Ancient Japan’s Cheese ‘So’

As we need to evaporate Milk into thick paste, I recommend to use a pot with large surface or frying pan. Non-stick pan is ideal.

Bring Milk to the simmer, and cook, regularly stirring and scraping the solids on the bottom and sides, until Milk turns to paste. It hardens slightly as it cools down. I stopped cooking when the texture was similar to soft cookie dough, and ‘So’ turned like Cream Cheese.

Wrap with plastic food wrap or place into a plastic container, and keep in the fridge.

*Microwave: Microwave is useful to heat up the Milk before cooking, but cooking Milk in the microwave is tricky. As Milk tends to bubble up a lot, you need a large heat-proof bowl and cook smaller amount of Milk.

*Colour: Depending on the strength of heat, ‘So’ can be light creamy colour, light brown or brown. It is up to your preference. The ancient ‘So’ that was cooked in Sue pottery must have been browned.

*Amount & Cooking Time: I made about 200g ‘So’ from 4 cups (1000ml) common Homogenised Full Cream Milk, and it took about 60 minutes.

*How To Enjoy: The flavour of ‘So’ is quite sweet. I enjoyed it with Honey. I think ‘So’ can be seasoned with Salt. It can be cooked like Halloumi.