OK, after batch #4 of carefully following directions, using good rennet and starter culture, etc, I'm starting to feel like I'm insane or doing something totally wrong.
No matter what I do, after cutting and cooking my curds, no matter how much they look like "cubes", as soon as I pour them into a colander to drain, they look like this:
A lot of websites and image searches turn up pictures of cheesemaking where the curds look like that.
OK, great, but whenever I've had "cheese curds" aka squeaky cheese from a cheese factory, restaurant, store, etc, they look totally different - much more like "hunks of cheese." How the heck do I get my fresh curds to look like this:
The bottom photo, as you can see, looks more like "cheese" instead of what I keep ending up with, which basically looks more like cottage cheese. Any ideas?
I know this is an old topic but I'm uniquely qualified to answer some of the questions of the OP.
I worked at Beecher's Handmade Cheese in 2009 as a cheesemaker. I'm intimately familiar with their processes of cheesemaking. The curds you show from Beecher's are not comparable to the ones your show as an example of what you end up with. The Beecher's curds are unhooped, unpressed, unaged flagship "curds". I use parentheses because the actual curds measure about 1/4" by 1"8" after cutting the curd mat. These curds are cooked for an hour and a half iirc (it's been a couple years since working there). The whey is then drained and the cheddaring process begins. The curds knit together and are allowed to drain for another hour and a half with being flipped every 15 minutes. After the desired pH has been achieved salt is added and the curd blocks are milled into the "curds" you know and eat in the photo. (Only a portion are taken for the fresh curd product, the others are hooped and pressed into flagship).
I don't really know what to say if that's what you want to achieve. I can't imagine how one would accomplish that at home. At Beecher's we had industrial equipment that made quick work and consistent product.
PS. The curds taste 100x better freshly salted and milled than they do from the grocery store
