Wisconsin Foodie

>> This week on Wisconsin Foodie... >> My name is Tony Hook. Hook's Cheese Company, Mineral Point, Wisconsin. I've been making cheese for 44 years. >> This is a real honor to be here. >> Well, thank you. >> Where cheese is made. >> This is it. >> This is 10,000 pounds of milk. >> Today, we had about 8,400. >> Slowly being turned into 1,000 pounds of cheese. >> Correct. Today, we're making white cheddar. >> Okay. >> We always say, the quality of our cheese is at least 90% owed to the quality of our farmers. You know, they provide us with great milk, and we can make great cheese. If all you have is just average milk, that's basically all you're going to get, is average cheese. >> It's like harvesting a 20-pound salmon of cheese! It's hefty and slippery, and sort of has a mind of its own. I just need to do this. >> Be prepared. >> I'm sorry, did you say something? I was just really enjoying this piece of cheese. That is amazing. >> Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters for their support. Outpost Natural Foods Co-Op, and Superior Equipment and Supply. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin are proud to support Wisconsin Foodie, helping viewers celebrate our state's vibrant food culture. With nearly 11,000 family dairy farms, the Wisconsin dairy industry generates more than $26 billion annually for the Wisconsin economy, and brings recognition to the state for producing award-winning cheeses. >> My name is Tony Hook. Hook's Cheese Company, Mineral Point, Wisconsin. I've been making cheese for 44 years. How are you today? >> I'm good...

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>> Yeah, I know! We make over 50 different varieties of cheeses, counting our aged cheddars. When we bought the plant in Mineral Point, the plant we're in right now, we decided that the cold storage was large enough that we were going to start aging cheddar. So, we decided we would get into aging cheese three, four, five, maybe up to seven years. Never expected at the time we'd get to ten, 12, and maybe 15 and beyond. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, so I can have cheese. >> That's right. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks, we'll see ya. >> Bye. >> We started in 1970 making cheese, or I did. Julie started helping me in 1976, when we moved to Buck Grove. At that time, most cheeses made in Wisconsin, and in the country, were just commodity cheeses. You were making thousands of pounds just to sell at the grocery stores. You were usually selling to big distributors. In the last ten to 12 years, it's become more of an artisan and specialty movement, especially in Wisconsin, all over the nation, really, but especially in Wisconsin, where we've come up with probably 300-400 different new varieties of cheeses ourselves. It's really caught on. People are looking for different and for more flavorful cheeses. I think that the artisan thing is really flying. >> Tony Hook, the legendary man of Mineral Point! How are you? >> Hi, Kyle. Nice to meet you. I'm great. How are you doing? >> I'm good. >> This is a real honor to be here. >> Well, thank you. >> Where cheese is made. >> This is it. >> Take me to the milk! >> Okay. >> This is a true boutique Wisconsin cheesemaking operation. But it's hard to believe that all of your famous cheeses, since '87, have come out of this little spot. >> Yep, it's true. This small, little make room. And typically, it's only two cook vats. The large cook vat and the very small cook vat. The large one will hold 42,000 pounds of milk. The small one will hold 10,000 pounds of milk. >> You've been doing this, you and Julie, for 35 years, right? >> I've been making cheese for 44, and Julie's been working with me since '76. So yep, 38 years. >> Take me on a little bit of a tour, if you'd be so kind. >> We'll start with the vat that's cooking right now. This is actually agitating the curd and the whey right now. But before we were stirring the milk, stirring the cultures in. Then we put rennet in and let it coagulate. We stirred that in for a couple minutes, pulled the paddles out and just let the milk sit there. It'll take about 30 minutes to coagulate, and get about as thick as a thick yogurt. Then, once it's thick like that, we cut it with wire knives. You end up with little tiny cheese cubes. As soon as you cut those, the whey wants to start coming out of there. >> Right. >> Because out of ten pounds of milk, you get one pound of cheese. That means you've got nine pounds of liquid to get rid of. What we're doing right at this point, we're stirring it and cooking it in the vat. This is the pan. The cheese-- >> Oooh! >> That's pretty warm. There's steam shooting underneath the bottom of the pan. So if we were able to lift this up, you'd see steam tubes shooting at the bottom of the pan, cooking it. We want to keep agitating it to keep it off the bottom, to keep it from burning. And we also want to keep agitating it to stir it and dry the curd out a little bit more. >> This is 10,000 pounds of milk. >> Today, we had about 8,400. >> Slowly being turned into 1,000 pounds of cheese. >> Correct. Today, we're making white cheddar. >> Okay. >> Right now, we've got real tiny curds. When we're done, before we put 'em into forms, we'll have what most Wisconsinites know as Wisconsin cheddar curds. >> Your raw material, your milk is so precious to you guys. >> We get our milk local farms, right around Mineral Point. The farmers we've been dealing with, some of them have been in their families for up to eight generations. They're all family farms. >> That's early 19th century. >> Yes, 1810, I think is the oldest one. From the farmers, we had at Buck Grove, where we started in '76, three miles out of town toward Barneveld, we had ten patrons out there. Seven of those have retired. So we get all of our milk from three patrons we've been dealing with since '76. We always say, the quality of our cheese is at least 90% owed to the quality of our farmers. You know, they provide us with great milk, and we can make great cheese. If all you have is just average milk, that's basically all you're going to get, is average cheese. >> So how many recipes in your master cheesemaker head, and you are a master at them, do you have in there? >> Well, at least 55-60, and I'm always coming up with a few more. We're going to work on a couple more in another week or two. >> I mean, just listening to the soliloquy of the process that you shared, and then to extrapolate that out across 55-60, I think that's more names than I can remember, and that's not all the details, step, step, step. >> We've pumped off 98% of the whey. What we'll start doing now will be the cheddaring process. >> Okay. What color is this cheddar going to be? >> This will be white cheddar today. If we were making orange cheddar, we would've added annatto, vegetable coloring. >> Right. Tell me the story about orange and cheddar. >> You know, there are quite a few theories. One is that back in the '30s and before the '30s, when New York was still the reigning cheese producer, and we were trying to overtake them, Wisconsin, their white cheddar was out in the marketplace and we wanted to show that ours was different. So, try our orange cheddar. That just caught on, and kept going. The other theory is that back in the day even before that, we were exporting a bunch of cheddar to England. And of course, the English didn't want to hear, or that their people didn't know it wasn't from England, you know, calling it cheddar and not being from England, so it had to have a color. >> I can tell English cheese! >> So it had to have a color, so we had to make it orange for them, as we exported to England. >> It's probably a combination. >> It's probably a combination of both. They will have very, very little flavor. >> This is the breakfast of champions. >> It hardly has any flavor at this point. You go through this whole process, add the salt, let the salt be absorbed by the curd. After about ten minutes, when you eat the curd, I mean, it just brings out all the flavor. >> It tastes like a solid glass of milk, with a lot of squeak. >> Okay, we're going to start cutting this and turning the slabs. >> Okay. >> We're starting the cheddaring process. >> I just have to take a minute though, because you said this is 8,500 pounds of milk, down to about 1,000. >> To about 850-1,000 pounds of cheese. This is cow milk cheddar. We also make some cheeses from sheep milk and from goat milk. >> You need any help? >> If you want to put some gloves on. >> Oh, I live for gloves. >> Move it down this way. >> Okay. >> It'll start spreading out, so that's room for 'em to spread. >> Mm-hmm. >> Roll it over. >> It's like harvesting a 20-pound salmon of cheese! It's hefty and slippery, and sort of has a mind of its own. Boy, you can feel the creaminess through the gloves though. >> They'll sit here 15-20 minutes, then we'll cut 'em in half and pile 'em on top of each other. >> So you're really just rotating the liquid back out. >> Right, we're rotating 'em so the liquid, it will, as they spread out, the whey puddles, it will kind of lock in between 'em. >> Sure. >> As they stretch, they'll let the whey out from in between the curds, and you want to be able to drain all that. >> Have you and Julie ever had any happy accidents in your process of 60 recipes in your head? >> Oh, you know, definitely. One of those was our Tilston Point. One of our own original recipes, but it was just going to be a blue cheese with a white exterior, only a little drier. But about three batches in, we started getting some red mold growing on it, the B. linens, which is what gives limburger its flavor and its smell. It started growing on it. We aged that vat out, and we thought that was better than the original Tilston, so we started growing that one. So, we like to have our wheels have an orange rind on the outside and blue on the inside. >> Your caves are really precious to you and really important for the process of the cheese and for Hook's flavor. >> Definitely, yeah. >> Now we're going to cover 'em. >> Yep, in the wintertime, we need to cover them just to keep the heat in, so they will drain better. >> I've never tucked in cheese curds before! >> Tuck them in for a little nap. >> Exactly. >> Since we're leaving the cheese curds drain for about 15-20 minutes, let's take a tour through one of the caves. >> The legendary caves. >> Legendary.

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So this is cave number three. We actually have three of them. They are built into a big hill here. The side of the caves are basically underground. The slope of the hill is the windows. >> So all this talk of caves is inconsequential to me, except I want to know where you keep the 10-, 12-, and 15-year-old cheddars. >> Well, I can't really take you into that cave, because the air flow will affect the cheese itself. I will show you cave number 2, where we do our blues. But I can't show you the rest of them. >> It's a consolation prize. I drove across the state. >> And I'll even bring some out for you to try. >> Well, then we'll be okay. All right. All right, lead on. I'll manage. After you, sir. All right, all right. >> So this is one of the caves. In this one, we mainly cure all of our blue cheeses, except the Tilston Point. We usually cure them in here for about a month. If you cut a wheel in half when it was about ten days old, there would be no blue inside of it. At about day 12-15, if you cut a wheel in half, you'll see a little blue. By day 20, it would just be exploded inside. >> How long do you age them total? >> Typically, like our original blue, like the rack behind you, we age at least a year. You know, we usually like to go a year and a half. That's optimum for us on that one. >> So this is literally how blue cheese is made. >> We actually add the liquid mold to the vat, just like the starter culture. >> Okay. >> Actually at the same time. >> So this wheel is about a day or two old. >> This is a couple days old. Typically, we would wait until it's about five to seven days old. >> Okay. >> So what we have here is a 60-needle pierce machine. We'll pierce each side with 60 needle holes. Pierce it once. Then we'll pierce it on the other side. >> It's nothing but air that's being introduced in that. >> No, all you're doing is forcing a hole. These are solid pins. All you're doing is forcing a hole, forcing 60 holes in there, just letting oxygen go in. Once it can start breathing, the blue can start forming. >> The liquid blue that you put in when you were coagulating, and so forth, is already in there. A little bit of air, and then it can do its trick. >> Then it can do its thing. >> It's just that simple. >> Just that simple. We're just putting in the mill guards right now. As soon as we get that all set, we'll start running the slabs of cheese through the cheddar mill. It cuts them into cheddar curd and spray those out. We'll drain that once they're all milled. We'll stir them all and get the lumps broken up. Then we'll ditch it, and let a little more whey drain out of the center. Then we'll stir it again and salt it. >> After all of that, then you'll press it. >> Yes, we'll put them into 40-pound forms and we'll press them into blocks. So, we're running each of the slabs through the mill, cutting them into cheddar curd size. They'll start trying to knit together again, so we want to keep them from lumping up, so when we salt them, the salt can mix evenly throughout. >> That looks like a little bit of salt. >> It is. >> Yeah, just a little. >> We usually put about 3% salt on, and the finished product will end up with about a 1.8%. >> Is this kosher, or sea salt? What do you have? >> Just plain salt, ground a little bit finer, so it will be absorbed faster by the cheese. From this point, we'll get all the lumps broke up, get the salt mixed in quite well, and we'll ditch it again, let a little bit of whey drain off while we put it in the forms. We'll weigh it and put it in the forms and put it in the press. >> Then it gets pressed and stays like that...? >> We'll leave it in the press for an hour and a half to two hours. >> Once that press hits, the last vestige of any liquid in here doesn't stand a chance. >> Right, it's gonna be pressed out. >> But that's the kind of, I guess, acridness, you need for it to become cheddar. >> Right. Then we'll take it out. We'll wrap it in bags, put it in a cardboard box with a liner and put it on a pallet, and put it in the cold storage, ready to cure. That's the rest of the cheesemaking day. Let's try some cheese. >> Oh, look at this spread! Tony, I love it! What do we have arrayed here? >> We've got some two-year white cheddar, some eight-year white cheddar. Ten-year, 12-year, and 15-year orange cheddar. What we made today is white cheddar. I will probably age it to at least three years, maybe even a long ways beyond that. >> That's a great semi-sharp. It's got some softness to it. Buttery. This is better than the cheddar that everybody knows. But it's what cheddar ought to taste like. >> That's right. >> So, this is two-year. >> This one is eight. >> All right, here we go. It's sharp, but there's this great sweet backbone to it. Then it's got that milky fullness, and then something else. It's almost like a great cut of steak, or something, coming through. >> This one is a ten-year. We cut the one, three, five, seven, and then ten and 12, as orange. We cut the two, four, six, eight, ten, and 12, as white. >> I'm sorry, did you say something? I was just really enjoying this piece of cheese. That is amazing. Then 12? >> Yep. >> Right now, there are connoisseurs of cheese, chefs, home cooks alike, that just, they know how lucky I am.

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There's envy coming through the TV screen. Yeah, that's just sublime. This is my sweet spot. >> Thank you. >> It settles down >> It does, it smoothes out. >> It settles down from the ten-year. >> Yep, it starts smoothing out, usually, getting more crystals. >> More crystals, but more like frothy cream, buttercream coming forward. Wow. That is really good. Okay, I just need to do this.

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>> Now, be prepared. >> So you had no idea 15 years ago? >> When we bought this plant, I didn't think we would get to this point. But by about 2000, you know, I knew we were going to be aging a bunch to ten-year, 12-year. At that point, I didn't even know we would save some out to 15. The first vat, I think went on sale in 2009. >> How was it received? >> It was sold out in about eight days.

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We got national and international attention. It was put in, there was an article done by Wisconsin State Journal. From there, within a day or two, it was picked up nationally and then internationally. I mean, we were getting calls from all over. >> Yeah. It's sweet. It's like a hybrid. >> It doesn't even have that acidic bite like you get with the two, three, and five. >> It comes back around to a little aspect of almost, you know, when the blue comes through right next to the cheddar, and that little in between? You've managed to capture that sweet, unctuous, which is overused, but that really great little-- I don't know, I can't even describe it. >> It's almost sort of a fruity flavor. >> Yeah. Well, it's like the perfect bite of two things paired together. >> Right. >> Only, it's in every bite. >> It is. >> That's really profoundly good. I just want to keep eating, by the way. >> Go for it. >> So these cheeses, it's no surprise, it looks like you've done okay with awards here. A couple through the years. >> There's been a couple, yeah. >> There's Julie's. >> This one is the World Champion that Julie got in 1982. >> Mm-hmm. >> The one and only woman to win then and through today. >> Wow. >> Some women have won the US Championship. Some have won First Overall at ACS, but nobody else has won the World Championship. >> I assume you're like every other cheesemaker we've met here on our show. You don't do it to win these. >> No, it's just more or less to know that you've made a good product and you can compete against the best of them. Because, I mean, I think all the cheesemakers in Wisconsin are the best of them. >> I hope I wasn't "in the whey" too much today! >> Oh, no, this worked fine. I'm glad you guys came. >> Cool. I'm gonna keep this hair net, even though I can take it off now, as a memento. >> I'd like to send you with some ten-year cheddar, and a bag of the cheddar curd we made today. >> I'd like to say I am very happy to receive these things. >> You're welcome. >> Fresh Wisconsin curds and legendary ten-year cheddar. >> Thank you. >> It's a good day to be a foodie. Thanks, Tony, see ya later. Keep making good cheese. >> We will, thank you. See ya. >> Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters for their support. Outpost Natural Foods Co-op; Superior Equipment and Supply; the restaurants of Potawatomi Bingo Casino; Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Something Special from Wisconsin; and Colectivo Coffee Roasters. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin are proud to support Wisconsin Foodie, helping viewers celebrate our state's vibrant food culture. With nearly 11,000 family dairy farms, the Wisconsin dairy industry generates more than $26 billion annually for the Wisconsin economy, and brings recognition to the state for producing award-winning cheeses. >> This episode of Wisconsin Foodie is now available on DVD at WisconsinFoodie.com. You can also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and watch past episodes through YouTube and Vimeo.