Selfsufficientish.com

Hi everyone

I want to make parmesan from locally sourced high welfare standards milk. But I can't accept slaughtering a calf just for the rennet. And no, I don't eat lamb for the same reason.

I need to look at vegetable rennet. Of those on offer stinging nettle, purple thistle, melon, knapweed, yaroow, butterwort plant, fig, and safflower, I don't think any are suited to hard cheeses.

However, I did come across one recipe, the owner of which I cannot get hold of. They suggest nettle extract gel capsules from a health food store. Fresh nettles are recommended only for semi hard cheese like gouda, so I presume this must be some sort of concentrated dose.

I want to make this myself. So, does anyone know A) if this would actually work in making parmesan, and B) how you can make this extract yourself and to what concentration / quantity?

There is a vegetarian parmesan on the market, but they use the microbial rennet produced in a lab which I don't want to do.



Thanks

My understanding is that you can't use nettle rennet for aged cheeses (such as Parmesan) for two main reasons

1) it makes cheese, more than a couple of weeks old, bitter - I'm not sure if it's the nettle or the salt which causes this

2) because a very salty solution is needed to get the coagulant out of the leaf it inhibits the ageing process

I'm not sure how these go together because if it won't age in the first place then you'll end up with an old, bitter but not aged i.e. hardened cheese, yes?

So, can the coagulant part be drawn out without salt? If you can do that you might have it cracked. But bear in mind this method has been used for a very long time - you'd think someone would have improved it by now.

Some really good points.
I need to get to the bottom of the claims made by that person online.
If you boil the leaves in brine to extract the coagulant, why can't you just rinse it in fresh water??

It's the liquid that's used, not the leaf pulp.

I'm guessing that these capsules are just highly concentrated. So you might be able to reduce the liquid, without adding salt. Given the price of milk and nettles (which hopefully would be free) it would be worth a go.

Maybe some of our resident chemistry boffins could explain what the salt does.

My final concern is that super-concentrated nettle juice might turn your cheese bright green - not necessarily a problem, Sage Derby is fairly lurid.

Probably rupture the cell walls by increasing the osmotic pressure.

Just a guess, though.

Assuming that is the reason, how else can you break down cellulose. Heat, I think, but it gets boiled anyway so maybe not.

Just thought I would let you guys know that I've had some in depth discussions with the person I referred to who claimed to have made the parmesan with vegetable and nettle rennet.

Well it seems that what he has infact been using was microbial vegetable rennet, which he has very successfully used to make parmesan.

He also successfully made one batch with nettle rennet gel capsules, but has since not been able to find a supplier.

He seems to think it would be possible with standard nettle rennet, so long as you boil it long enough you could use less salt.

Some serious experimentation required

Anyway, will post back when I have my results. If it doesn't work out then I'll just leave parmesan out of my diet.

Good luck looking forward to hearing how it goes...