Wild cheese

[sinmantyx]

I am a mother of two young children and most nights I give my children a sippy cup of milk.  Tonight I noticed that my son's sippy cup of milk from the previous night had gotten messed up in the covers and was still there.  Over 24 hours, the milk had separated into curd and whey.  The curd is very firm and clean.  It smelled fresh - not pungent.  I tasted a very small amount (too curious) and it was very mild, not acidic.

The milk is just store-bought homogenized, pasteurized whole milk.  Chances are it was being held close to my son, so it may have been warmed all night.

Any ideas?

Is it even technically a cheese?  Does anyone have advice on how I might prepare what I have safely?  Might there be a way to re-create the cheese without lining my son's covers with sippy cups of milk?

I know this is an odd request for information.  I appreciate any input you may have.  Thanks.

[Cheese Head]

Hi, I would call curds a cheese.

What you had was natural increase in bacteria count in the milk resulting in increased acidity resulting in coagulation and separation into curds & whey. Milk does this naturally from increasing bacteria count over time as milk is a very fertile landscape for bacteria. These bacteria multiply faster with warmer temperatures and larger starting count. Milk when raw from animal has this bacteria and thus has a short shelf life, store bought pasteurized milk has been heated for a short period of time to reduce the bacteria count and thus extend it's shelf life, sadly for both good and bad bacteria, thus the big drive to push for raw milk sales in US and other countries. Ultra-pasteurized is heated to higher temperature to further reduce the count and thus further increase shelf life, Ultra Heat Treated even more so. There's some more info in our Wiki: Milk Processing webpage.

For your milk to do that overnight indicates to me that your store bought pasteurized milk was either old (past it's use by date) or had been improperly pasteurized or stored at higher temperature either during shipping or at store or in your fridge.

I would not recommend trying to recreate what happened with your store bought pasteurized milk by aging it uncontrolled like you did as that can result in good but also unwanted nasty microorganisms. When intentionally making cheese with pasteurized low bacteria count milk people add acid (ie lemon juice, vinegar etc) or more commonly good bacteria to speed up this process and to further increase the shelf life of the curds, remove whey to dewater the curds. If you want to read some more on natural separation of milk into curds and whey, search the forum for word "Clabber".

Hope helps.

[sinmantyx]

Thing is, it simply doesn't seem like simply spoiled milk.  It doesn't smell bad and the curd is very well formed.  I was hoping that perhaps I picked up some friendly wild bacteria or yeast or something that happened to thrive at about 37 C.  Of course, it's possible (though a little disturbing) that it was simply older than I think it was.  However, if that was the case I suspected it would taste very tangy - but I suppose the acid would be mostly in the whey?

Well, short of growing some cultures, I'll never know.

Best to stay with the bacteria and enzymes known not to be pathogenic!  It's just the concept of creating a cheese that's the equivalent of a sour-dough or lambic is really appealing to me.

[MrsKK]

That works with raw milk, with proper management, but I wouldn't trust it in pasturized milk.  Quite honestly, you are lucky it didn't make you sick!

[zenith1]

I have to agree with Karen-way too many possibilities too make you ill. It would not be a yeast, it was what ever "normal" flora you child has in the mouth(normal-as is normal to them). You really need to stick within the realm of known's when working with foods. Just my opinion..

[iratherfly]

Meh, I don't think it's that dangerous. There are a zillion different strains of lactic bacterium out there and who knows which one built enough acidity to separate that milk. If it doesn't smell bad it's probably fine. Our bodies know how to detect these bad smell and find them alarming.

sinmantyx you can definitely re-create this and make proper healthy cheese out of it, however I agree with everyone here that as long as you are using pasteurized milk (where the balance of bacteria, minerals and enzymes has been taken out of whack by human intervention, including the killing of some very good bacteria) -you should do this in a controlled environment.  The easiest way in the world to do this at home is to do the following:

What you need:
- Milk (Half a gallon would be enough. Preferably NOT marked as "Ultra Pasteurized", "HTST" or "UHT" if you can).
- Buttermilk (get one without any additives if you can). Smallest container is good.
- Salt
- Clean cheesecloth, ladle, spoon, pot with lid, colander, thermometer and optionally a large bowl.  (sanitize them using boiled water,  dry without any towel to prevent contamination).

What to do:

• Heat the milk with a few tablespoons of buttermilk to about 77°F. Put the lid on and wait 12-24 hours without disturbing the pot.  It should be curdled and smell yogurt-ish.
• Fold the cheesecloth over a colander to make it fine and ladle the curdled milk into it over a clean sink or large bowl (gently! you don't want the curd to break by the stream of whey on top of it. Use ladle, don't just pour it)
• Let it drain naturally for 3-6 hours. You will lose about 80% of the volume in whey. It's normal.
• Transfer the curd mass to a bowl and add 1%-2% tsp salt (about 1 to 1.5 tsp). Fold it together gently, refrigerate. You can give it a second mix after 30 min to mix the now-dissolved salt more evenly

So there you have it; Easy spreadable basic cheese. Fromage Blanc style. You can add olive oil and herbs to it, use it as base for salad dressing or eat it with cereal, nuts, fruit, honey or maple syrup, put it on toast, mix it with tuna and veggies, use as dip. Really versatile. Lasts about 7 days refrigerated -if you can wait that long.

You can replace the buttermilk with yogurt (greek style is best), but your initial temperature will be much higher, maybe 105°F-120°F. You will get a more tangy cheese, somewhere between Quark, Fromage Blanc and middle eastern Labaneh.  If you are going for it, than on your future batches I would add rennet and calcium to get a much higher yield and much improved texture.

Explanation
The buttermilk or yogurt are naturally cultured and have live probiotic bacteria in it. By adding it to the milk you are the ones who decide which bacteria will be responsible for "spoiling" the milk. Adding a couple of tablespoons of yogurt or buttermilk to the cheese propagate such enourmous amount of these probiotic bacterium into the milk that it very quickly out-competes all the pathogenic bacterium you have going, especially when set at the temperature in the recipe. It eats up all of the nutrients used for the competing bacterium and thus cause it to starve to death. This also allows you to create your very own flavor profile and texture as well as an extremely safe cheese (with live proactive bacteria in it!). This is really the most basic naturally-cultured cheese you can have. People have been making it for thousands of years.

[smilingcalico]

Just an anecdote. A friend of mine was a nanny and she found that out of a set of triplets, one of them could reproduce this nightly.  It was more of a yogurt consistency. 

[elkato]

In the Wiki milk processing page it reads: "Pasteurized: Milk is heated to ~66C / 150F and held for ~30 seconds before cooling." shouldn't  it be for 30 minutes?

[iratherfly]

You are correct