Easy Basic homemade Cheese

How to make an easy, basic homemade cheese.

Using whole cow's milk; fresh cheese is just one hour away. ;0)

Ingredients:
3 Quarts whole milk (Goats milk would be great if you can get your hands on some!)
3 C's buttermilk
1 Tablespoon salt

Note: this is a basic way to do cheese. You can add herbs like chives, dill and etc to make this cheese even more delish! But, for my purposes, I was making Saag Paneer, and Indian-style dish that uses homemade cheese as it's meat. ;0)

*I've been asked by a friend to add to this blog what you can add to your cheese: In the past I've added rosemary, lemon thyme, thyme, various basil's, dill, chives, onion, garlic, roasted red bell peppers, pimento, pineapple sage, sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lavender, mortared peppercorns and various mixtures of herbs or vegetables to make a really flavorful cheese to stand alone as a dip. Any fresh herb will work.

Instructions:
1. Line colander with a triple layer of cheesecloth and set in sink.

2. Bring milk to a boil in a Dutch oven pan over medium high heat. I watch the milk closely and just as it begins to boil over the pan, I add step 3 to stop the spill onto my stove.

Just starting to simmer around the edges of pan in upper image.

Getting close to boil in bottom picture; notice how it looks foamy. It is close to try to boil over here. This is when I added the next ingredients in step 3.

3. Whisk in buttermilk and salt, turn off heat and let stand for 1 minute.

This is what curdles in pan should look like after the buttermilk is added and cooked. You can see separation.

4. Pour milk mixture through cheesecloth and let curds drain for 15 minutes.

Slowly draining:

Should look something like this before you do step 5:

5. Pull edges of cheesecloth together to form a pouch. Twist edges of cheesecloth together, firmly squeezing out as much liquid as possible from cheese curds.
6. Place taut, twisted cheese pouch between 2 large plates. and weigh down top plate w a heavy Dutch oven, filled with water. I drain off some of the water that forms on the plate as I wait; but it is not necessary.

Plate, cheese, plate, dutch oven I used to cook the cheese is being filled w water just to make it heavier.

7. Set aside at room temperature until cheese is firm and set, at least 45 minutes.

8 -A. Remove cheesecloth and cut cheese into 1/2 pieces if you are making Saag Paneer.

8 -B. Otherwise, keep it in it's lump shape and serve it with crackers.

9. Left uncut, this cheese can be wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Enjoy; folks will think you spent days instead of one short hour to make this!