How to Make Halloumi: A Quick and Easy Recipe

Making your own halloumi (or any cheese for that matter!), is incredibly intimidating. It seems like it will be an extremely hard and tedious process that requires special ingredients and particular cooking tools. The truth is, it isn’t and it doesn’t! Making your own halloumi is an extremely easy process that requires few ingredients, that you can easily find from your local store, and pretty standard equipment (asides from a cheese press). So if you’re looking to make your own halloumi quickly and easily, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get into it.

Halloumi Ingredients:

• 2 litres of full fat milk
• 2 junket tablets
• 1.5 teaspoons of grinded rock salt

Halloumi Making Equipment

• Large saucepan
• Thermometer
• Microwave safe bowl
• Cheese press
• Muslin cloth
• Coffee grinder or food processor
• Funnel

Method:

You can watch the video above for the full tutorial. I definitely recommend watching the video at least once before you attempt to make the halloumi as the written instructions can get confusing, particularly if you’ve never made cheese before. The video also shows the consistency of the mixture throughout every step of the process. Once you’ve watched the video and are ready to start making your own halloumi the written instructions are below.

1. Firstly, grind the salt into a fine powder. You can do this in a coffee grinder or a food processor. You only need 1.5 teaspoons of grinded salt for this recipe but if you’re intending on making this recipe again I’d just recommend grinding as much as possible so you have extra for next time. Set the grinded salt aside.
2. Place two junket tablets in a small container, bowl or glass.
3. Add 1 tablespoon of room temperature water to the junket tablets and mix them, dissolving the junket tablets in the water. Set the junket tablet and water mix aside.
4. Add the 2 litres of full fat milk into a saucepan. NOTE: Rather than throwing out the empty container from the milk, keep it and set it aside, as you can use it later.
5. Place the saucepan on the stove top and heat the milk slowly on low heat until the milk reaches 30 degrees Celsius. Keep stirring the milk while you wait for it to reach 30 degrees Celsius.
6. Once the temperature of the milk reaches 30 degrees Celsius turn the heat off.
7. Add the dissolved junket tablet and water mixture to the milk and stir slowly and gently for 30 seconds.
8. After stirring for 30 seconds place the muslin cloth over the saucepan and let the milk and junket tablet mixture sit for 30-40 minutes.
9. The mix will now have a texture that slightly resembles jelly. Pour the mix into a microwave safe bowl and heat it for 2 minutes in the microwave.
10. Take the mix out from the microwave and stir it.
11. Once stirred put the mix back in the microwave for 1.5 minutes.
12. Take the mix out and stir it. Note: the cheese mix will start to clump and will separate from the whey. At this point the cheese clumps should be springy when you press your finger on them. If they are not you may need to put the mix back in the microwave for another 30 seconds.
13. Place the muslin cloth over the top of the saucepan. Pour the cheese and whey mix into the saucepan. Ensure that the cheese clumps are caught in the muslin cloth. The whey mixture however should drain through the muslin cloth and into the bottom of the saucepan.
14. Lift the corners of the muslin cloth and bring them together so the cheese mix is held tight in a ball.
15. Pour the whey liquid back into the empty milk container, use a funnel to prevent spillage.
16. Wrap the top of the muslin cloth onto the saucepan handle (or somewhere else that allows the cheese mixture to drain). Place something (literally anything) under the saucepan to lift it up slightly and keep it at an angle.
17. Let the cheese mixture drain for 1 hour.
18. After 1 hour of letting the cheese mixture drain pour any of the liquid whey from the saucepan into the empty milk container (with the remainder of the whey that you put in previously).
19. Remove the cheese mixture from the muslin wrap and place it into the saucepan.
20. Break the cheese mixture up with your hands.
21. Add the 1.5 teaspoons of grinded salt and mix it in.
22. Place the cheese mixture into the cheese press.
23. Once in, press the mixture down with a spoon and place the top of the press on the mixture.
24. Put the milk container, that contains the liquid whey, on top of the cheese press. It will weigh down on the press, applying additional pressure to assist with draining.
25. Leave the cheese in the press for 2-3 hours.
26. After 2-3 hours remove the cheese from the press. Congrats! You made halloumi that is now ready to cook!

That’s it! How easy was that?! It’s safe to say that after learning how easy it is to make halloumi we’ve become addicted. We now incorporate halloumi into our dinners multiple times throughout the week.

We hope you enjoyed our halloumi recipe as much as we do! Make sure to let us know in the comments if you gave our recipe a shot and what you thought of it.