[Cheese] Whey proteins.

[Ziad D. Jaber]

Dear Joel,
You are right it is usually not practical to work with small amounts of whey.
Still you can improve your yield of whey proteins, or cottage cheese or KARICHI
as we call it here in Lebanon by applying this method that we follow. First of
all the whey should not be very acidic and that means the type of cheese you
are producing does not require long inoculation period with lactic starter
cultures. Heat the whey up to 185 F and add about 10 % milk (raw, fresh,
pasteurized, or recombined it does not matter) mix well and wait till the
mixture starts to boil. By now you should have dissolved one – two
tablespoonfuls of citric acid crystals in one cup of tap warm water. Add the
citric acid and agitate vigorously then turn of the heating and leave to rest
for 10 -15 minutes. The coagulum will collect on the surface and you can
retrieve it softly by a fine mesh wire. Here we serve it either fresh and moist
with honey or sugar or pressed and marinated with 5 – 10 % brine (salt)
solution.
Bonne Apettite
Yours Ziad Jaber ( Beirut Lebanon)


Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:03:52 -0600 (CST)
From: Joel Plutchak <plutchak at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Subject: [Cheese] Whey cheese questions
To: cheese at hbd.org
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0702211153050.5502 at badger.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

   After a two-year hiatus, I finally made the time to make
two batches of cheese over the past two weeks (a stirred-curd
cheddar and an attempt at a semi-hard sort-of Havarti with
dill; I also smoked 2/3 of the former).
   Both times, I just couldn't bear throwing out the collected
whey, so I tried both of the whey cheese (riccota) recipes in
the Carroll "Home Cheesemaking" book.  They are quite simple,
involving mostly just heating the whey to near boiling (one
with vinegar, one without), then draining through butter muslin
(I used tight-meshed cheesecloth).  One recipe said yield
should be about 1/2 pound per gallon of whey, while the other
simply said "yield is low."  Both times, I got a meager 3 to
4 tablespoons of soft cheese, in spite of adding some
extra milk or cream to help with yield.
   So my questions are, has anybody else done this, and if
so what yield did you get?  And if the yield should be
higher, what could I have done wrong to keep the yield so
low?  At this stage, I'm thinking it's not worth messing with
it in the typical low-scale home/hobbyist setting.
--
Joel Plutchak