Wednesday, November 14, 2012

How To Hang Curd

Many cheeses require to be hanged for varying lengths of time. So gravity and time can do their work and compact the cheese and drain the whey.

Some cheeses hang for an hour or less, some as long as a day. Most of the cheese I make hang overnight or 6-12 hours. Such as Feta which will be next tutorial.

I'm sure there are as many wheys to hang curd as there are cheeses. So these are only the few that I have actually used or seen used.

I will share with you my whey as well as a few others.

I have hung it off a broom stick between two things. I can't remember what 2 things I balanced the broom stick on! So, I probably shouldn't have made mention of this method. ha! But maybe you of the more awake world will think of some way to make that work. So, I mention it.

A friend puts a yard stick on the top of her kitchen cupboards over her sink and ties the bag of curds to that to hang. I have a bulk head on my cabinets and no extra space to store stuff on top of them...booo. So the was not an option for me.

I drilled holes in the side of my cupboards over my sink to fit a piece of metal rebar that we had laying around in the yard. The piece I found was not thick enough or long enough. So it fell if the cheese was too heavy or the bar was not put just even inside the cupboards. I got sick of that really quick and went looking for a thicker and longer piece of rebar. I successfully found one.

Pictured is what my current set up is for hanging curds to drain. Hard to see but its there, really.

 
 
Here is a close up of how the rebar goes inside the cupboard slightly.
{Ignore the bag of cheap, but real powdered sugar....gasp}