Kitchen laboratory: Proteins and Cheese making

Step 14 Unexpected trouble

If happens that the curds are very light (like in my case) and you cannot avoid disturbing it, nor take them with a fine colander, then you have to improvise (like I did) and filter the whey to separate the curds.

I used a clean cloth and a fine colander to filter it, the draining was very slow because the curds covered the cloth and it made very slow the whey draining. However, as I told you before, I got an acid creamy, soft and spread able curd, is not ricotta because but you can see the whey proteins now :).

My theory is that I got this kind of curd because I added too much vinegar to the whey (by accident I added like about 250 mL instead of 50 mL, this is why I recommend you to use a spoon or your dropper). However the objective was accomplished because I could demonstrate three ways of denaturate proteins: by enzyme action, by temperature and by changing pH.

If you want to help me to confirm my theory, then add about 250 - 300 mL of vinegar to your whey and let me know if you get the same type of curd, and please be patient while the curds drains(at the end, I helped it by gently squeezing the cloth and I used my spatula to remove it from the cloth, so make sure your cloth is really clean to avoid contaminating it)