People, read the reviews on this one! The advice by another poster helped me make perfect cheese the very first time with this recipe. Make sure you measure your lemon juice (1/4 cup to a gallon of milk) and use a thermometer. Letting it rest the full ten minutes is important. Also, every time I have made this (and I now use this recipe all the time to make ricotta cheese but also to make syrnyky and blintzes) I have had to reheat the milk mixture to get the full amount of cheese. Remember, until you only see yellow whey left behind, you still have milk solids that, if reheated, will become cheese! Strain it once and if your liquid is still milky white, reheat and add more lemon juice and it will all turn into cheese.

I tried this recipe tonight and the results were excellent. I had only 4 cups of milk, so I used 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. I heated the milk to 190F, removed it from the heat, and stirred in the lemon juice, then let it sit for 10 minutes, then drained it in cheesecloth. Perfect -- I'm going to use this recipe again!

Since lemons vary so much in acidity and yield of juice, I have had much better and more consistent results using white vinegar. I started with a quarter cup, as I did not want a vinegary taste, but it was not sufficient to fully curdle the milk, and I had to repeat the process. A scant half a cup worked perfectly, and no vinegar taste that I could discern. Although the whey looks kind of gross, it's a great ingredient, especially for stews and soups, to which it adds body and richness.

That's almost the way my Grand Mother was doing it except she wouldn't use lemon (as it was not really avaiable in polish country side) but just let stay fresh unpasterized milk for about 2 days to allow it to get sour by itself. The rest is the same. I would suggest not to throw away whey - if drunk,it is a all-natural detox for your body (ie. hangover), if applied on skin, cure for sunburn and, well, it taste good as well :) As for variations - traditionally we add finelly chopped fresh herbs (parsley, spring onion's green) with more salt and some pepper but you can add about anything (my Mother's special was farmer cheese mixed with smoked mackrel and onions - tastes great but no kissing afterward ;) ).

Second try, it went better: much more lemon, I saw yellow liquid...left outside from eve to morn in a very windy night, it came out dry this time. I'll keep trying, but this is the right way

This recipe worked wonderfully for me. It made a cream-cheese-like cheese. My only compliant might be that it wasn't salty enough. But I suppose you could put this on salty crackers and it would be fine. Note---I halved the recipe just to try it---1/2 gallon of milk, juice of 1/2 a lemon. Also, I didn't use fresh milk, I used week-old milk. Worked beautifully, thanks for the great recipe.

I use buttermilk and it works much better. I just put the half gallon container in a large pot, turn it on and wait for the water to boil when the water starts boiling, wait 10 minutes and turn water off. let sit in the water until cooled (about 2 hours) then pour into cheesecloth and drain for 4-12 hours and "bam" great farmers cheese!

this recipe makes wonderful, versatile soft cheese! i think the other reviewers had a problem because of the temperature of the milk when they added the juice. also, lemons vary in size, so measure the juice (or white vinegar works, too). to a gallon of milk, heated to 190 degrees, 1/4 c vinegar or lemon juice should work. and please, use a thermometer! don't rely on "bubbles" which could form at a much lower temperature depending on your altitude! also, let it sit for a full 10 minutes to let the curds fully form! i use 4 layers of cheesecloth (it usually comes folded in half in the packages i buy, so i fold that in half again) so no curds slip through. strain your whey into a container and if it is not yellow, but WHITE, heat the milk and do it all again... the white means there are still milk solids (cheese) contained in the whey that you can extract. when it is through dripping whey out of the cheesecloth (an hour or two) unwrap it and put it in a container in the fridge. i usually make ricotta out of it by sticking the curds in the blender, adding a little milk and blending until smooth. i have made the BEST lasagna with it... VERY creamy mouthfeel and melts delightfully! next, i'm going to try making tangier cream cheese by mixing it with plain, lightly salted yogurt cheese (recipe from this site, but leave out the garlic and black pepper) which is much smoother! PLEASE don't give up on making cheese! try my tips and see how it turns out! thanks, mlyin!

This is great! I make buttermilk by adding 1 T of lemon juice to 1 C milk and wait 5 min. If the milk doesn't curdle, you either don't have enough lemon juice or did not wait long enough. After making the cheese, save the left over butter milk for pancakes (my kids love buttermilk pancakes).

We were skeptical and scared yet hopeful after reading everyone elses reviews on this recipe. But we tried it. We stood over the pot for a really really really long time. We finally saw some bubbles and got excited and added 1/4 cup of lemon juice and waited 10 minutes. We were crushed because it only yielded about 1/4 cup of cheese. My friend here cried and swore she would never make cheese again. Since it sort of worked and we had all this leftover milk, we decided just to do it again. We had nothing to lose. We heated up the milk again (which took much less time since it was already almost boiling) and when it started to bubble we threw in another 1/4 of lemon juice. (This makes two lemons of juice now.) This time, we had almost immediate results! The glee and glory we felt was great. It actually made a good pound or so of cheese this time. What next? Disneyland.

I tried this recipe, followed very carefully, and I never saw much of anything in the way of curds. Basically I still had milk. I was very excited to try it, and it didn't work for me, which was disapointing to say the least. Waited a lot of milk as well.

I tried to make this cheese,a pinch of salt..... heated the milk till the bubbles came to the edges and added the lemon juice....poured it into a cheese cloth....but no cheese. What could I have done wrong? How many layers of cheese cloth do you need? This was my first time making cheese and I would like to know what I could have done before I try it again?

This recipe sounds awesome! I can't wait to try it, especially since it's so ersatile and takes well to peppers. We love hot cheeses. Thanks so much for sharing!