Farmers Cheese and the Lékué Cheese Maker

I got the Lékué Cheese Maker several years ago when I was doing ice cream and got interested in Creole Cream Cheese and other farmers cheeses, plus I’ve also used it to strain yogurt to Greek-style. It’s a handy little device that I don’t use enough! It has built in measuring and goes in the microwave – ok, I’ve lost the book, and the recipes online are all wonky, in European weight measures and degrees, with an 800-watt microwave while mine is 1200-watt. So it takes some translation!

CONVERSIONS NOTE: If you have a different wattage and need to convert your microwave time from a written recipe, use Microwave Watt. Typing “XX degrees centigrade to Fahrenheit” or vice versa in your search bar will return the number you need if you run into one when you need the other.

From what I can tell, the variations of this cheese maker formula are –

• using whole cow milk, whole goat milk, low-fat milk (Creole Cream Cheese) or any mammal milk, any fat %;
• using buttermilk, yogurt, citric acid, vinegar and/or lemon to create curds;
• adding flavor like herbs, nuts, fruits, during cooking, or during straining, or after chilling

Some of the cheeses I have made are Mascarpone, Creole Cream Cheese, Mozzarella, Paneer and Ricotta, but not always in the Lékué.

Print Recipe

Farmers Cheese in the Lékué

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Ingredients

• 1 quart whole milk
• optional: some cream I used because I had it, less than 1/2 cup
• juice of 1 lemon (should be 1 T lemon or vinegar I think)
• salt

Instructions

1

Heat the milk in the cheese maker bowl in the microwave - for my 1200 watt microwave, 8:30 minutes got it to 198° F (92° C); for the 800 watt it says 13-14 minutes.

2

Add lemon or vinegar, measured using the green cheese maker lid.

3

Let it sit for 30 minutes for the curds to separate from the whey.

4

Pour through strainer basket - I did this over a larger bowl to catch the whey. First, it overflowed; second, it burned my fingers!! I ended up adding a regular strainer while I let the Lékué strainer sit in a quart-sized yogurt container. Per Lékué, you hold the strainer over the sink and let the whey go down the drain.

5

You could line the strainer with a cloth or cheesecloth, especially if the curds are very small.

6

Put the strainer basket in the cheese maker bowl after straining, and at this point I added some salt and stirred. Put the green lid on it.

7

Chill the container for 1+ hours.