Hello Friends!
The cost of the goats milk for me was $10 for 2 liters. This recipe made about 500 grams of cheese. The stuff I used to buy at the store was good, we really liked it most of the time. It was tangy, sometimes sour, very crumbly and cost $3.50 for 125 grams. Eating the store bought variety, I thought I knew how good goat cheese could be until I made my own! Not only is home cheese making a FRUGAL** choice, by gum it's delicious! :) And...no preservatives! :)
**After the initial cost of buying your cultures and additives and equipment that is!
Goat Cheese (For a printable recipe, click here)
Yield: About 500g
Ingredients:
2 liters whole goats milk
1/8 tsp Meso B Culture
1 drop Calcium Chloride
1 drop double strength rennet
Cool filtered water
1% cheese salt by weight of the final cheese
Directions:
Stage 1: Mixing The Ingredients
Stage 2: Caring for the curds
Stage 3: Draining and Salting
Stage 1: Mixing The Ingredients
1. Heat your milk to 77F or 25C. You can heat it directly on the burner - no need for a double boiler since the temperature of the milk is quite low.
2. Sprinkle the culture into the milk and let sit 5 minutes. Stir well for one minute.
3. Prepare a small dish with 1 drop of Calcium Chloride into 1 tbsp cool filtered water. Do the same with 1 drop of double strength rennet into 1 tbsp cool filtered water. I bought an eye dropper at the pharmacy specifically for my cheese making - it really comes in handy!
4. After the 5 minutes, add the Calcium Chloride, stir well for one minute. Add the double strength rennet and stir well for no more than one minute. The reason that you don't want to stir the rennet for more than a minute is because it starts to set the curd right away. You want it to mix well, but not upset the curd formation.
5. Let sit for 24 hours at room temperature.
Stage 2: Caring for the curds
6. After the 24 hours, check your curd. If the curd pulls away from the pot, you're ready to go. Cut the curd into large 1/2 inch cubes.
Stage 3: Draining and Salting
7. Ladle the curds extremely gently into a butter muslin lined colander. Goat milk curds are ultra-sensitive. Butter muslin is finer than cheesecloth and will help the cheese to release whey much more slowly, keeping that creamy texture.
8. Hang the curds for 7 hours at room temperature. My tripod came in handy for this! :)
9. Continue to drain the curds in the fridge for 2-4 days depending on how dry you want your cheese. I drained mine for an additional 2 days and it was the consistency of a cream cheese. I just let it drain in the muslin, in a colander over a bowl in the fridge.
10. When you're done draining the cheese, weigh it.
11. Calculate 1% of the weight and add that amount of salt. My cheese weighed just under 500 grams, so I added 5 grams of cheese salt. (In hindsight, I will half the salt)
12. Add the salt and mix it well.
13. Use it as is or roll it into logs. I divided the cheese into three and put one third into a dish to use right away; I rolled the other two thirds into logs and put them in the fridge. My hope was that they would harden up but they didn't. They were still amazingly delicious, but next time I'll drain them longer to see if I can make the consistency a little drier.
Note: This cheese will be nice and fresh 10 days refrigerated - from the day you drain it at room temperature.
Note: I found this cheese to be really salty, next time I'll reduce the amount of salt in half. I also would like it to be drier, so I'll increase the draining time.
2 comments:
This is a favorite of ours too! I love your idea of wrapping in plastic wrap and rolling in a bamboo mat. Makes it so pretty!
Your tutorials continue to be excellent. Maybe someday you can publish them all in a book.
Thanks so much Leigh! I'd love to publish a book one of these days! I saw the idea of the bamboo mat online and I remembered that you can actually buy cheese prepared like that at the stores. It was so easy too! That cheese is so delicious. If I had my own milking goats then I'd be making it all the time.
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