How to make halloumi cheese at home

🇵🇱

How to make halloumi cheese at home

Halloumi - best cheese for grilling

Halloumi is a traditional cheese that comes from Cyprus. It is made from sheep's milk with a possible addition of goat's or cow's milk. It has a compact and fairly elastic texture and due to its high pH, or low acidity, it doesn't melt when heated.

When grilled or fried, halloumi caramelizes on the outside and softens on the inside, without melting. It is safe to say that halloumi is the perfect cheese for grilling and frying.

What does halloumi taste like?

Halloumi is quite salty and definitely very milky in taste. However, you won't find any acidic notes in its flavor, due to the specific production process and the lack of typical acidification in most cheeses. Halloumi is also not a typical aging cheese, which affects the lack of a deep flavor that is characteristic of aging cheeses. This does not change the fact that halloumi is a delicious cheese that will delight many carnivores when grilled or fried ;)

Halloumi can be eaten raw or after being heated. When served cold, it works perfectly as an addition to salads, sandwiches, or as a cheesy snack. Halloumi served warm can be used as a substitute for meat in various forms, from baked dishes to veggie burgers. Personally, I love halloumi fries, which I bread in panko and deep-fry ;)








If you are wondering how to make halloumi cheese, you can find the recipe using cow's milk below. After reading it, you will have to decide for yourself if making halloumi cheese is difficult or not ;)

Recipe for halloumi cheese:

It is best to use raw milk, but if you don't have access to it, pasteurized milk can be used as well. However, the production process will slightly differ, and the quality of the curd will be weaker with store-bought milk, resulting in a more brittle cheese.

• Heat the milk to 32°C. If using pasteurized milk, add calcium chloride at a rate of 2ml per 10l of milk.

• At 32°C, remove the milk from the heat and add the rennet according to the dosage. 
• If using liquid rennet, it's nice to dilute it in water (preferably non-chlorinated/ spring water). In my opinion, diluted rennet spreads a bit easier in milk.

• If using pasteurized milk, add meso-thermo or thermophilic cultures according to the dosage, stir thoroughly, and let sit for 30 minutes, then add the rennet and continue as in the recipe.

• After adding the rennet, wait for approximately 40-50 minutes to obtain a relatively strong curd.

• Once the curd has formed, cut it into 1cm cubes using a knife or harp. First cut from top to bottom, and then as much as possible across. I have been using a long pastry spatula to cut for some time now.

• Next, heat the curd for approximately 20-30 minutes to a temperature of 40°C. It's important to keep stirring the contents of the pot constantly. At the beginning, stir slowly to avoid breaking the curd, and when you see that it's strong enough, you can speed up the mixing. As you mix, you'll see that the curd becomes stronger and releases more whey.

• After heating to 40°C, turn off the heat and continue stirring for another 10-15 minutes to dry the curd.

• Then transfer the curd to a cheese mold or cloth. If you don't have any equipment, you can even use a sieve on which the cheese will drain. The goal is to get rid of excess whey.

• Gently press the cheese under a weight of approximately 2-3kg for two to three hours. I don't recommend going longer, as the pH will drop too much, and the cheese will start to melt during frying. If you didn't use a mold, but rather a cloth or sieve, it's enough to wrap the cheese in a cloth and put something heavy on top. Similarly, in the case of a sieve, just put something on top that will press the cheese.

• In the meantime, heat the whey that was left after making the cheese to a temperature of approximately 80°C. It's best to make ricotta from whey (the recipe for ricotta cheese). If you didn't leave any whey, you can successfully heat water to about 80°C.

• Next, we cut the compressed cheese into pieces weighing around 150-200g. Depending on preference, you can leave the cheese uncut and just use the size that comes out, but the steeping process may take a bit longer with larger pieces.

• We put the cheese pieces into hot whey and wait for them to float to the surface. After the cheese floats to the surface, we keep it in the hot whey for about 10 more minutes. We try to keep the temperature around 80 degrees Celsius the whole time.

• Occasionally, we can gently move the cheeses around so that they don't stick to the bottom.

• Next, we take the cheeses out onto a tray while they are still hot:

• We press each cheese lightly from the top and sprinkle them with salt and dried mint (or place a fresh mint leaf on top).

• We fold them in half and let the cheeses cool down. You can skip the mint and make a version with just salt.

After the cheese has cooled, it is ready to eat right away. As I mentioned earlier, you can eat it raw, fry it, or grill it. If you want to keep it longer, it's best to wrap it in paper or, unlike with other cheeses, vacuum-seal it and keep it in the fridge. Personally, I kept vacuum-sealed cheese for about a month without losing any texture or flavor.




You can see how to make halloumi cheese in my YouTube video with ENG subtitles




Photo by Emma Miller on Unsplash