A Survey & Recommendations
There are zillions of cheese-related videos. My intention was to find a few for you to use.
Hopefully, you can look at the list below, find a cheese you would like to make and learn something from the video. Almost all of the recipes used are different from the ones in our book Home Cheese Making and on our website, but I believe you can never have too much information.
Because there are so many videos, I could not possibly watch all of them. So, if your video isn’t among the few I recommend here, please do not conclude that it was rejected – the odds are good that it was overlooked.
Note: I didn’t watch the videos about 30 Minute Mozzarella because we already have two good ones at our website, including one by Ricki, our Cheese Queen.
General Overview
1. Although there are great numbers of videos, there aren’t very many different cheeses represented. That may be because it is fairly easy to show how to make a soft cheese or 30 Minute Mozzarella, but you have to know what you’re doing (video-wise) to make a film about the hard cheeses.
2. There are many “trailers” (short ads) for videos on the market about making cheese. (We sell one such video – Cheesemaking 101, but we don’t have a trailer on YouTube.) Some of the trailers are excellent, but if you want to see cheese being made, you have to buy the videos they are representing.
3. Many of the videos were made in countries other than the US, so they use the metric system for their temperatures and quantities. For example, our friend Gavin Webber (The Greening of Gavin) in Australia has a whole collection of excellent tutorials about a wide variety of cheeses. I recommend all his videos, but for this article, I excluded the ones using the metric system.
4. Many videos are made in the throws of enthusiasm by folks who have made cheese once and want to share the fun. For some reason that I will never understand, they tend to begin their presentations by boiling their milk. In this post, I wanted to recommend videos made by experienced cheese makers.
5. My last observation was that many folks who make videos think they have to talk slowly and move slowly. This makes for a very boring video. I ruled out many videos that probably had good content, but I, personally, did not have the patience to watch them.
Quick Picks
(Note: If you click on the links above the videos, you can watch them full size.)
How to Make Cheese
This is a good first step for an absolute beginner. From foodwishes.com, it shows how to make a soft cheese using lemon juice and buttermilk.
https://youtu.be/jBPYopcoeqs
How to Wax Hard Cheese
This comes from the Shepherd School which has a survivalist oriented website. They have a lot of other videos about cheese making and other “back to basics” skills.
https://youtu.be/Z5GJ1H63UjU
Cheeses in Alphabetical Order
Butter
There are a LOT of butter making videos…
Mixer Method
From thepromiselandfarm.com, this video demonstrates how to make butter from raw unhomogenized cow’s milk.
https://youtu.be/TFKljYGiIt0
Shake Method
This is a great one, particularly for kids. (There are more videos by Robert Krampf at thehappyscientist.com.)
https://youtu.be/oropJD0CUxI
Cheddar
1. Jason Akers from The Self-Sufficient Gardener makes cheddar differently than we do in any of our recipes, but it obviously works. This video moves right along, showing the entire process in 3:45 minutes!
https://youtu.be/LXhvDeibGlw
2. This one (from Urban Homesteading Group) is a little slower. They use our recipe, so, of course, we know it works!
https://youtu.be/aen5cQn4qEM
Chevre
Tammy Algood at The Volunteer Gardener (on Nashville Public Television) has invited Paula Butler from standingstonenubians.com to demonstrate making chevre. Ms. Butler definitely knows her stuff.
https://youtu.be/bkG4d4a4kW4
https://youtu.be/_12aqnkaDnE
Cream Cheese
This is a very simple method from copykat.com.
https://youtu.be/4RRBPuGPQHo
Farmer’s Cheese
This is a quick way to make Farmer’s Cheese using vinegar at the starter. The chef (from KerrisChannel1) uses this cheese in the stuffing for pierogies. We prefer to use starter cultures because we can usually taste the vinegar in the final product. But, for something like pierogies, this is fine.
https://youtu.be/BJBO1pSclK0
Fromage Blanc
From about.com, this chef uses lemon juice and buttermilk. (We prefer to use our Fromage Blanc culture because the result is sweeter, but, still, this is a good video.)
https://youtu.be/v6884Dl163g
Gouda
Jeremy Barnes, the head chef at Frog Belly Farms in Boulder, goes through the process of making cheese from goats milk. This is not quite as complete as it could be, but there is good info about “stitching” the cheese.
https://youtu.be/mkbSkiiI7XY
Panir (Paneer)
This is a video from the BBC cooking show ‘Indian Food Made Easy.’ In this video, Anjum Anand uses yogurt as her starter.
https://youtu.be/2yd_7EGM8Iw
