I love to make cheese but stirring can really be a drag especially when your recipe says "stir continuously 60 min" or whatever
. Recently I made (what I wanted to be) a classic Monterrey Jack with pepper added and printed Eric (Spoons) recipe. I thought it would be interesting to compare to some other recipes, so I pulled out Karlin's, Caldwell's, Ricky's and one from CulturesforHealth.com. All were in agreement within a close range for ripening time and temperatures, curd cooking time and temperature targets, and draining / pressing (it is interesting that only half call for washing with cool water). However, there was a huge difference in stir times and techniques. I totaled all of the stir times for each recipe:
Cultures for Health: 60 min (last 30 min. occasional)
Spoons: 90 min
Karlin's: 90 min
Carroll's: 100 min (last 30 min. occassional)
Caldwell's: 188 min (over 3 hrs. total!)
Needless to say I did not use Caldwell's; not because I assume it would make a good cheese but because after 3 hrs. stirring my arm would fall off drop into the pot
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I'm curious what others think. Can we "limit" our stirring or at least do more occassional stirring vs. continuous?
ps: I had not been to
culturesforhealth.com and searching on the forum only see a few links. I like their website and they really have a lot of recipes (3 for jack alone). However, I'm a little wary after seeing "rest curds after cutting 45 min" and their Pepper Jack recipe that calls for adding 5 jalapenos and 4 habenero diced peppers in a 2 gal. milk make
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