This soft, spreadable cheese originated in France and is eaten fresh. Gather edges of bag, secure with a rubber band and hang, or press until firm like cream cheese. Pour into a cheesecloth-lined colander and let rest 15 minutes. After setting, cut curds into cubes, place curds over medium heat, and cook five minutes. To make cream cheese from this recipe, reduce rennet to 1/4 tablet and add 1 cup buttermilk when mixing ingredients.

This is a very mild cheese, good with salt and chopped chives. Or, place in a cheesecloth bag and press. Pour curds into a strainer, rinse with hot, then cold water, and drain.

Cut or stir to break into curds and cook over medium heat for five minutes. So, am I the only one who's never heard of junket before? Do any of you use it? I'd love to hear your comments.2 Junket ® Rennet tablets dissolved in 1 tablespoon cold waterīlend all ingredients and place in a heavy saucepan coated with a nonstick spray. Now there's something I should have included on my holiday gift guide! You can order tablets and dessert mixes on their web site-there's even a junket gift set. Founded by a Danish chemist in the 1870s, the company is now part of food giant Redco. There are also vegetarian rennet products available.Īs for junket tablets, I was surprised to realize that this obscure product still has at least one manufacturer in the United States: Junket Desserts, with a factory in upstate New York. According to this biology professor's site, since about 1990 most rennet (also called chymosin or rennin) has been made in a lab, using genetically modified bacteria. Life without cheese was a fate too terrible to ponder. After making the crushing discovery in college that marshmallow Peeps were NOT vegetarian (because of gelatin), I concluded that a certain amount of ignorance was indeed bliss. Yet I never really wanted to find out for sure, because for a long time I was a vegetarian, and I happened to LOVE cheese and ice cream. The mention of rennet has always made me squirm a bit, because I've also heard that it is made from the linings of calves' stomachs. I have heard of that: it's an enzyme that makes milk proteins coagulate, used in many types of cheese and ice cream. Okay.so what's a junket tablet? Google was quick to answer: Rennet. This is very nice with a spoonful of whipped cream on each cup, and bits of preserved ginger or of jelly on it. In winter you must warm the cups till they are like the milk. These must stand for half an hour without being moved, and then the junket will be stiff, and the cups can be put in the ice-box. Then quickly turn in the water with the tablet melted in it, stirring it only once, and pour immediately into small cups on the table. Warm the milk a little, but only till it is as warm as your finger, so that if you try it by touching it with the tip, you do not feel it at all as colder or warmer. Put the sugar into the milk with the vanilla, and stir till it is dissolved. The recipe itself didn't help, either:ġ junket tablet 1 quart milk 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoonful vanilla Break up the junket tablet into small pieces, and put them into a tablespoonful of water to dissolve. Since the only kind of junket I'm aware of is a 'press junket,' I was left scratching my head. Most of the recipes are somewhat familiar, but there was one title in the desserts section that stopped me cold: 'Junket Pudding.' As I wrote yesterday, I'm having fun flipping through a century-old cookbook that once belonged to my great-grandma.

Junkit tablets