Homemade Squeaky Cheese Curds

Poutine is and Canadian delicacy, very prevalent in Old Montreal.  While there are many, many variations any Canadian will tell you that using squeaky cheese curds is a must.  Only fresh cheese curds are squeaky.  They lose that squeakiness about 8 to 10 hours after being made.  So, I wanted to learn how to make squeaky cheese curds.  The best way I found was to buy a kit from Make Cheese, a Canadian company that is quite good to deal with.   

The poutine cheese kit came with enough rennet, calcium chloride, cheese salt and mesophillic culture to make eight batches of poutine.  A thermometer and cheese cloth was included.  A long bladed knife, large perforated spoon and colander is required.  A French fry cutter is optional but honestly, I tried it but wouldn't use again.  The cheese curds were too small!  Each batch of poutine uses 8L of whole milk with a final yield of about 1.34 kg (about 3 lbs).

The entire process is not difficult but it will take up a good part of a day.  But parts of that is waiting for certain stages while other stages you have to be actively involved (ei. every 6 minutes).  After a couple of batches the process will be a bit smoother.

Pictured is the milk heating, coagulation/cutting stage, curd/cooking stage.  Once the curds are formed, they are drained, they are drained from the whey.  The nutrient rich whey can be used in baking.  The drained curd then undergoes a texturing process by cutting the drained curd into two slabs then stacking and rotating.  This is important for achieving the right texture for making squeaky cheese curds.  

We made a traditional poutine (homecut fries, brown gravy and cheese curds) and a chili poutine (homecut fries, homemade venison chili, and cheese curds).  The layering really makes the poutine too.  Fries, then curds followed by hot toppings and in Montreal the variations are endless.  Honestly, we had if I recall correctly nine different variations while we were there.  Basically if the topping in some way, remotely goes well with cheese, it's fair game.

The bottom two pictures show the traditional and the chili poutine.  The traditional has the gravy over the curds, the chili has it reversed.  Either way is delicious but the sauce over the curds is better!

Many restaurants here offer their version of poutine using shredded cheese.  Technically, that is not poutine even though it is quite delicious.  The best version we found used a shredded three blend cheese and called the dish ugly fries.  The reason for this variation is despite poutine being so popular, finding cheese curds in smaller communities is rather difficult.