Making Simple Cheese with Children

Mark Nowicki

Weekend cooking with children can provide nutritious meals and nutritious snacks all week. It helps everyone relax and chat while making a favorite recipe or trying a new one as an experiment. After all, cooks are scientists, mathematicians and artists with reading and organizational skills. It’s a perfect quiet fun and learning activity with a reward at the end.
Super Simple Cheese
   With a little help since a stove is involved, children will have a creamy cheese to add protein to snacks all week (Check that no one is lactose intolerant.)
  This creamy cheese tastes like nothing, which can be good. Add a little salt and put it on nutritious crackers, vegetables, and fruits children already enjoy. It is good with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, toast, or finger licked in a bowl by little ones.  The ingredients are two cups whole (works best) or 2% milk and one or two tablespoons of lemon juice.
  Place milk in a saucepan, heat and stir it on low so the milk doesn’t stick to the bottom. If you have a cooking thermometer you can put it in the pan until the milk is 170 to 190 degrees. If not, just make it hot. Turn off heat and add one teaspoon lemon juice and stir until the little curd lumps form. Add a second, if needed, for lumps.  Be patient and remove from heat.
Shaping Cheese
  Let the mixture cool to a temperature you can handle. Now you will separate the curd lumps from the whey liquids. Pour mixture through a strainer into a bowl to save the whey and empty the curds into a cloth. A clean white t –shirt (never worn again), washcloth, or cheesecloth work.
  Take the four corners of the cloth and twist them making a bag. Twist tighter and tighter to get the liquid whey out.
  Cheese will be crumbly. Add a little salt and taste. Do not break it up further with your fingers at this point.
 You can make a block of cheese by taking your cloth with curds and folding in thirds. Place on cake pan and put fry pan with 10 lbs on top for about 30 minutes. It will form a loose shape. Keep everything refrigerated.

fdarling fotos

It will get firmer.
 While waiting say “Little Miss Muffet, “ “Farmer in the Dell” or read “The Cheese” by Palatini or “The Stinky Cheese Man…” by Scieszka.
  You may wish to try the whey, an acquired sour taste. Children will probably not like it, but it is rich in protein. Whey is used in protein bars, commercial protein shakes, and soups. The Swiss bathe in it to keep their skin soft. Hmmm. It can even be frozen.
Sketch: Mark Nowicki; Photo: Fran Darling, fdarling fotos
More Ideas and Activities....See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. For more help to prepare young children for success in school see the authors’ web site: www.grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest