Brad Makes Mozzarella

[Brad] Well, look at that, bud.

[Cody] There it goes look at you go there

hey, oh yeah, its alive

oh Mr. Mozzarella over there

Mr. mozzarella

Alright don't get excited.

Hey guys saying it's alive.

We're here. My beautiful backyard

with my beautiful friend, Cody,

Cody Reiss cheese connoisseur, cheese magician.

Cheese mutation. I have no idea.

And now he's going to be helping me and showing me,

and we're going to be learning together,

how to make a little bit of a fresh mozzarella cheese.

Yeah, let's get started.

Let's get it going

[Theme song plays]

What's up. Welcome back to cheese in with cheesers

Hey, thanks for joining me man.

So happy to be here. We're going to be doing,

we're going to be having a nice little experiment together

of making some mozzarella cheese.

Yay. Can't wait, dude.

Thanks for having me.

Cody. I know you've dabbled with it, you know a bit.

Yeah. I've done some dibble dabbling.

I've made ricotta, made some fresh cheeses at home.

Pot cheese

Pot cheese, farmer's cheese stuff like that.

Mozzarella is like a little bit more complicated.

I know

So yeah, I picked a hard one.

I've never made mozzarella.

yeah I think like a lot of people haven't

and I also, like, I feel like a lot of people

don't really know what cheese is in general

Like when you think

Whoa what's cheese. What is cheese Cody ?

I'm so glad you asked Bradley, but now cheese is milk,

That's been fermented and coagulated.

Coagulated being with the proteins.

Basically. Yeah.

There's like nodded up case in proteins and the thing you

add kind of like denatures them and they untangle and then

they walk together and then kind of gel into like a little

pudding, kind of like a wiggly kind of pudding.

Science man. That's incredible.

Yeah that's Crazy.

And I just want to say I'm not a scientist, so none of this,

[Brad] I am, so don't worry about it.

So I got that covered.

Oh, by the way,

I learned this technique from this amazing book that if

you're interested in natural cheese,

it's called the art of natural cheese-making by David Asher.

This technique comes from that book. It's very rad.

Very cool.

Very very groovy

alright cool lets warm up some milk.

yeah Let's warm up some milk.

We got this. It's a good spot in Connecticut here.

This is under... [mumbles] Look at this color huh

Yeah. It's some beautiful Jersey milk here.

Now. Sometimes when you buy unhomogenised milk,

there'll be a fat layer

whoa

and you kind of have to like shake it up.

That's delicious

Oh yeah.

Sweet.

Yeah very sweet.

Well, it's like the height of summer dude,

[Bryan] so its just like raising on sweet corn

But happy corn. Yeah.

Grass is what I meant. I'm sorry.

All right. So let's turn this bad boy on.

All right. Let's get him on

I do not know how to use those things so,

Don't worry, I'll turn this thing on

We want the equivalent of like medium high heat.

So I'm going to put this in, just in case

90 degrees fahrenheit

I usually end up around 93, but between 90 and 95,

Flirting on the danger zone

Yeah, getting up there a little bit

This whole process is basically trying to emulate what

happens inside of a baby animal.

Go on

baby calf drinks milk, right?

Right,

its super stoked

from the otter

From the outer, gobble gobble blah

it goes through its ah, it goes through all the stomachs,

it lands on the fourth stomach, the stomach acid

the stomach acid acidifies the milk.

But then there's an enzyme in a baby animal's fourth stomach

it's... mumbles and it has a bunch of like enzymes in it,

that chemical coagulates the milk,

to make it easier to process.

And then the stomach is like smooshing it around,

basically cutting it into curds basically.

Wow

So we're basically emulating that process.

Instead of stomach acids, you might use citric acid,

You might use like laboratory bacteria.

Or even Lemon people which is citric acid

Vinegar, et cetera.

Like you're basically trying to bring the milk to a certain

acidity where in which I've never said that out loud before

it'll stretch.

You looked like a professor when you said,

I know.

Wherein

I know, I felt like a professor.

It was good.

So this is actually getting close.

We want to stop at like 93. Should I dial it down ?

You can dial it down

We'll we'll slowly get up there.

So the way that we're going to acidify this milk is by

adding kefir now, basically. Can I open it ?

Yes, absolutely.

So kefir grains are basically like little SCOBY,

I don't know. I forget what SCOBY stands for.

Symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast

Yeah, exactly.

Whereas kombucha uses a SCOBY to turn, you know,

sugary tea into kombucha.

This is a similar process where these kefir grains are

eating the sugars and milk lactose and they're converting it

into lactic acid.

Right.

So Cody, like you were saying,

we'll let this sit for about an hour.

Right.

Maybe take a little bike ride.

Maybe take a little bike ride Lunch time !

Music plays

All right. So Cody, we had our hour break

now, how can we tell that the,

that the key for the kefir is working

Well, you can't really, but I mean,

if you look at the milk,

it's still very much milk,

right

But you will know beforehand that your kefir is active

because it will be thickening

the milk that you're feeding it

Exactly so that was our indicator.

Exactly.

Now it's just scaling up and it's getting to,

it's getting comfortable, it's spreading

Its mingling

it's multiplying Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So we're gonna bring it back up like a couple more degrees

and then we're going to add the rennet now.

Which is that enzyme from the from the stomach

The natural process, yes

The fourth stomach of the cow [cow mooing]

One tablet like this will coagulate a gallon of milk,

which is what we have here.

So I'm just going to plop it in here.

Plop, [water sizzles]

And what's that water?

This is water.

You're just going to crush it up, alright.

Complete dissolved.

Yes. Completely dissolved.

Okay. So do you want to do this?

Yeah. Let me help you dude

Okay So basically what you're going to do is

you're going to stir it in a figure eight pattern,

and then we're just going to drop this rennet in.

Now this rennets going to probably work pretty quick.

So we're done, scoop that out of here.

And then it's set.

Yeah, and now you want to still the milk

or else it'll it'll set while it's swirling,

and it'll give you like kind of a frosting kind of vibe now

Gotcha break, so break the current

[Lighting sounds]

The crazy thing about this is you guys are like

this episode sucks so far. Who's this guy, but the thing is,

we're going to come back and this whole thing is going to be

full of milk Jello that wiggles and is cutable.

If nothing else, That'll be home run

Yeah that'll be home run derby

[melody plays] All right. Let's give it ah

I say, let's give it, let's give it an hour.

Yeah yeah yeah let it chill

Let's give it a hour fifteen

And we're going to do a nice little tour of my man Cody's

van. Cause it's special.

[music plays]

They don't make them like this anymore bud

Smells like maple syrup in here

This thing is hot

Candy booze

hmm

That's right. All right. There we go.

It's alive Cody and Brad

[Cody and Brad] on the road

[Brad] that's right, that's [mumbles]

[Cody] here's your phone.

Yeah, I was leaving it, so I had to come back.

Hey, I think I might've left something in there

Should we take a look at it?

Yeah. Open it up, I'm excited.

Come on [mumbles]

Oh, wait For Kevin.

All right. Ready Kev ?

[melody plays]

Whoa Yogurtly looking.

This is definitely done.

You can tell just by looking that it's expelled away and

it's firm, but what you do is called the clean break.

My hands are very clean.

You dunk in your finger at a 45 and

then you lift your finger straight up and see.

Whoa look at that [mumbles] run. So basically

So what's the move here.

You always see them do like ridges

Yes so we're going to cut it into a chess board.

So let me show you one and then you can do a million and you

can do it fast. Right. You go.

All right, cool. So now you're going to do the other way.

I'm going to start in the middle.

Okay. Checkerboard it, gorgeous love that.

This is very satisfying.

Really satisfying.

Now there's one more cut we're going to do,

We're going to come in at an angle like this,

cut em like right in the middle,

So I just stabbed it right in the gut.

And you'll twist it around there.

Give it another slice that way.

And that should probably be good.

The Curt is strong enough that you could probably just start

fussing with it now.

Wow. Nice.

See ? Piggly wiggly.

So I go down like this and then stir, super soft fingers.

Yeah.

Like if you feel them breaking, you're going too hard.

You know, if you see them breaking,

maybe I should stop.

It's okay.

Basically this is the starting of stirring the curds,

which you do to expel more whey,

the wheys not gonna end up in the cheese.

So you're just kind of like condensing the cheese into like

pure cheese matter.

So this is now a hunt for the big boys.

You're basically looking for the

for like the big old guys that you like cut in properly.

So like, if you look at this now, Ooh, it's milk jello.

Oh big boy

Oh yeah. It's a nice big boy.

[guy in green jacket] Oh yeah. Big boy.

[guy in yellow jacket] Big boy. Oh yeah.

[Brad] I like them like that

[Cody] Well, you want them to be the similar size,

So they all like ferment at the same rate in texture.

If you hold onto it and

like squish it a little and let it just fall.

Boom Beautiful. Cut it down to size.

So now we're just gonna stir for anywhere from 15 to 45

minutes.

Oh, oh wow.

We'll still firm as we go

Yes. Cause they're, they're losing more whey.

You basically want them to,

to be the texture of like an over medium poached egg when

they're done.

Like right now, this is like very much over easy.

Yeah. Let them go, let them hang

They're going to chill, they're going to be like

Five minutes we're stir them again

Five minutes stir them again

All right. Look they're looking cheese curdy

yeah

looking real Wisconsinly

yeah

This looks like the yolk inside is just going to pour out.

Right. But you want it to like kind of like

be a little bit springy.

All right. So now we just, now we wait, it's a waiting game.

yeah

No one said cheese was quick.

Nobody said that.

And this one looks pretty good. Check this one out.

Yeah. Nice.

You know,

so these are pretty much set up.

We got them in the spot we want them.

yeah

And then so what's the next move?

Ahh now you just let them ferment, ahh

for a couple hours

yup, probably several hours.

Right

I feel like there's probably a much easier way

to be able to do this as well.

Non fermentation way where we're just going to use lemon

juice, citric acid to acidify it.

And have it just happened a lot faster,

a lot quicker and just a little bit. It's an easier way.

It's just a different approach to it. And I figured we can,

just bang it out since we're here on this beautiful day,

we got a little bit of downtime while it's fermenting.

Now the important thing for this because

we're adding lemon juice right to milk,

is the milk needs to be cold. All right.

That's such a huge tip there

Huge tip

So what's the ratio.

Well, it's a gallon of milk for a half cup of lemon juice

diluted in two cups of water.

Oh wow.okay.

Nice, great pour lovely.

I'm going to stir pretty briskly.

Gentle emulsification.

Exactly.

We're basically trying to acidify it without curdling it.

And now what we're going to do is very slowly warm it up.

Hello

Hi

this milk is now as acidic as we would want the milk to be

for the configured bank. So when we add rennet to this,

it will turn into what we had after like an hour and 15 in

probably 15 minutes.

Wow

Yeah.

Honestly, you know,

if I was going to make mozzarella at home

You'd probably

[Laughs]

This whole time, you had an easier way.

May I ?

Yes, please.

Yes, dude.

Cool.

And then remember the 45 degree angle you want to come in.

You want to get like halfway down this, you know,

the Curt is pretty solid. Like,

remember we weren't even able to stir like this

when we made the first of the other one.

it's a lot more forgiving, you know?

These curds you're able to toss them around

Nothing wrong with that.

No, not at all.

We could have wrapped like seven hours ago.

I know. I know. I know. I know. But.

[Laughs] Let it hang for a minute.

Let it relax.

Let it relax.

All right. So code.

All right, this took a little bit longer than we thought.

I think maybe next time I'd add more lemon juice,

but they're pretty good.

So I think we should just strain them off.

Let me do it.

Okay.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Now we're going to let this kind of strain.

Yeah strain, its going to all knit together

So we'll come back to this soon and hopefully

we'll have a nice little firm loaf

Firmloaf.com

find my resume and headshot there.

All right. Now it's formed into a little puck,

Yeah a nice little mass kind of bind it all together

Why don't we give this one a melt test

Let's see what it looks like.

This smell test, this is an indicator that

your locked into that right pH level. That 5.2, 5.4

Exactly.

Allowing those proteins to kind of stretch

and then get nice and stringing.

Exactly.

And mozzarella

And look, you can see this one is

You can tell its got a little

Its meltly. Yeah.

Look at that. Huh?

Look at that bud.

There It goes.

Look at you go

Hey, oh yeah

[high fives]

That a [bleeps] mumbles

Look how happy he is.

It's just like someone took an elephant.

I didn't think it was going to work out,

And then it worked out.

Everybody you guys can't see the crew.

Everybody's like, yes Cody !

Yeah. Look, the kids are stoked

The kids are like wait, Cody did it. He's our new dad.

How many mozzarella balls do I make ?

Four.

Ow that cut Nicely.

Yeah.

Okay. So I'll stretch one and you salt it and I'll roll it.

Okay I'm good with that.

Cool Beautiful.

So what we're going to do here is

we're going to take our

water here.

So let that core temperature get up there.

That'd get pliable.

Its probably hot as hell Hot as hell. Yeah.

This is definitely there. It's like very soft.

I like this. Yeah Beautiful.

You don't wanna work it too much,

but I think this is probably going to roll.

So what we're gonna do is we're just gonna fold it over

itself.

So basically the end move here is your roll,

you're tucking it all under itself.

And then once you get the final one over it,

you pull this guy around it.

You can maybe give it a dunk if it's not feeling super

workable and then nice little bowl,

but like, look at that tho, huh, come on

Its a nice mozzarella ball

you get some good salt on there.yeah. Bless it.

Bless it.

Look at her. Look at her. Hey dude, that ain't bad.

Tell you what Buddy. That's good.

All right.

chef.

Hey right in the water.

You probably need to get a little bit more hot water,

that's not enough

Here. Hit me with some salt.

That looks great dude.

That's awesome. We did it. Here, you wanna try this ?

Give me that.

Yeah.

Oh my God. Are you kidding me.

Alright. I baked a little bit of bread

Lets hit it dude

From the recipe from the book I got going on

oh yeah awesome.

Well make just a little, quick little appetizer bites.

Let's do it.

I mean, this really worked out.

I'm really happy [mumbles] a little bread that I made

A little bougie, baloney I see. Hello welcome.

Lets try the alfresco. Maybe

Yeah absolutely

Dude it's soft.

It's beautiful. The texture on it.

It's definitely lemonade.

It tastes like Milk and lemon.

It's really dank

[mumbles]

Its Really dank

Yeah. Come on We earned this today bud.

We made this.

This is awesome.

From milk

I know it started as a, like two half gallons of milk,

Mhm a little Sandwich at the mortadella.

It was amazing.

What we're going to be doing with the one

that the fermented cheese ?

same thing.

We're just waiting for that pH to get to a spot where I can

allow it to to string out.

And so it'll be you know,

sometimes this takes eight hours. Sometimes it takes 11.

It depends on how active your recovery time is.

Every time is a little different.

It's a live thing.

We'll Finish that up, we'll make a little cheese.

You know try it tomorrow. But overall man,

I think this is an awesome success.

It was a huge success.

I think you Nailed it, man.

Yeah, thank you.

My Hands are covered in Mozzarella but

I would want it no other way

No other way,

At this point.

Absolutely.

Alright, so we had that last patch of the curd. Alright.

That Curdy Cody had set up with me last night,

the fermentation one where we used the kefir grains and you

know, late last night it got to the pH that we wanted.

We had a little sleep over

and he helped me form some new mozzarella. He's out here.

We had some coffee this morning and I think he fell back to

sleep in his van. Just taking a little nap.

I did nothing wrong.

All right. So good yellow cup of coffee, bud.

Weird pairing. But so yeah, man, so this looks great.

This is our cheese last night from the fermented kefir.

I think they turned out good.

I like this little dude. That's my favorite.

It's clean.

It's very clean.

And I feel like the, the acidity is like in the background,

but it rides for a long time.

Nice texture.

I do not taste that lemon at all.

No, well its not there.

but I'm saying like, it was certainly present,

It's kind of like, more focused on the milk.

I kind of like it better.

Yeah, I think I prefer this one too.

But the lemon one I was also really nice,

A hell of a lot easier.

umhum

I found this one to have a little bit of a better texture,

a little bit more of that like very nice

Milky lactic kind of flavor

Yeah it's like, it's more complex and robust and like

Cause its a alive, its fermented.

That's right. Exactly.

Well on that note man, thanks again for teaching me.

Yeah

Come here, give me a hug, we hug around here.

All right. And this was awesome bud you come up again,

I'll show you how to make the bread,

and we'll make some cheese again

Hell yeah

Hell yeah dude

So much fun

Thanks guys. And again,

I hope you guys make some cheese at home. I had a blast.

Cody was great hanging out and bon Appetit

[glass shatters]

It was good.

Ahh it was good.

You guys should try some cheese.

Yeah.