Author Topic: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?  (Read 3034 times)

teegr

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a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« on: January 25, 2010, 08:34:47 AM »
A homesteading friend from Alaska years ago used to make a simple acid coagulated cheese, drained and lightly pressed in colander...then whipped the curds adding salt, smoke flavor, and some whey for consistency and then packed into small sterile airtight  jars...sprinkling salt ontop using a sandwhich bag to press it down for no air pockets.  Then she aged it 60 days and called it a smoke barrel cheese.  I'm also wondering if a simple post pasturization would increase it's shelf like like those Kraft jar cheeses .

Does anyone know about this old timey farm style cheese?  She used old snuff jars and sealed with wax when she didn't have canning jars.  As kids we loved it on whatever bread was laying around getting stale.  I have a few concerns about doing this now that I have more info on cheese making and it seems to me that the high heat of the acid coagulation pretty much stops any true "aging" of this cheese.

I have no idea why she called it smoked barrel cheese...but I'd like to see if anyone has any experience with this old homesteader type cheese and whether it is safe to eat after 2 weeks opened since I am comparing it to a high moisture uninnoculated type cheese.  Any info helpful.

iratherfly

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2010, 09:13:49 AM »
Wow, that sounds like an interesting cheese. What did it taste like?
I can only assume the name relates to the smoke flavor she put in it.

Generally, the bad bacterias in unpasteurized milk (or spoiled milk) are the first to go and all are gone within 30-60 days. Other bacteria takes over, grows faster and finish the food for the weaker bacteria. Enzyme work the proteins and turn them into different bacteria-food in a consistency and acidity that is inhospitable to these original bacteria. That's when the cheese is born out of milk.

If you want to pasteurize this cheese in jars, you can surely pressure-can it, but this is something I would only do to highly processed cheese. The thing is, under pressure, water boils at 240F. If you would to pressure-can this (place closed jar under water in a pressure cooker, boil and let the pressure go for 5 minutes, shut down and release pressure without a shock, cool the jar down) - than it would surely kill everything in there and vacuum pack it for a long time. However, this violent process would be even stronger than ultra pasteurizing milk. It will boil the cheese over and melt it like processed cheese, suck all the oxygen out and destroy any active bacteria and enzymes. From this point on, aging is useless because virtually zero process is happening in the jar. It's like canned corn or peas. Congrats for reverse-engineering Velveeta :)
« Last Edit: January 25, 2010, 09:21:24 AM by iratherfly »

teegr

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2010, 10:41:54 AM »
Hi, well this gal learned to make this cheese from her Grandmother long before Alaska was a state.  She show me how she did it with I am pretty sure it was raw milk. She made it in 5 gal batchs in an old electric tabletop roaster oven and she said she now uses lemon juice to curdle the milk, but she was taught as a homesteader and before they had such things as lemons she used ocean weather to coagulate.  I beleive she probably did pasterized the raw milk in the process.  Anyhow...she did not say anything about pasteurizing the product...I was thinking that it might be a nice way to increase food safety if you wanted to make a gift basket with a jar of this smoke barrel cheese.  I was just reminded of this issue after reading about a outbreak of listeria in Wa State in the Hispanic community run farmers markets where folks could buy jars of soft Mexican fresh cheese.  It was due to fact US rules no raw milk cheese can be sold unless aged 60 days...and immigrants of course did what they did in their home country, but did it here.  I was just thinking of making this smoke barrel cheese from memory...and wanted to know if there was others out there that did this that could tell me the "traps" I might incur.  It doesn't taste like Velveeta nor cream cheese...just something inbetween and is great on toast.

iratherfly

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2010, 04:49:05 PM »
The US somewhat over-does it with rules. Generally raw milk is safe and raw milk cheeses - even as young as 21 days are sold in Europe - I don't exactly see the Europeans drop dead. It is true that raw milk can carry listeria, but testing and food safety standards should take care of that. Spinach can carry salmonella - but with proper testing you will find it out before it goes to market. If the WA farmers would run a pathogen test in a food lab as every responsible commercial operation should - there will be no listeria outbreak.

In fact, to date there is more proof of the damage that homogenized pasteurized supermarket milk has on people and the benefits of raw milk than any proof that raw milk is dangerous.

As for your cheese - I think that if her grandma could have smoke flavor she surely could have lemons, citric acid or vinegar to coagulate the cheese. If she let the milk simply self coagulate by leaving it out than this would be a lactic type cheese where the coagulator is the buildup of lactic acid. This is a different method than the lemon/citric acid/vinegar or the rennet method.

If I were you, I will try to reproduce this cheese first with supermarket milk and when you figure out the recipe and feel comfortable with it - that would be the time to plan packing and preservation of the product.

teegr

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2010, 05:58:00 AM »
I have no idea how her grandma added smoke flavor to her cheese so long ago...but suspect it was possible to "make" as in the 70's I used to add a small amount of a homemade liquid smoke to beans and such as my late hubby had a bit of unusual way of smoking turkeys and as a result he ruint my large stainless steel bowl  by putting close to the bottom of a homemade vertical smoke/cooker (with a little water) but above the firebox.  Just visualize a large glass tank water heater... and you have an idea.  He suggested I make lemonade out of the lemon of a bowl I now had...so I used it as liquid smoke collector.  LOL  I actually never knew there was a "liquid smoke" product till 10-15 years ago.   If anyone trys this please avoid trying it with Mesquite wood.  I don't know about charcoal...we used chopped wood and mesquite was just too strong to use for any liquid smoke application we had.

AS far as worrying about using raw milk...I personally aint so worried about myself but I have a DIL with Hodgkins and I don't want to worry about that issue even though she can now have soft cheese, at least for a short while.  She loves soft cheese as well as my granddaughter and am trying to teach them that not everything has to be "processed". 

iratherfly

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2010, 08:50:45 AM »
That's a funny story.

As for the raw milk - if you want to distribute cheese, US law forces you to age it for 60 days minimum. However, if this is a cooked or pressure/vacuum canned cheese than I suspect you are not just pasteurizing it in the process but actually ultra-pasteurizing it! (UHT) - even if you started out raw.

Cheese Head

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2010, 11:47:46 AM »
Hi teegr, I see you and iratherfly have reasonably figured it out.

Welcome to the forum, I see from your Profile that you are NW of Seattle WA USA! While my family and I now live in Houston TX I grew up in Vancouver BC and had many holidays on Whidby Island and area, close to where you are. Also, my brother and family live in
Queen Charlotte Islands, first Canadian Islands South of Alaska and I can vouch that they do indeed have cow's there, although not many ;D.

teegr

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2010, 06:50:50 AM »
Hi Old Cheese... funny thing is I used to live in Houston (Belair/Rice University area) back in 72-75 then moved back to the NW high plains  Texas area I grew up in.  I first moved here on the edge of Puget Sound (I can see Whidbey Island as well as others daily) in 76-77 and said that someday I was going to move back and stay for I loved the cool rainy weather and mountains and water surrounding me.  So I jumped at a residency in 88 and have felt blessed to live in such a beautiful place.  I've had to re-learn how to do alot of things however to compensate for fact I live in a maritime climate as far as gardening goes...and it sure took some time to deal with yeast bread and sea level cooking.  It's so cool outside (average 50's) here most of the year that I use a partially insulated garage for cheese hanging/drying and garden storage.  In fact my garage stays colder than my refrigerator about 5 months a year.  So I spend winter making hard cheeses to eat during the warmer times.  Humidity is high enough most of the time I don't have to worry about as long as it is cool. 
My late hubby and I used to love to go to the Jazz festivals in Vancouver BC...so I know it pretty well.  GREAT FOOD there!!   Small world isn't it?

You certainly have enough humidity in Houston but I bet trying to deal with the drying refrigerated air is a pain with your cheese making!  I have to deal with too much moisture (since I rarely need any air conditioning) when drying semi soft cheeses if I don't keep them in the house a few days before putting out in the garage pantry.

teegr

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2010, 08:35:26 AM »
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3001.0.html 

I found the gal who demonstrated this smoke barrel cheese and how to age it and I started a new topic under acid coagulation since the video demostrates that...however she says she has done it with rennet and long time ago sea water.

Think you'll enjoy it.  I have made it and I never got it aged past 30 days and the boys ate it.  It was good if not quite a smooth as a store bought process cheese spread would be.   :-)

iratherfly

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Re: a cheese food in jar to give as gifts?
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2010, 10:33:40 PM »
wow, never seen anything quite like it. Almost painful to watch the curd under a mixer  :o