Make Make Your Own Mozzarella with M&S Prime Meats

Cooking aficionados looking to pick up an impressive new skill would do well swinging by on Fifth Avenue.

Mel Bonello, owner of the Italian butcher and sandwich shop between Second and Third streets, is offering hands-on group mozzarella-making classes in the M&S kitchen. The course guides participants through the multi-step process of crafting their own tasty homemade Italian fresh cheese.

Bonello, who has made mozzarella by hand for the last twelve years, said that Slopers who have already taken his cheese-making class have been surprised by how easy the process actually is after he’s coached them on a few key techniques.

 “It’s nice. We set out some appetizers—meats, cheeses, olives and bread—and people can bring in their own wine,” said Bonello, who was born in Uruguay and picked up many of his cooking techniques and recipes from his Italian-born mother.

The course—about an hour long—is $30 per person for groups of six people or more. All participants leave the shop with their own big ball of mozzarella cheese and the know-how and confidence to try their hand at cheese-making at home.

The mozzarella-making class starts with Bonello setting out a big bowl of cut cheese curd. M&S Prime Meats produces 250 to 300 pounds of handmade mozzarella a week, so Bonello buys his curd from major cheese companies, such as Sorrento, to save time. Ambitious home cooks can try their own hand at making curd, boiling milk and adding vinegar, or rennet, an animal extract used in cheese-making, to curdle the milk.

Bonello then guides students through the process of slowing adding slightly-cooled boiled water to the curds, and then patiently working the melted curds into one big, sticky mass. He then molds and sculpts the cheese mass into individual balls, using a special technique. The balls cool off in cold water before getting a salt bath to give them more flavor.

Bonello is a cheese-making expert, thanks to years working at a cheese shop in Yonkers before taking over M&S in 2002, with his late brother Sal.

He lets students make mozzarella “knots” out of a portion of the hot cheese mass. Participants fold small bits of the mozzarella into a knot, coat it in olive oil and spices, and then sample. Every student also takes home his or her own hefty wrapped ball of mozzarella, which should be eaten within five days, Bonello said; that’s how long mozzarella typically lasts.

But class participants who want to make their own mozzarella at home get another special benefit, as well.

“I won’t sell curd to just anybody,” he said. But those who’ve taken his cheese-making class, they have a special in.

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