MAKING YOUR OWN GOATS CHEESE

Self Sufficient Dinners

(from our small holding)

WoW this gorgeous fresh sharp beautifully clean goats cheese is a simple pleasure to make and eat.  A simple process for making your own goats cheese, all you need is a little patience and somewhere in your kitchen you can leave a saucepan and cheese cloth drainer for (2-3days) then you will have approx 450g of gorgeous fresh sharp soft goats cheese which you can then mature for depth of flavour or knead in flavours like garlic, chives, black pepper or walnuts.

Cooking Prep Time 15 minutes / Standing Time 24hrs / Finishing Time 24hrs

First you will need to make a culture, this is what you need to sour the goats milk for the next stage, you will use the culture with a few drops of rennet which in the next stage will separate the curds and whey.

Ingredients and equipment for the culture

1 sachet of culture (homestead farms on line)

1 ltr goats milk

1 saucepan

Ingredients and equipment for making the goats cheese

24 hrs at room temperature 

1 bottle vegetarian rennet

4.5ltr goats milk

1 deep saucepan

1 cheese cloth

1 drainer and large bowl

Baking paper

The Culture

(plus extra for freezing for next time)

This is a really simple slow process, patients is the key here, in a sterilised saucepan bring the goats milk to room temperature 22 degrees Celsius sprinkle over the sachet of culture powder and leave for one minute to allow the dry culture to absorb some of the goats milk then gently whisk the goats milk to incorporate a even spread of culture throughout the milk, leave covered with cling film and a saucepan lid in a warm place for 24hrs, when you remove the lid you will find a beautiful double cream consistency with a gorgeous aroma of a promise of fresh sharp clean goats cheese.  

This recipe makes enough culture for 20 batches you can freeze the culture in ice cube trays then pop into a freezer bag and use when needed.  Now you are ready for stage two.

Separating the Curds and Whey

Pour the 4.5ltrs of goats milk into a deep pan and bring to room temperature 22 degrees Celsius add 30ml of your room temperature culture and four drops of the vegetarian rennet stir in well and cover the pan with cling film and leave to one side in the kitchen for another 18-24 hrs.  I found this stage exciting as after 18hrs I had separated curds and whey and the promise of exciting goats cheese...

After 24hrs pour the cheese curds and whey in to a cheese cloth using a jug and leave to drain for approx 24 hrs, don't be tempted to speed this up by squeezing the cloth as you will squeeze out some of the soft cheese.

Once all the whey has drained from the cheese cloth after 24hrs you will be left with a soft goats cheese, turn this out onto some baking paper, this is the point where you can knead in any flavours you might like then shape using the paper to roll up, spatula or butter pats.

I bashed some walnuts and rolled the goats cheese coating all the way round, I left my goats cheese plain as I wanted to taste the pure clean sharp fresh flavour.

The Culture

One batch of culture will provide you with enough frozen culture for approx 20 more batches of 450g of goats cheese, having this ready to hand in freezer bags will save 24hrs of the goats cheese making process, approx two ice cubes per batch.