The most tedious and frustrating part of the cheesemaking process for me is cutting curds.  We’re using a standard tallish skinnyish pot and cutting with a long knife; it’s easy enough to cut a grid in the top of the cheese, but stirring and cutting the resulting long thin strips down to size takes a long time, especially with cheddar.  It seems as though it would be faster to use some kind of wire grid, but I haven’t seen such a thing advertised.  Do any of you have special tools/shortcuts to expedite this process?  I use a whisk on Jack curds, which are tougher because of the higher temp; I’m trying figure out what to do for cheddar, gouda and colby.

I use a canning pot (5gal) and the longest knife I have. I use a whisk when it calls for small curds. I am also on the look out for one of those cooling racks u get in the kitchen section that would be just the right size.

This is prolly wrong, but when I did a cheesemaking course, 1 day fetta and camembert, we used the skimmer thing, that sort of flattish holey big spoon thingy, to do the horizontal cuts. We sort of jiggled it sideways through the curds, layer by layer.

braufrau - 10 March 2009 07:50 PM

This is prolly wrong, but when I did a cheesemaking course, 1 day fetta and camembert, we used the skimmer thing, that sort of flattish holey big spoon thingy, to do the horizontal cuts. We sort of jiggled it sideways through the curds, layer by layer.

I believe the name you’re looking for is a ‘slotted spoon’. Ricki’s DVD shows it being slid down then moving it horizontally.

Check the thread entitled “new curd knife” on page 2.  Dave’s got a new custom made knife that he really likes.

Joanna….
Rich is right, I really am in love with my curd knife.
The vertical cuts have always been fairly easy for me but the horizontal cuts….man, what nightmare.
I had a friend weld up the stainless steel, 1/8” round stock into a frame. I then purchased stainless steel “trolling line” from Cabella’s online and just wrapped the wires around the frame.
One thing that was necessary was to notch the outside of the frame every half inch with the edge of a file. This gives the stainless wires a place to grip once they are wrapped.
I currently have my welder doing a vertical knife (hmmm…I guess it’s been over three weeks now so I need to call him and check on the progress) which should speed up the cutting drastically.
I was a little concerned since I placed the wires at 1/2” spacing but this is really not a problem at all. I’ve found that if I need to do 3/8” cuts I turn the knife through the pot twice, instead of once. If I need 1/4” cuts I turn the knife 4 times through the curd and I have nice, even 1/4” cubes once finished.
I had my knife made 1/2 the diameter of the pot and it really does work perfectly. Also, the 1/8” frame does very little damage to the curd upon inserting and removing.
A few weeks ago I did a lot of reading on the importance of cutting the curd and one thing that was pointed out is that it is very important to make the cuts as quickly as possible (from the University of Gelph website). This is what convinced me to have my welder make the vertical knife as well.
One other thing I will add…..
Most curd knives have the wires soldered in place instead of being twisted on, like mine.
I actually see this as a problem area if one does not have the proper equipment to make repairs to the knife.
If I break a wire, I can simply remove the old wire and replace it with a new one.
Also, if my wires loosen (which some of them will after doing a half a dozen batches, or so) I can simply give them a twist with a pair of needle nose pliers and they are tight once again.
The only potential problem I can see with the twisted wire method is that it might be a place for bacteria to hide, but since I used Rich’s advice and boil the knife and also give it a 5 minute soak in Star San sanitizer, I don’t see this as ever being a problem.
Below is a picture of the knife AFTER I finished polishing and sanitizing. It now looks a lot better than it did when it first came back from the welder.
Hope this information helps.

Dave

Horizontal cut is the most frustrating, time consuming, hard to do part in cheesemaking

Horizontal knife is a heaven

so this knife .. its the width of your pots diameter? or radius?
you insert it into the pot and gently rotate it?
Hmmm ... might be another thing for my husband to make

Braufrau,
Mine is the radius of the pot. I don’t see why one made to the diameter would not work but of course you would use double the materials.
Also, the only stainless steel round stock I could find locally was 12” long so I was limited as to how large I would make the knife.
Hope this helps.

Dave

Thanks Dave. Sure does help.

I made this last week and used it today to cut the curds for a tomme. It is based on a traditional tool used in the Auvergne called “frenhau” to cut the curds for St. Nectaire. It works great, might be a little hard on the curd.

Its pretty! But how do you do the horizontal cuts??

By moving it up and down in the vat, it cuts both vertical as horizontal.

Looks great, some small artisan places use a branch and use it like a whisk.

hmmm

I’m going to make one from a pancake frying ring as raw material. Great tool.
Till now I use a long knife and a whisk.