Raw Milk to Mozzarella: 1st Attempt pizza night

Happy day 8 of Grow 30, a big day. We're going to make mozzarella for the first time from our very own cows. But we have got to hope that our measures of keeping them in is working. I think it is. I see them in place. They've been getting out lately, and when that happens and that calf gets the mom, the calf gets all the milk that we tried to save up overnight. That's it. We really need that milk for this mozzarella. Oh, he's out. Okay, okay. I'm hoping our redundancy worked of putting the calf in a separate paddock. Honey's calf is still in its paddock and did not get to Honey. What do you think causes this?

I found out last night Minty Man was out in this paddock, so I came over here.

Okay.

And I put him back. He literally walks over to the tree around the net, puts his horn in it, and just picks up.

That's what that is. That's what this is. That's what that is. He's bred, everybody. So we move him into the 2 acres with a steer on, on single strand electric. That's going to solve our problems.

Well, we just put Minty back up here.

Yeah, you're gonna have a bromance. You and the naughtiest steer we got. Who's our naughtiest steer?

That one right there.

You too. Meet the new bromance. It may seem ironic that they would say stay in a single strand, but we can keep that hotter. It doesn't lift up out of the ground in most places. You'd have to be right on it where it's a fence post. I am so excited about this development. We have finally figured out what is causing these nets to go down. I had suspicion He-Man is putting his horns in and lifting up and getting those going that way. Harriet hadn't come back in heat, has she? So we can assume she's bred, right? He's bred Harriet. Oh shoot, he needs to bring— breed back Vanilla. Another option is to run the cows in a shingle strand on a— and sheep in a net. Remember the calves, they get out and get Is that a worse problem than, than He-Man getting everybody out?

Yeah.

Stud Mephisto gave us none of these problems. He-Man stepped in the water, he tripped, he lifts up water troughs, and now he's lifting fences. It is partly because he's a teenager, and so he's a little bit of a cutout. No, never was. We was fortunate. But right now he needs to, he needs to stay around to breed Vanilla so she can get pregnant and give another calf. She just had a baby. I'm excited about this. We got milk and we figured out what he manned it, so I'm gonna shoot him. Which— it's on the table. We have an ornery bull. Oh my gosh, make them go over it, then you teach them they can do that. Oh, they know. Most important task of the day, bro. I'm excited because we're getting the milk from Honey and we figured out what's causing this— them getting out. Okay, that's why we tie her up. Oh wow, she's— milk is just coming out without even being squeezed. Look at this. Almost 2 gallons. Rebecca, I got 2 gallons of milk, girl.

That's great.

Total this morning? Yeah, total.

Oh, okay. Well, that's good considering the cat.

I mean, Vanilla's calf gets more and more of it every day, right? So we're sort of getting less, but we're about to get more because we're going to separate her too, right? What you making?

I have ground my own grains, so you can see right here I have my— I bought millet and sorghum from Azure.

Okay.

And I was like, you know, if we're gonna cheat, you know, family meal night. Yeah, well, listen, we might as well. Well, I'm just saying, I've been wanting to do this, and I, I— so I have this. This is a grain— this is a grain container. I don't know what you call it. And it, it will grind the grains. Now, I do want to get a mill eventually, like a real mill. But I was like, I'm gonna try it with this first and see if I'm actually gonna do it. But it wasn't even that hard.

All right, good. And it's healthier.

Let me tell you something, so much healthier.

I'm proud of ourselves because we're gonna make the mozzarella, yes, the Italian sausage, the onions, the sauce, the tomato salad.

We didn't grow the grains, but we're never gonna grow these.

We almost need to stop focusing on that.

Yeah.

What's the one thing we didn't grow, right? And celebrate everything that we did because it puts too much attention on what we didn't do.

I agree, I agree.

And look at this, are you serious? This first 8 days of Grow 30 has— she's busy as a bee— sorry, has really helped me realize just how much we are growing, and I'm extremely proud of ourselves.

I am too. I think, uh, what we're doing is amazing.

And our goal for 2 years has been to quit the grocery store. It's been 2 weeks since she's been to the grocery store. Yeah, we supplement with Azure. You know, we first found out— the nail in the coffin for the grocery store was that they spray a peel on the even organic vegetables, which is a preservative, and then you lose— for tomatoes, for example, you've lost 85% of their nutrients by the time they're in the store. Local black tea. The tea we were getting is local from the co-op. The co-op's cool. Yeah, I don't know if we should ever quit there because they have local produce. They don't spray a peel. Yeah, you can buy stuff bulk.

Should I need to buy things?

Yeah, I mean, it's set up like a grocery store, but it's a co-op and they do local whenever possible. So between the co-op and Azure, I think we could quit the grocery store pretty much for life. Whole Foods every once in a while.

Well, yeah. Well, I went to the co-op to get cilantro to make my salsa.

Yeah.

But I'm just using it for that. But I'm like, because my cilantro is not growing yet.

Yeah. Uh-oh.

It's old.

Our cheese-making kit is 4 years old. We had some intentions. So our rennet is bad. We need rennet.

Well, I looked it up and said that the rennet is bad.

You're supposed to freeze it, girl.

Yeah, you're supposed to keep this in the freezer. Who knew?

Thankfully, we've developed some friends, neighbors. I mean, if you're within 5 miles away, you're definitely a neighbor. Do you have some? We had 2 people we could call on. One's already got back to me. They saved the day. They saved the day. Oh, Jonah, we should take her something. What does Miss Leslie not have? Give her some produce. This is good old-fashioned trade. We're gonna go to the master herself. Ruth Ann on how to make mozzarella. Ruth Ann Zimmerman. We're going to do a gallon. It should give us 16 ounces of mozzarella. That's not enough, but we have some other mozzarella. There's a good chance we could mess this up. That's what it's supposed to look like. You guys could go get this recipe at ruthannzim.com. You know, there it is. Okay, let's see how it goes.

So I'm doing my citric acid in the water and mixing it together. Hopefully Old citric acid is okay. I'm gonna buy new stuff. I'm buying, um, my own animal rennet because I had to borrow some. I heated my milk up to 55 degrees and I'm gonna pour in my citric acid. Well, please let it work. Okay, so now I'm gonna heat it to 188— I'm gonna heat it to 88 degrees. I've reached 88 degrees. I've got my rennet in here. All right, I'm gonna stir it in and then I'm gonna let it sit covered. That's my timer. Very excited. Okay, so stop that. I'm going to try to do a clean break. I'm gonna try to show you. So she went like this. Okay, so that wasn't a clean break. So I'm gonna make 5 more minutes. Okay, so now we're going to check to see if it's a clean break, which I think it is. Watch. Is that a clean break? Like that? Was that a clean break?

I don't know.

I have a knife. I don't have a curd cutter, so we're just going to Cut it. Yeah, that's definitely like this. I'm gonna let them rest for 2 minutes. I've got my salt here for my brine. I did a little over a third of a cup of salt. Going to ladle some whey into that to then become my brine for resting. I think this is not directions. I'm not giving anyone directions because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just documenting my journey with making mozzarella, and hopefully it will inspire someone to make their own mozzarella that's never done it. Because you don't have to have your own milk cow to make mozzarella. You can just buy milk and make it. All right, it took longer than a couple of minutes for the curds to fall, to drop to the bottom, and I'm going to ladle off some whey into my salt. Now I'm gonna heat this up on medium. So I'm breaking up the curds, but you— but Ruth Ann said in her video you don't want to make them too small because then it's hard to get them together. Yeah, I know. So— this is crazy. I cannot believe I did this. Like, it's wild.

You made it.

All the people who make mozzarella on the regular are like, yeah, this is normal.

Look at all that pig food.

I know.

Not the curds. This could be easier than buying it at the store because—

Yeah.

You have to earn the money to buy it at the store.

No, definitely. So what she said is to have different size clumps so that they don't need to all— they don't all get ready at the same time. Okay, so I have 3— like, this is the small, medium, and then I have a large clump.

And do you cool that to be able to shred it?

Yeah.

Cool.

So I'll put it in that bowl right there.

What is this byproduct?

This is whey. All right, so we can, um, we'll feed this to the pigs. They love whey. Remember that one farm we went to and they like the pigs won't drink water. Yeah, like, so it's still tearing. So see this right here? It's not like smooth. So when it's smooth and it doesn't tear— see how it's tearing? It's, it's not ready yet. So she says put it back on the bottom of the pot, and eventually what I'll do is when all of these are ready, then we'll put them all together.

First impressions, babe?

I can't believe I did it. Not that it's like so hard. It's just I think, you know, a new skill.

That's from a gallon of milk.

So I got this big one.

Okay.

And then this small one. I'll put those together.

I want to weigh it. That's gonna be about 16 ounces.

I want to weigh it. It says, the internet had said between 1 to 1 and a quarter pounds of mozzarella for a gallon.

16 ounces. You think you'll be making mozzarella on the regular now?

Probably. Every week now. Because it doesn't feel— it doesn't feel so hard.

How about we do pizza every Friday night?

I like it, and I'll grind the grains.

Unless we want something special one night.

Yeah, no, I like it.

Friday night is our family fun night.

Our family night dinners tend to be like a Chipotle Mexican type meal. Pizza, biscuits and gravy.

Fried chicken.

Fried chicken. Those are pretty much the ones that our family really likes. That doesn't, you know, we don't get that on the regular. Yeah, this is almost done.

We could have deluxe hamburgers sometime with hamburger buns. It's important to do just a few meals and do them really well because, yeah, every time you learn something. Oh my gosh, baby.

All right, I'm gonna put it in its— in here. I'm gonna put it in the fridge.

You You soak it in whey in the fridge.

Uh-huh. It's got salt in there, so it's a saltwater brine.

Wow.

Salt brine. Oh, there's still some salt.

Sweet.

Salted whey until chilled. Keep in refrigerator. Okay, so I'm gonna— do I leave it on the counter? I need to look that up.

How many do we need for 4 pizzas? 4 of those? Probably. That's doable. I mean, we got 2 gallons in a day. It wasn't even a great day.

No, well, we don't—

vanilla is not in full milk, right? And, uh, that's— and now we're skimming the cream off the top, so it's actually— yeah, it's easy. We can easily have enough for mozzarella in just 2 days and still have drinking milk.

Oh yeah, well, and then when we have Harriet come into milk, yeah, we'll have plenty. Yeah, I'll be able to make—

because you made that from— we had, we had scooped the cream off the top. There's still cream in the milk, so it's not skim milk. That's what we made this out of. So our butter didn't suffer, our cream didn't suffer, and we still got mozzarella. You give it a try? Yeah, look at that!

We'll see.

We made cheese.

I know, today. Crazy. Is it good?

So good. So stinking good. Yeah, so nice and sweet. We have some from Azure, but it's not as sweet as that. Look, does it shred nice?

Yeah, it shreds decent. I wish I had a different shredder. Like, Ruth Ann has a shredder where it like goes like this and you just do this so you don't have to necessarily hold the—

oh. Was it 1 gallon?

It was 1 gallon of milk.

Dude, 1 gallon of cheese is gonna do 2 pizzas. Becky, we could do 2 gallons in a day. We got our pizza.

I know.

Let's assess. Sausage, cheese, peppers, onions. We got ice cream coming after, blueberries. Family fun night. It's so good. Why are you nervous? It's so good.

No, I'm not nervous, I'm excited.

It's so good. That's definitely gonna be in the rotation, mozzarella. This part? Every week. You nailed it with the crust. It's firm enough.

Too firm? Perfect.

We'll never be able to eat out again pizza.

I know, right? You like it?

And dessert, homemade, homegrown ice cream. Blueberry cobbler. We're all chilled for some reason, so we're gonna eat our ice cream outside. Henry wanted it in two different plates. That make you happy? Yeah? All right, everybody want to say it together?

Happy day!