Cheese Based Question aimed at Colonials.

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Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
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McBride, BC
Absolutely. BIG FOOD and Health Canada have made it practically impossible
to buy, beg, borrow or steal unpasteurized milk.
Just one more difference that accounts for a whole spectrum of cheese flavors.

Let's you and I make a single batch of cheese. Then, we will divided the curd pressing into two parts.
I'll mature mine at 8C and you mature yours at 12C. Night and day.

The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to make the one batch then divide it into parts and do
different things for ripening. 15 liters of milk ought to be enough for at least 2, maybe 3 kinds of cheese.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
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McBride, BC
We've just shifted the blame to BIG FOOD and their dirty manufacturing machinery.
Second helping of Listeria, anyone? Oh, but they know best, don't they.
They will tell you nothing in 50,000 words or more.

Mann's is a huge conglomerate of fresh produce processing plants all over North America.
Huge recent recall of all sorts of lettuce-based offerings due to dirty disease water.
Hard for me to run fast enough.

Pasteurization is effective but just another example of a factor affecting the results in cheese making.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
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Florida
.......I'm presuming here that cottage cheese is cottage cheese over there too though :)
M
To be honest I don't really know. our cottage cheese is a soft/moist batch of curds. Like a thick (vicous) curdled milk in texture.

Cottage-Cheese2.jpg


cottage_cheese-9415.jpeg
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Looks pretty similar, though our curds are bigger and maybe a little less mushy looking....that may be a local thing, I don't know.

M
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
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McBride, BC
Here, the cheese curds are drained, rinsed then resuspended in a mix of whey and cream.
The draining step seems to change the texture and size of the curds.
Several brands here and they are distinctively different.
I think I can buy coarse and fine in the city.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
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S. Lanarkshire
Ah, that makes sense. The ones I've been buying these past few years have rounded lumps of not solid solid, but certainly firmer looking than the mashed kind of stuff in the bowl that SM2K showed.
Very nice salted :) or with fruity bits added :)
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
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Florida
I may have to try it salted now! Yeah, we have different sized curds. No meaningful choice about them, just whatever is common for the brand you buy.
 

Robson Valley

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Nov 24, 2014
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McBride, BC
Salt helps the flavor, for me.
My all-time cottage cheese treat is to add at least a tbsp of very fine dice chives and let that sit for a couple of hours.
My partner despises CC but she can eat yoghurt all day long ( I can't stand the texture).
Drained in tatziki, OK, but that's it.
 
Jul 30, 2012
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westmidlands
Well as robson says dirty processes. During the egg thing that was about battery eggs, people where advised to eat free range ones. You would have thought that all the salt would have been ok for rendering it safe. You can still buy raw milk cheese in the uk, as long as its labeled, i believe, but the point is that the majority of cheese that is sold comes precut in pouches, from about 4 ? Manufacturers, that are very similar. The remainder do have a bit more character
Ecoli 157, TB, brucellosis, campylobacter, B. cereus, Q fever.....all easily preventable by pasteurising milk.
It has earned it's place in the health wars.

M
.

I suppose it has its place with thoes with a lower immune system who do not go out and wallow in the mud every now and again. I think it may have something to do with the time from milking of the cow to processing, fresh raw milk is alot different to the stuff you get in most supermarkets that is atomised and pasturised. You would think that these days they could treat cheese post aging with sound or radiation the way they do fruit ?

The sort of raw cheese that im on about is like this, they used to sell in morrisons but no longer. Has a very distinct and d8fferent flavour.

http://www.longmancheese.co.uk/product/greens-of-glastonbury-unpasteurised/

I once got a carton of unatomised milk from the supermarket in wales whilst out walking, full fat. The motion of the walking turned the cream to butter !
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
12,330
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
There is a programme on Netflix ( forgot the name. A foodie series?)
That tells the story of a US nun that makes cheese. I think she was a microbiologist in her former profession or something.
Anyway, the authorities did not want to approve her cheeses because she used ’unhygienic’ wooden barrels in the cheese making.
Risk for Listeria.
She discovered that the wood contains something ( bacteria?) that prevent the Listeria from multiplying.
 

Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
12,330
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Cottage Cheese in the US comes as Small Curd or Large Curd. Tastewise exactly the same as in UK, Norway and Sweden.

You mix it with chives?
Then you are touching on a Liptauer.
Wrong cheese technically, but very close, should be quark, which is more acidic.
Toddy, fine chop some onions, add sweet paprika and crushed caraway. Plus chives. Mix.
Make one batch if both, try and see which you prefer!

If you like a bit of spice/heat, take a pinch of Cayenne too.
 

Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
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TB in humans got virtually eradicated from our countries with pasteurisation of milk. Then later, TB got virtually eradicated from the cow population.
Then it came back, and they blame badgers. Who got it, cows from badgers? Or badgers from cows?

Santaman and Robson, what do they blame the TB in your cows on?
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
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McBride, BC
It's very difficult to get a living tree to rot. How come?
Woods contain all sorts of biochemicals which are poisonous to bacteria and fungi, the common organisms of decomposition.
Those things carry over to wooden containers. The same is true if you compare wooden butcher's blocks to plastics.
You have to bleach plastic to get it clean.
This is a biochemistry concept about wood which has been documented for decades and decades.

The FDA are nut-cases. Of course wood is OK. Wine/sherry/whiskey barrels and all the luscious vanillins that are released.
Given the prices for old/aged drinks, the makers would be absolute fools to risk the value of their products in anything but wood.

There's a dairy butter/cheese operation on the east side of the mountains from here. Maybe 4+ hr drive on a good day.
Their products are all more stronger-flavored than the stuff(?) that comes from BIG FOOD. I read the labels.

Free Range? Know what that means here? There's holes in the walls of the chicken house.
Inside, the chicks are warm and dry and there's food, water and all their friends.
Outdoors is cold, windy, wet grass to walk in, no food, no water, no friends.
BUT, they have the opportunity to go out as they please so the Free Range label applies.

I buy local farm eggs. A dozen smalls is about $3.00. In the summer, they are all outdoors to eat everything.
In winter, they get to run around in part of a barn. Funny, I use more eggs and eat more eggs that I used to with store eggs.
Two large @ 55g each are about the same as 3 smalls @ 35g each.

Have you seen that video of a chicken catching, killing and eating a mouse? Stole it from a cat.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
I see chickens wating dead iguanas, and chickens eating dead chickens daily.

We human privide the dead iguanas and dead chickens with our cars.

I refuse to buy eggs or chickens that are brought up on vegetarian feed.
Cruel, as chickens are omnivores.
You can buy vegetarian dog and cat food too. Even crueller, as cats and dogs are carnivores.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
She's right. They are wrong. Crap floats, I can add no more. Never drink downstream from the administration.

I can't tell you anything about the incidence of TB in cattle here. I'll ask, it I happen to think of it.

People use "chicken tractors" here. Open bottomed wire cage, say 6' x 10', on wheels.
Even water and shelter in there. Just keep moving it as the chickens eat everything.
Not much worry about predators.

I feed a couple of peeled 71-90 shrimps to my cat every night at approx. 5PM.
Fun to watch her cut them apart with her carnassial teeth, working like scissors.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
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If those shrimp are from North Atlantic, I want to be your cat.
Rye bread, a pile of shrimp, mayo, a slice if lemon snd a sprinkling of fresh dill weed.
Please peel the shrimp. Tail off!
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
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67
Florida
No idea here about the incidence of TB in cattle. To be honest I haven't heard of any (that doesn't mean there isn't any though) A more pressing worry is Brucellosis (thought to be passed from bison to cattle)
 

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