Monday, December 15, 2014

Homemade Chevre


HOME. MADE. CHEESE. Yeah that happened. Be forewarned, there are boob jokes ahead.

This Chevre was recommended to me on Amazon and for $8 for five packets. It sounded affordable enough to give it a whirl. It would be a lot cheaper over all if you had a goat and an excess of goat's milk though! In Denver you can have up to eight chickens/ducks and two goats (all female). This is very neat and I know a few people who keep chickens, but it's a responsibility I'm not yet prepared to take on. So for now, I have to buy my goat milk at the store. This goat milk is was $7 for a half gallon. That brings the price of this project up to $24. Well I could get much cheaper goat cheese from Costco but this time it's about seeing if I can actually do it, more than just getting the cheese.


The first stage is very unexciting. You heat the milk to 86°F and stir in one packet. Let the packet rehydrate for a few minutes. Then cover and remove from heat. This is where I ran into trouble. Nate and I keep our house kinda cold. 60°F at night and when we are gone and a balmy 65°F when we are home. This wants to be kept at 72°F for 12 hours. The warmest place in the house is the laundry room so I put it there. I put a small fridge thermometer near it so I could see what the temperature was. It stayed nice and warm in there until bed time. But when I woke up it was in the mid 60's and had been for I don't know how long. The curd was almost non-existent so I covered again and let it go another 12 hours. By then it was Sunday night and I just wanted to get on with it since I would be gone all day Monday for work.


I poured half the cheese into a dish cloth and hung it from a kitchen knob and repeated with the other half. Calling it cheese at this point was a joke. It was still very very milky and I lost a lot. Eventually the moisture draining from the cheese started to run clear (whey) which was a good sign. Nate suggested a milk bag fight. My milk bags bring all the boys to the yard...

I found the easiest way to hang these was with hair ties. Then I could quickly remove the cheese and agitate it. The cheese on the bottom would drain, but that would become firm and prevent the cheese above it from draining. Oy. More work than I planned for. I finally just went to bed and hoped these would magically drain fully by morning.

In the morning I took them down and put them in a bowl. I popped the bowl in the fridge and dealt with it when I got home from work. My first thought at seeing these was 'from D cup to Deflated' haha!

This is what I ended up with. You can see the outside of the cheese is drained and just like goat cheese should be. But the inside was more wet and soft. Giggity.

I emptied both bags into a bowl and mashed them together. I ended up with much less than I would have if a stronger curd had formed. Since so much of the milk was just poured off!

Even cold it was pretty creamy.
I sprinkled with salt (because I thought that would be tasty) and continued mixing and mashing. Even though I think it turned out softer than it was supposed to, it tasted so good!

I put about half in a jar and put the rest in the freezer, I wasn't sure I would get to it while it was still fresh. A weird thing happened to the frozen portion. When I removed it and let it thaw it was very wet and had to be re-strained. Once strained (which only took a couple hours this time) it had a very grainy texture. Not as smooth as the unfrozen half and it didn't taste quite as good. I think next time I make this I'll try just making half a gallon and not freezing any.

So while this did not go smoothly for me and I had tons of doubts along the way, I DID end up with a really tasty edible goat cheese in the end.