People in the US consume about 157 million pounds of string cheese a year. Which is why Sunny Anderson visits Henning’s Wisconsin Cheese Factory to learn how raw milk is turned into string cheese. Raw milk – straight from the cow – first heads to the pasteurizer to kill bacteria. Next a cheese-specific bacteria culture is added to the milk; all string cheese starts as mozzarella. The culture creates a curds-and-whey mixture. The whey liquid is drained from the curds, which are then rinsed. Then the clean curds are dumped into a cooker vat. The curds come out the other end as a giant glob of mozzarella cheese. The cheese is forced through an extruder, turning it into long cheese ropes, which are then cut to size and packaged as string cheese.
