First time making Mozzarella

For Christmas my Mum gave myself and 2 of my 3 sisters who live here in Brisbane a Cheese Making Kit each.  It was a bit heavy to post to Perth and as my sister leads a busy life Mum didn't think she would be into a Cheese Making Kit.  So last week my sisters came to my place with their kits and we set about to have a go at making Mozzarella.

We made two batches one of them 15 minutes apart as there is some waiting involved when you can get started on the next batch.  It all seemed to work out okay on the first batch and the cheese set however we started stirring it and it seemed to split and we ended up not being able to use the first batch.  The second batch we had on the go looked the same as the first batch when it set however we didn't stir it at all we gently put a knife in and sort of just moved the set milk apart a bit and that was it.  This batch worked fine and we set about to have a go making Mozzarella. I have heard that it only takes 30 minutes to make Mozzarella and then you can put it on your pizza for dinner which sounds great however I would give it an hour as we had to wait 30 minutes for the milk to set in the beginning.

Like anything that you haven't done before it takes longer to do it the first time and it seems rather daunting but once you've done it once and it turns out okay you gain the confidence to do it again just like soap making and making yoghurt when I did these things for the first time.  The second time round it's not as hard because you know what you are doing.  In all honesty it's pretty easy particularly with a kit that comes with everything except the milk.  These are good investments to have a go first to (i) to increase your chances of success (ii) not having to run around different shops and buy different items and (iii) if you like the process you can invest in individual items from suppliers to keep your cheese making going.  It is not as scary as it looks and the cheese was delicious on our pizza's.  The cheese can be kept in the freezer or in the fridge in the whey from the milk.  All in all it was fun and we were pretty impressed that we had all made cheese.