Who doesn’t love a good block of Parmesan, sharp cheddar, or creamy brie?
For cheese lovers, that satisfying flavor and texture is something we always come back for.
As many hobbyist cheesemakers know firsthand though, crafting the perfect wheel or wedge requires care and precision throughout the process.
This includes adding rennet properly. If you add too much rennet in cheese, it will ruin it.
In this guide, I’ll go through everything you need to know about this.
Problems Caused By Too Much Rennet
If you add too much rennet when making cheese, it creates a bunch of problems that mess with how good the final product turns out.
Also Read: Does Rennet Go Bad
Some of the main ones are:
Flavour And Moisture
Too much rennet makes the milk curds shrink really fast, pushing out a bunch of liquid whey.
This causes a big loss of moisture, fat, and other stuff that makes the cheese taste good.
Important things like lactose, fats, proteins, and other flavorful components end up getting lost instead of staying in the curd.
So, the cheese ends up getting dry and tough, almost like rubber.
Even if you try to press and age it, it still can’t hold enough moisture, and it stays stiff and dry because the extra whey keeps draining away instead of staying in the cheese.
Plus, this stops the cheese from developing its proper flavor as it ages.
Appearance
When cheese gets too much rennet, it doesn’t look good either.
The curds become super tight and firm but can’t stick together properly. So Instead of a smooth and solid texture inside, you end up with cracks, and holes all over the cheese.
Also Read: Cheese Taste Like Dirt
The shape might even get weird, bulging in some parts and collapsing in others, making it crumbly instead of sliceable.
Overall, it gets this dense, rubbery feel and isn’t flexible because it’s way too stiff.
Difficulties With Aging
When the curds are not formed correctly, they stick together too fast, and as moisture escapes, it creates a situation where air can’t circulate properly during aging.
This lack of air leads to a problem because certain cheeses need it to develop the outer layer (rind) that’s crucial for their ripening process.
Without the right conditions, the cheese can’t soften and break down in a controlled way.
In the end, all these issues with flavor, texture, moisture, and aging result in a cheese that doesn’t have the expected characteristics of its type.
It’s a letdown, and it feels like a waste of ingredients and the effort put into making the cheese.
Salvaging Cheese With Too Much Rennet
Before despairing and tossing out what seems like a plastic-textured mess, there are a few ways to rescue the batch:
Blending It
One option is to blend this cheese into a normal batch of the same variety.
Shredding or dicing the rubbery cheese and mixing with properly made cheese can help balance out and dilute the excess rennet.
Also Read: Brie Smells Like Cabbage
Play with ratios starting small until you achieve an acceptable texture and flavor.
The issues caused by rennet tend to lessen when you add higher moisture, unaltered curds.
Cooking Cheesy Dishes
Even if the rubbery cheese isn’t great on its own, it can still be put to good use in cooked dishes like lasagnas, casseroles, mac and cheese, pizza, and more.
When you melt it and mix it with other ingredients, the cooking process helps hide the textural problems.
Surprisingly, the excess rennet might even be an advantage.
It prevents the cheese from turning into a complete oil slick and maintaining some thickening ability when heated.
Reworking Fresh Curds
For fresh cheeses like ricotta, you can catch the problem early, right after the curdling but before the curds set completely.
In the first hour or so, you can quickly reheat the curds close to scalding temperature, which helps to remelt them and manually redistribute the rennet.
After cooling again, knead the curds thoroughly to reintroduce moisture and develop the gluten strands.
However, this is only possible in fresh cheese as its curds react quickly – which isn’t possible with aged varieties.
Tips For Getting The Rennet Right
Always follow guidelines for the cheese by doing thorough research before beginning.
This gives amounts, timings and steps specialized for that type of cheese.
Also don’t estimate. Carefully measure it with proper kitchen tools for accuracy. You might also need to dilute some rennet first to distribute it evenly.
And always watch coagulation time.
The time range at which the milk begins to coagulate offers clues if rennet is off.