Feta Preservation

[ancksunamun]

Last weekend I made a batch of Feta and it seems to have turned out lovely!

I left it out of the fridge for 3 days while dry salting, and have since put it in the fridge and continued to dry salt every other day.

It is a week now and to us the cheese seems lovely. Just the right saltiness, the right amount of crumble and yet creamy and just delicious!

My question is, rather than put in brine (which always seems to melt my Feta), can I vacuum pack and still preserve the Feta with no issues? In the past I have used oil to preserve due to aforementioned melting issues but I am keen to keep the Feta exactly as it is now and wonder if vacuum sealing will achieve that?

[sominus]

If you put a little CaCl in the milk as well as the brine you'll notice that the melting problem disappears..  Also, in addition to CaCl, make sure you age for 4 days or so with dry salting (like you're doing) before brining...

-Michael

[Cheesetart]

I've had the same problem before -- and I have found that if I use whey to make the brine instead of water, it works much better.
I actually preserve my feta in a seasoned oil  -- herbs, garlic, etc -- it keeps for quite some time refrigerated in the oil.  When the feta is gone, the oil is a great addition to a salad!

[ARTskyd]

i brine my feta in it's own whey with added salt. this works much better as it matches the ph of the cheese. i only brine it for a week though and then let it dry overnight and dry pack/cryovac it for sale. this preserves the cheese very nicely. the only downsize is you have to use it rather quickly and opening the bag back up. for this purpose i mainly sell it to stores in 180g pieces(single serving).

hope that helps.

[ancksunamun]

I have preserved my Feta in oil before and this worked fine but between that and my sun dried tomatoes I end up with a lot of jars filled with oil so would like to try another way.

ARTskyd, thank you for your input re: sealing. I like the idea of doing smaller batches as we don't eat a lot of Feta in one go so would  probably do well to seal up small portions.

I might just try sealing after the dry salting that has occured and see what happens.

[Miss Muffet]

How long do you expect it to keep in the cryovac packet if not opened?

How do you then determine that it is still edible?  I presume smell but are there any other indicators?