How to Make Mozzarella at Home

This article is a part of Cheese Week—seven days of recipes and stories, all cheese—presented by our friends at Proudly Wisconsin Cheese.

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For this episode of Dear Test Kitchen, former Test Kitchen Director Josh Cohen and cheese expert Elena Santogade whipped up a batch of perfect, creamy, fresh mozzarella. Watch them mix, stir, and stretch in the video below, then follow the recipe and step-by-step guide to do it at home.

1. Make the Curd

Start by dissolving rennet (on the left) and citric acid (on the right) in water. We prefer the rennet tablets over the liquid rennet. You can order these ingredients online from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, which also has some nifty cheesemaking kits.

You can also buy mozzarella curd from a local cheese shop (which Josh and Elena use in part two of the video above), but making it from scratch doesn't take very long, so why not?

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2. Warm the Milk

Set your dissolved citric acid and rennet aside for now and start to warm your milk. Place a 5-quart pot into a large bowl with enough room to pour water around the sides. Pour your milk into the pot and add warm water to the bowl—you're creating a water bath to gently heat up the milk. Once it reaches 86°F, add the citric acid solution and give it gentle stir with a slotted spoon to evenly distribute. Allow the mixture to sit for about 10 minutes at 86°F.

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3. Add the Rennet

After 10 minutes, add more warm water to the bowl to bring the temperature of the milk up to 90°F. Once the milk reaches 90°F, add the rennet mixture. Very gently stir the milk in an up and down motion to disperse the rennet for about 1 minute, taking care not to stir too vigorously. Allow the mixture to sit for about 30 minutes.

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4. Add Water & Rest

At this point, the curds will have come together into a solid-looking mass. Add more warm water to the bowl to bring the mixture up to 105°F and allow to sit for about 10 minutes.

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5. Drain the Curds

After 10 minutes, it's time to drain the curds. Place a colander on top of a bowl. Use a slotted spoon to lift the curds and place them into the colander. Let the whey drain off.

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6. Gently Press the Curds

Lift the colander to keep draining the whey. Using your hands, very gently (that's the key word when dealing with curds) press the whey out of the curds.

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7. Break Up the Curds

When your curds are drained, break them up into evenly sized pieces. Your curds are ready, so now it's time to make the mozzarella.

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8. Add Curds to Hot Water

You need hot water for the next step—as hot as your hands can handle. We've found that 180°F is a good temperature for this step, but do be careful when you're testing the water with your hands. Wearing food-safe gloves can help protect your hands from the heat if you're sensitive. Once you've added the water to the bowl, gently drop curds into the water to start warming them up.

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9. Let the Curds Warm Up

Using a large spoon, lift the curds to see if they're ready for kneading. They're ready when they look melty, like in the photo on the right.

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10. Stretch & Knead

Now's the fun part: Stretch and knead, salting with sea salt along the way. If the cheese starts to get cold and stiff, dunk it back into the hot water, and swap in more hot water as needed. Keep doing this until the cheese starts to feel smooth—you don't want your mozzarella to have a rough, flaky exterior. This can take anywhere from five to 20 minutes.

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11. Shape It!

Form the cheese into a ball, or any other shape you might want.

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12. Serve

There you have it: a ball of fresh, homemade mozzarella. Garnish as you like, and enjoy.

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Have you ever attempted homemade mozzarella? Tell us about it below!

This article was originally published in 2019 but was updated by our editors in May 2023.