Feta Cheese Recipe

With just a few simple ingredients and some easy steps, we show you how to make this easy homemade natural feta cheese recipe.

This is such a beautiful cheese and very simple to make. It will work whether you have raw milk or pasteurised milk.

There are two ingredients you will need along with milk – rennet and a starter. If you already have milk kefir on your bench you can use milk kefir as your starter. If you need to order a starter you can visit a site like Green Living Australia or Cheeselinks to order your starter and rennet.

Feta Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 4 litres of quality milk – cow, goat or sheep
  • 1/4 cup active kefir (or your bought powdered starter)
  • Regular dose of rennet (1/4 tablet of WalcoRen, or 1ml of liquid rennet) dissolved in 1/4 cup of cold water
  • Salt
feta cheese recipe

Method:

Warm milk to 32°C. Add the active kefir and gently stir in, then place the lid on the pot and leave for one hour.

Add the rennet and gently stir in, then lid on the pot and leave for one hour.

Check for a clean break. Cut the curd into 2cm pieces, then slowly stir for 20-30 minutes. Let the curds settle for five minutes, then pour off the whey (keeping one litre for the brine).

Gently pour the curds into a cheese-cloth lined colander. Sprinkle two flat tablespoons of salt (20gm) over the curd and carefully mix through.

Tie up the cheese cloth and hang for four hours or overnight.

While it’s hanging make your brine – dissolve 1/4 cup of salt in 1litre of reserved whey then leave at room temperature to ferment until the feta is ready to be used (store in glass).

Untie the cheese cloth and cut the cheese into a size that will fit into your ageing vessel. Apply salt to the surface of each piece, to develop strong rinds.

Air dry the cheese at room temp for 24 hours, flipping the cheese once or twice.

Place your cheese in the brine, put on a (non-metal) lid, making sure the cheese is submerged under the brine, and age in the fridge. Feta will be ready to eat in two weeks, but leave up to two months for better flavour.

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