mistake and bought the wrong milk. obviously, it never came together and I ended with salty glue!  Made me want to cry.


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## kccjer (Apr 11, 2013)

Plain yogurt hung to drain makes a pretty decent cream cheese  (I guess it's actually called "yogurt" cheese)  I've done it several times and it tastes remarkably similar to Philly cream cheese that you buy.  Just get a muslin towel or something similar.  Pour the yogurt into the towel, tie up the ends and suspend over a container for several hours.  The cheese will keep for about a month.  The leftover liquid is whey and can be drank or added to recipes calling for water.  You can also use the whey to culture other things.


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