Making Goat Cheese

Yeah, I'm excited! I just made my very first batch of goat cheese. I've mentioned before that my doctor wants me to avoid dairy as much as possible. Also, Laughing Water has a real intolerance to soy, nuts, and beans. So, I'm always looking for things that help our diet be balanced, rich in calcium, and satisfying.

I had a long talk with a lady in my area who has goats and I was thrilled to get some milk from her. So, tonight was my first venture into the process. First off, I noticed that the milk was incredibly mild - not goat-y at all.

I rigged up a double boiler by filling my canner with some hot water and placing my large soup pot in it. I poured one gallon of
goat milk into the soup pot and began to heat it. After about 45 minutes, it had reached 180 degrees and I slowly added about 3/4 cup of brown vinegar. (I'm told you can use lemon juice, too, which I am eager to try.)


I stirred the milk with a stainless steel spoon while I slowly poured in the vinegar. The curds began separating from the whey quite quickly. I felt like Little Miss Muffet! My family came running at my shrieks of success and loved watching the process!

Then I poured it all into a collander that I had lined with a flour-sack towel. Under the collander, I had another bowl so that I could save the whey. When much of the whey had drained, I set the collander over the empty soup pot, so that the steam from the whey wouldn't come back into the cheese.


At that point, I added salt, basil, onion, garlic, and rosemary and began to fluff with a fork. After it was well fluffed, I gathered the corners of the flour-sack towel and tied them with yarn. I suspended the sack above my sink for about one hour to let it finish draining.

In the mean time, I poured some of the whey over Old Faithful's dry dog food. He has very bad teeth and we have to soften his food for him. I figure this is a nutritious, economical way to help him out!

In the end, I had about one quart of very yummy
cheese. Laughing Water got very excited about the
project and even wrote down some ideas for different ways
to season the cheese, including sundried tomatoes, dill and lots of other ideas!


In other news today, we finished getting The Wood Artist's new office set up. It is low budget, cozy and quite cute. I also made a big batch of salsa out of our
tomatoes and tomatillos. Speaking of which, I am SO overwhelmed with all of the tomatoes and tomatillos I still have to process. Anyone want to take some off of my hands?!

Sleep peacefully everyone. As for me, I'm going to dream of goat cheese. - Nanette