impress your friends! make your own queso blanco

Queso blanco is that white, sweet, slightly rubbery cheese you get in real Mexican food. It’s also those white lumps in some Indian dishes, only then it’s called Panir. It’s really, really good when it is fresh. And, it turns out, it is incredibly easy to make. Hey, if Sophie and I can do it, anyone can.

Here’s what you need:

A colander lined with cheese cloth (the real kind) or maybe a bandana. Any clean, tight weave, cotton cloth will work.

A quart of milk. We used fresh from-the-goat Fancy Milk.

Some plain old vinegar, about a tablespoon of it. You could easily enlarge this recipe to a gallon of milk and a quarter cup of vinegar, but we were scared we wouldn’t like it. Fools. By the way, this is the jug out of the laundry closet. We’re real foodies around here.

Okay, next you heat the milk to 182-185 degrees, stirring all the while to keep from scorching the milk. If it scorches, you’ll have to scrub the pan with steel wool. I hate scrubbing. Oh, and don’t use an aluminum pan–the acidity of the cheese will leech aluminum into your cheese, making it taste off, and giving you Alzheimer’s. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

You keep it at 182 degrees, for about ten minutes or until you can’t take it any more. Sophie stirred for a while, then went off to do headstands. I gave up on this step after about seven minutes.

Next you pour in the vinegar.

Did I mention that Sophie took most of the pictures? I cropped them, so you wouldn’t be able to see what a disaster our kitchen is. Crop vs. clean, that’s my motto.

Okay, so this is what happens when you pour vinegar into hot milk. You get a disgusting mess. No, no, it’s curds and whey. See the little stringy clumps sticking to the ladle? Curds. See the thin, greenish liquid in the pan? Whey. This is what Miss Muffet was eating. Weird, huh?

Next you pour the whole mess into the aforementioned colander….

….and gather up the cheese cloth like so. You can see the whey starting to drain out already. Hang this puppy up somewhere. You could suspend it from a wooden spoon balanced over a deep pot, but we didn’t have a pot deep enough, so we hung it from the kitchen faucet. If you want, collect the whey–you can cook pasta in it, make ricotta from it, or feed it back to your goats. What? You don’t have goats? Well, you can also throw it away, okay?

Wait two hours. Go watch a movie. Howl’s Moving Castle is good.

Has it been two hours? Okay, open up the cheesecloth and–Shazam!–you have cheese!

Here it is, turned over on a plate and sliced.

Did I mention that it’s really good? You can salt the cheese, or not. You can blend it with a little cream for cream cheese. You can throw it into soups, spaghetti, chili–queso blanco has this weird property of not melting, even under high temp. You can fry it with olive oil and spices. Or, you can eat it standing up at the kitchen counter, which is what we did. Mmmmm…..