Show HN: Tool to calculate how much milk is needed to make an amount of cheese
cheesemak.ing
cheesemak.ing
(the main three variables that dramatically alter boil time are soft vs hard boiled, starting temp [e.g. refrigerated vs room temp], and egg weight)
The number I got for a 60 gram egg starting at 4.4degC at sea level reaching soft-boiled temps was 5m17s. Compared to the website saying 6m58s. That's a pretty big error somewhere.
[0]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%2860grams%29%5E%282... [1]: http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/CW061201-1.pdf
> The Wolfram Language natural language processing functionality is a combination of rule-based and machine learning language models, including LLMs. It builds on top of advanced text mining and string manipulation capabilities and is integrated with a large visualization suite and extensive built-in linguistic data.
Also appreciate the question/prompt/command (!?) being encoded in the url.
Thanks for sharing!
[1] https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/NaturalLanguage....
I remember using it as a student back around 2010 and it worked the same then. Actually I think the free tier used to be better before they introduced the "pro" version with subscription fee.
From empirical experience, I completely agree! 5 minutes is about right, 7 minutes will give you a hard-ish yolk..
Ehh, I don't believe that's where eggs come from originally :)
This makes a significant difference: with a US L egg at sea level, soft boil time is 8 minutes 27 seconds from the fridge in Fahrenheit, 6 minutes 58 seconds in Celsius. In my experience, the right answer is 6 minutes even, though opinions about runniness vary...
(Sending a note about this to feedback@omnicalculator.com)
edit: also, it says US L egg = 60 g? That's not right, unless maybe they're counting the shell, which they shouldn't. 50 g is about right and what cronometer.com says. cronometer also says 56 g = extra large, 63 g = jumbo.
Good grief. Three PhD authors <sigh> ... when did we all forget the scientific method?
"Our" eggs, starting at room temperature, boiled for exactly 3 minutes 30 seconds, gives us the perfect soft-boiled consistency we like. Every time.
Why would one need a website to calculate this. Honestly?
// script.js
// Yield factors for each cheese type
const baseYieldFactors = { "cheddar": 0.10, "mozzarella": 0.20, "parmesan": 0.09, "gouda": 0.12, "brie": 0.15, "camembert": 0.15, "blue cheese": 0.13, "feta": 0.17, "ricotta": 0.20, "monterey jack": 0.10, "swiss": 0.10, "colby": 0.10, "provolone": 0.10, "cottage cheese": 0.18, "cream cheese": 0.20 };
// Milk type factors
const milkTypeFactors = { "cow": 1.0, "goat": 0.9, "sheep": 1.1, "buffalo": 1.2, "camel": 0.8, "mare": 0.7, "reindeer": 1.15, "yak": 1.10, "donkey": 0.75 };
// Calculate milk volume based on cheese type, milk type, and desired weight
var baseYield = baseYieldFactors[cheeseType]; var milkAdjustment = milkTypeFactors[milkType]; var adjustedYield = baseYield * milkAdjustment;
// Calculate milk volume range
var minMilkVolume = weight / (adjustedYield * 1.1); var maxMilkVolume = weight / (adjustedYield * 0.9);
I have heard ricotta can be made by just adding lemon or vinegar to milk. It's basically curds.
Ricotta in Germany was completely different from what I have found in the US and I have long wondered if I could make ricotta I would actually eat.
Look up a basic mozzarella making kit if you need the tools, but basically some cheese cloth and a thermometer are the only thing you might not have in a standard kitchen.
The most complicated might be to get some real milk (raw) for best results; if you don't, depending on the pasteurization process you might need to fortify the milk with calcium chloride.
I've eaten a lot of Italian industrial ricotta and the home-made stuff is just entirely on another level.
- 1 gallon whole milk, 1 liter heavy cream.
- Heat to 180F while stirring
- Add half a cup of vinegar and stir thoroughly for a minute or two
Then you just wait until it's cooled enough to pick up and pour through some cloth. After that I salt, add garlic, chopped herb, anything will do.
One tip I can offer is to jar it up before it gets cold so it is easier to get in the jar without air pockets. Lasts in the fridge for a few weeks, freezes fine.
An improvement might be to make milk type the first choice, and limit the cheese options based on milk type selection. Or maybe just combine both into a single selection with milk type option groups.
Obviously dryer cheeses are more dense and require more milk per kg as they age
The cheese choice is severly lacking :) The milk type choice is nice, as Cow's milk contains more water compared to goat or sheep's
What does this calculator mean by the cheese type "Swiss"?
I imagine this is what the calculator means too.
But I take offense at "Swiss cheese"... are we talking Gruyere? Emmental? Appenzeller? Raclette? Tilsiter? Sbrinz? Or one of the many other delicious cheeses we have in Switzerland?
Now all it needs is some cheese recipes.
Turns out making cheese is -really- easy. Milk, rennet, culture, time.
Making -specific kind of cheese- though is hard. Recipes are very precise (so you need things like good pH measurers).
The biggest problem for me was the waiting time. I'm into software - fix, recompile, run, repeat. Whereas 'leave for 3 months, 6 months, a year, and see if you got it right' was too slow of a feedback loop.
These days I only make soft-cheeses, take a week or less, and only in tiny batches (and irregularly).
Overall learning the process was fun, and a cool thing to do, but if you want good cheese, well, find a good cheese store :)
A rule of thumb is 10% cheese, 90% whey. So it takes a lot of milk to make say 1kg of cheese. And if you're waiting a year 1kg gets eaten pretty quickly.
The size of your fridge (and the cost of running it) dictates the size of your pipeline.
If an error is discovered, and that error was consistent through the pipeline, that's an expensive error. (Its all usually edible, but if you're trying to make say cheddar and it's not cheddar, then you have a lot of something else...)
At my local cheese shop there might be 10 varieties of cheddar. I can eat all of them but 1 or 2 are my personal favourites. Making something that matches one of those would take decades of experimenting.
Turns out, I like -eating- cheese, more than I like -making- it.
Especially if you have whey from goat milk, you get excellent brunost. Put it on waffles together with some strawberry jam, best thing in the world.
Strongly seconded. Unless you have a full blown cheese cellar in which to store a hundred wheels and experiment over years, there's pretty much only one cheese that the average cook can make that would be cheaper and taste better than buying in a store (unless you're in Italy) and that would be burrata. Store bought burrata has a much bigger markup than other cheeses and the machine method they use to make it here in the US is inferior to the hand shredded version.
I expect, like most quick cheeses, it's all about the texture, not the flavour?
I would start with the Americanized version at Chipotle and move up from there :)
On a serious note, I'm not sure if you can use the usual quick mozzarella recipe [1] for burrata because the mozzarella might not be stretchy enough to form the shell or the mixture might be too acidic - I forgot what the issue was. You'll have to use the proper recipe [2] which is quite a bit more involved (I also recommend looking up videos of Italian cheesemongers making burrata for the technique, there are tricks to it). A sous vide recirculator comes in real handy.
Burrata is more about the flavor of the cream which combines very nicely with the texture of the cheese. Definitely recommend getting the cream from a proper dairy even if you don't get raw milk for the cheese. The stracciatella absorbs the cream which creates a unique and very rich flavor.
[1] https://cheesemaking.com/products/30-minute-mozzarella-recip...
Also, cheese curd is super easy. Ripening it into something fancy is a trick, but, poutine!
It’s honestly so much nicer also, I always find store bought paneer to be somewhat hard and lack the buttery taste of the fluffy homemade stuff
The paneer turns so soft and fluffy that it’s hard for me to distinguish from homemade.
Shepherds and sheepherders in my country make traditional kinds of cheese, which are very specific, with ease. They use their eyes and experience, they don't use lab glassware and they don't measure PH.
Technology is great for making a large amount of cheese that’s very similar. You don’t need it to make any specific type of cheese that’s over 100 yrs old though, and that’s nearly all of them.
"go to this specific valley in switzerland and spend 20 years immersing yourself in their cheesemaking tradition" is arguably a lot more difficult than following some specific procedures and measuring carefully.
where i live, cheese shops do not exist. european style cheese has to be imported and is way to expensive. local options are barely useful for pizza.
i learned how to make yoghurt (from my chinese wife, surprisingly) and a few times turned milk going bad into a cheese experiment that sometimes worked out.
now i am making kefir which turns out to be a lot easier than yoghurt because it works at room temperature, whereas yoghurt needs milk slightly heated.
Having said that, they introduced me to this handy site where they said folks can get any missing equipment and the calcium chloride additive for store milk: https://cheesemaking.com/collections/beginner
Then, speaking of the raw milk, because I know quite a few folks are in the Bay Area, they said - and I confirmed - they sell raw milk at the Oakland farmer's market on Saturday https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/grand-lake Regrettably I don't recall the name of the vendor, and of course have no idea if they're present every Saturday
However, in the back they have a little shop for Raw Milk Single Cow.
So you can subscribe and its super limited quantity, but they provide whole raw milk sourced from a single cow.
Super amazing - and the plug that forms on the top is amazing creme.
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Another option is to make friends with whomever you can to learn where high-end products are sourced at MIchelin restaurants, I have someone very close to me who was at french laundry for years and their vendors (aside from certain veggies grown in the garden across the street) were from very particular vendors - such as their lamb which comes only from one specific farm.
The point being that you should find out who high-end restaurants source from and seek them out directly.
(most of the crab sold in San Francisco restaurants was sold by Royal Hawaiian Seafood, but the public could only purchase from them for one hour on a tuesday between 12pm and 1pm - but you get the same live crab that SF charges $65+ for, for $5...)
(Find out restaurants of ilk for things you like)