Cheese, Nabulsi

⚠ UNTESTED. A briefing.

The white brined cheese of Nablus, in Palestine — the cheese in knafeh, and the one on this page where the brine is the recipe.

⭐ Everywhere else in this family the brine is a place the cheese lives. Here the aromatics go into the boiling brine: mahlab, the ground kernel of Prunus mahaleb, and mastic, the resin of Pistacia lentiscus. The cheese is boiled in it, so the seasoning arrives from the outside in, through the liquid, rather than being mixed into the curd.

🔴 And it is deliberately made too salty to eat. The cook is expected to soak the salt back out before using it. ⭐ It is the only cheese in this collection that is finished by the person eating it — the makes page notes that over-salting is one of the few reversible mistakes in cheesemaking, and this is the cheese that makes the reversal part of the design.

⚠ Like halloumi it holds its shape in a pan, and it gets there a different way: boiled in brine rather than cooked in whey.

Ingredients

• 1 gallon whole milk — sheep or goat traditionally, cow works
• 1/2 tsp calcium chloride solution, if the milk is shop-bought
• 1/2 tsp liquid rennet, single strength, diluted in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water
• A pinch of mesophilic culture, optional and easily overdone
• 6 cups water and 1 cup coarse salt, for the boiling brine
• 1 tsp mahlab, ground
• 1/2 tsp mastic resin, crushed to a powder with a pinch of the salt

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Warm the milk to 90 F / 32 C. If you use culture at all, 15 minutes and no more — as with halloumi, acid costs you the calcium cross-links that let the cheese hold its shape.
2. Rennet at a flocculation multiplier of 3, and set firm.
3. Cut to 1/2 inch and stir 20 minutes, then drain and press lightly for an hour or two into a slab.
4. Cut into rectangles about 3 inches by 2, half an inch thick.
5. 🔴 Make the brine and BOIL the cheese in it. Bring the water and salt to a boil, then add the mahlab and the mastic and let them infuse a minute. ⚠ Crush the mastic with a little of the salt first — it is a resin and it will clump and stick to the pan otherwise.
6. Slip the blocks into the boiling brine and cook until they rise, roughly 10 to 15 minutes. They will firm up noticeably.
7. Cool the cheese IN the brine, then jar it in the same liquid. It keeps for months.
8. 🔴 Desalt before you use it, and taste as you go. Soak in fresh cold water for several hours or overnight, changing the water two or three times. ⚠ The aim is to take the harsh edge off, not to erase the cheese — rinse, cut a thin slice, taste it, and decide whether it needs more. This step is not optional and it is not a rescue; it is how the cheese is meant to be served.
9. For knafeh: desalt, then slice or grate.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it is not 🔴 UNTESTED, and built from published descriptions of the traditional method rather than from a maker in Nablus. Treat the quantities as a starting point.

🔴 The brine is the aging environment, not storage A brined cheese has no rind, so there is no barrier between the liquid and the paste: whatever is in the brine is in equilibrium with the cheese, permanently. A plain salt brine pulls calcium out of the cheese down the concentration gradient, and the surface goes slippery, then soft, then to mush — in about a week, on a perfectly good cheese. That is not spoilage, it is chemistry. Use the storage formulation in Cheese Brine, Saturated: 7-8% salt, 0.5% calcium chloride, and acidified with a splash of vinegar so the brine sits near the cheese’s own pH rather than well above it.

⭐ The two aromatics, and why they are unusual Mahlab is the kernel inside the stone of the St Lucie cherry, Prunus mahaleb, ground to a powder — faintly of almond and cherry, and used across the eastern Mediterranean in breads and pastries more often than in cheese. Mastic is a resin tapped from Pistacia lentiscus, pine-like and slightly bitter, and it is a texturiser as much as a flavouring.

⭐ Both go into the brine rather than the curd, and that is the point of the cheese. In a family where the brine is usually the thing that quietly ruins your work, this is the one that puts the brine to work.

⚠ And a third seasoning that is NOT in the brine Most photographs of nabulsi show the blocks studded with black seeds, and those are a separate thing again — nigella (Nigella sativa, حبة البركة) or black sesame, pressed onto the surface rather than infused through the liquid. ⚠ Sources and sellers disagree about which, and at least one photographer captioned their own picture “nigella or black sesame” rather than commit. Add them at the moulding stage if you want them; they are decoration and aroma, not preservation, and they are not what makes this cheese.

⚠ A note on the desalting, because it changes how you should judge the recipe A nabulsi straight from the jar is not a failed cheese and should not be tasted as one. The salt is doing preservation work over months without refrigeration, and the soak is the last step of the make, performed in the kitchen where it is eaten rather than where it was made. Judge it after the soak.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/brined-and-pickled/ on the site.