Cheesemaking 101: Feta Cheese

Cheesemaking isn’t as mysterious as you might think, but the process is really cool. You might not realize it, but you can make some really easy and delicious cheeses in your home with minimal effort and equipment. If you love cooking, you’ll want to try your hand at cheesemaking.

In this class we’ll learn one of the easier cheeses to make, the popular Greek cheese known as Feta. And although we’ll be making it from cow’s milk, instead of the traditional goat milk, it will taste better than anything you can get in a store, and will have a hint of goat flavor because of a trick you’ll learn in the class. We’ll show the different steps in making this delicious salty brined cheese that you can crumble onto salads or mix with spinach to fill spanakopita. Through the process of making feta from scratch, you’ll learn the basic methods you’d use to make most cheeses. At the end of the class we’ll eat some homemade feta.

Instructor Dan Durica has been making cheese for over 17 years. He lives a self-sufficient life at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri and loves to make most of his food from scratch with local ingredients he’s grown or raised himself. You can find more of his work at his YouTube Channel, Hardcore Sustainable, which has around 50K subscribers.

General Admission: $38
Low Income/Senior: $17 (limited number)

Although our base price for this course is $38, Sweetwater is a nonprofit that puts on educational programs for elementary schools in the neighborhood and teaches them about food systems and basically where their food comes from. We also host community volunteer days and a farmer’s market every Sunday from November through May. You can donate to Sweetwater in addition to your course fee if you’d like to help us continue our programs. And if you want to get your hands dirty in our gardens you can contribute your time by volunteering Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday mornings from 9-12.