Whey Cheeses
Drain a cheese and roughly 80–90% of what you started with runs off as whey. It looks like waste. It isn’t quite — and this small, frugal, under-appreciated family is what’s left in it.
I have a lot of time for these. You have already got the whey, it is already hot, and the alternative is pouring it on the compost.
What’s still in the whey
The milk page explains the composition; the relevant part is that about 20% of milk protein is whey protein, it is not in the casein micelles, and neither acid nor rennet coagulates it.
So when your cheddar’s whey drains away, that protein goes with it. Untouched. Still there.
Two facts unlock it:
- whey proteins have an isoelectric point of about pH 5.1–5.3 — different from casein’s 4.6;
- and they denature above about 65 °C, and have poor thermal stability generally.
Heat them hard enough and they unravel, exposing sticky regions that bond to each other. Add acid and you coagulate them into a second, much smaller, much finer curd.
That’s the whole family. It’s the heat-acid route applied to the leftovers.
Ricotta means “recooked”
And that is literally what it is — the whey, cooked a second time.
Which makes the supermarket version a bit of a fraud, or at least a different product. Most commercial “ricotta” is made from whole or skim milk with acid added, not from whey at all. It’s a perfectly decent fresh cheese, and it is not ricotta in the original sense.
True whey ricotta is a revelation if you’ve only had the other kind: finer, sweeter, lighter, faintly caramelised from the heat. The yield is small — a gallon of whey gives you a modest bowl — which is exactly why industry doesn’t bother.
Timing matters. Use the whey while it’s fresh and still warm, ideally within an hour or two of draining. Whey that has sat and acidified gives a poorer, grainier result.
🔴 Brunost, which is not cheese at all
The Norwegian brown cheese, and the family’s most interesting member because it isn’t really a member — or a cheese.
Instead of coagulating the whey’s protein, brunost boils the whey down. Water evaporates, the solids concentrate, and the lactose caramelises through the Maillard reaction — which is what gives it that brown colour and the sweet, fudgy, faintly goaty caramel flavour that divides opinion so sharply.
There is no curd. No coagulation. It’s a reduction, not a cheese, and calling it cheese is a courtesy of language.
Two sub-varieties worth distinguishing, because the names get used loosely:
- Gjetost uses primarily goat’s milk whey — sharper, more assertive.
- Fløtemysost uses cow’s milk only — milder.
It also still contains lactose, since caramelisation reduces but does not eliminate it — worth knowing if that’s why you’re eating cheese.
And the technique is the honest ancestor of nothing else in this section. Everything else here is about coagulating protein. Brunost is about boiling sugar. It belongs in this family only because the raw material is the same.
The members
Ricotta (Italy), from whey — and ricotta salata, the salted, pressed, aged version, which is a genuinely different and underused cheese.
Brunost, gjetost, mysost, fløtemysost (Norway and Scandinavia) — the caramelised branch.
Mizithra (Greece), fresh or dried and hard enough to grate.
Anari (Cyprus), made from halloumi whey, which is a tidy pairing — the same make gives you two cheeses.
Requesón (Mexico and Spain), urdă (Romania), brocciu (Corsica) — the same idea recurring independently everywhere people made cheese and disliked waste.
Making one
This is the easiest cheese in this entire section, and it is free.
You have just drained a cheese. The whey is hot. Heat it further — hard, past 85 °C or so — add a little acid, and watch a fine curd rise. Skim it off through cloth. Salt it or don’t.
Three things worth knowing:
- Yield is small. Do not expect much. That is not a failure.
- Use fresh warm whey. Whey that has stood gives grainier, poorer results.
- Sweet whey works better than acid whey — the whey from a rennet cheese generally gives a better ricotta than the whey from an already-acidified one, because you have more headroom to work with.
I find it a genuinely satisfying end to a cheesemaking day: you have a wheel going into the cave for eight months, and a bowl of ricotta for supper, from the same gallon of milk.
How to make one: Making whey & second-run cheese — why the cheese you made first decides whether there is a second one at all.
Next: smoked and flavoured cheeses — including the smoked salt that got me hooked.
Sources
- Brunost as caramelised whey rather than a coagulated cheese: the Maillard reaction on lactose as the whey is slowly simmered; gjetost from goat’s milk and the milder fløtemysost from cow’s milk only; and that caramelisation reduces but does not eliminate lactose: Brunost (Wikipedia) and Scandinavia Standard, “What is Brunost?”
- Whey protein’s isoelectric point (pH 5.1–5.3) and denaturation above 65 °C: University of Guelph, Dairy Science and Technology
Comments (0)