Help with halloumi

[Fugal Faye]

Hey everyone, just found your forum after a few days of deciding to have a crack at cheese making, so far so good until just now.  Just had great results with cream cheese and ricotta and decided to try my hand at halloumi. 
As I was using a thermomix, I used a recipe found on the internet.  We live in Perth Western Australia, temp today is a very warm 38 degrees.

Ingredients

2 litres of milk -Fullcream and longlife
Heated for 10 minutes on 37 degrees and then added 1 mad millie tablet dissolved in 1 Tbsp of non chlorinated water.  Supposed to let it sit for 1 hour and then cut.  It is still runny after two hours.  I reheated and added another tablet dissolved in water.  Now it looks a bit curdly.
Any chance of saving it, or repurposing it, any ideas on what I may have  missed.
Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Fugal Faye]

Well after letting it sit on the bench for another hour, I decide to strain through a chux cloth and separate it from the whey.  So I am wondering, what do I have now?

What do you get when you cross 2 litres of milk with 2 mad millie tablets?
It does taste like my ricotta? On the bright side at least I can eat it and won't waste it. ;)

[jwalker]

Just guessing here , you say you used two litres milk , full cream and "longlife".

With a name like "longlife" , it may be ultra pasteurized  , or high temp pasteurized , almost impossible to get a good curd set with.

Just a guess , but what you have should still be edible , maybe similar to ricotta.

[Schnecken Slayer]

As Jim says, your problem is caused by using the longlife milk.
Try to get the least processed milk you can find, ie non-homogenized and low temperature pasteurised if you can.
You could also turn some of it into yoghurt, with some gelatine to help it set.

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

Hi Frugal Faye,

You can possibly get unhomogenized milk in your area from supermarkets or knock the farm gate of a close by farm to ask for raw milk for pet consumption. Ultra Heat Treated milk is only good for yogurt making.

You also didn't mention any starter culture in your make.

Once you get the milk, have a look at the 8 different halloumi recipe comparison here.

Once you get up to speed, you might want to educate yourself on the Flocculation technic which is covered in length here in the forum, just use the search function at the top or go to here

[Chicken man]

Hi!
Yes Long life milk will stuff up all cheese!!
Try 43 degrees next time!!

[KatKooks]

Hi Faye,

I have not had much success with my cheeses...except for the halloumi I made.  I started using MM products however my first 2 recipes were complete failures because their rennet strength is not standardized.  You definitely need to follow their directions on their products.

I did have success using this video for Halloumi, however the brine they suggests results in a REALLY salty cheese.  I even soaked it in milk for 5 days to reduce the saltiness and it was still bad.  But the cheese developed well and tasted good otherwise.

Good luck!!

[Chicken man]

Try 5 % salt....ie...for 1 litre of whey use  50 grams of  salt!...is not to salty then
10 % would be 1 litre to 100 grams of salt.
Ian

[Andrew Marshallsay]

Hi Faye

I can relate to KatKooks' comments about the Mad Millie rennet. I started out using it and it worked alright for the first couple of makes, using the MM recipes. When I started using other recipes it was a different story and I discovered that different tablets are different strengths and the MM tablets are weaker than most. The standard dosage rate (1 tab / 4L) and activity are printed on the blister pack in very small print.
This probably wasn't the problem in this case but it will be worth bearing in mind as you venture into new recipes.
I have changed to liquid rennet.

[Chicken man]

Hi faye.
I started out using Junket rennet tablets....1 quater tab in .25 cup of water...this worked fine for 10litrs milk!