Here is my home made cream cheese recipe. I have really craved cream cheese since I've gone plastic free as I stopped buying it for a long time due to the excessive packaging that comes with it. I perfected this recipe over Christmas and now it has become a staple in my sandwiches.
Ingredients
- 2 pints of whole milk (I use gold top from our milkman, the fattier the better)
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- double cream (Our milkman has just started selling it in glass bottles)
- herbs/garlic powder if you wish to flavour it
Equipment
- heavy base saucepan
- sieve
- cheesecloth or muslin (if you don't have one just use a fine sieve)
- food processor or blender
- food thermometer (optional)
- jar to store the cheese
Method
- Pour the milk into a pot and warm it on a medium heat until is close to boiling (~75/80ºC). You can tell it has reached temperature when you can see a lot of steam and it is too hot to touch but has not started boiling yet. Turn the heat to low.
- Juice a lemon and filter the juice through a sieve or tea strainer.
- Pour the lemon juice one tbsp at a time and stir through. You will see the milk starts to curdle and leaves behind a yellow liquid, this is the whey. Stop adding lemon juice when the liquid becomes see through and loses its whiteness, I usually need about 3 tbsp.
- Turn off the heat and leave covered for 5-10 min.
- Using a slotted spoon, transfer the curds onto a sieve lined with cheesecloth or muslin and let it drain.
- Once the cheese has lost all the water you are left with something similar to ricotta. You may eat it as it is or make it into cream cheese.
- Transfer the cheese into the food processor and add 1/4 tsp salt and 2 tbsp double cream. Blend until the texture and consistency are to your liking. Adjust the amount of cream to make it firmer or silkier. Keep in mind it will get slightly firmer in the fridge.
- If you wish to add any other flavourings or herbs now is the time, you can either stick them in the blender or mix them in with a spoon afterwards. In the picture below I added garlic powder and fresh chives.
- Your cream cheese will keep well for 7 days in the fridge in an airtight container (I use glass jars). It'll probably be fine a few days after that but it will start to dry out.
zero waste tip:
You will be left with a lot of whey, I often use this for bread making instead of water or milk. If you don't want to make bread right away it will keep in the fridge for a few days but I would recommend using it as quickly as possible.
I hope you've enjoyed January's recipe, looking forwards to hearing about your results in the comments below. I'm going to try to post one recipe every month in 2020. Let me know if you have any specific requests in the comments.