A Simple Goat Cheese Recipe for the Homestead

I have had many folks ask me how I make my lovely goat cheese.  I do not use all those fancy additives, equipment, or anything outside of the ordinary kitchen utensils.  I have a very simple recipe that creates a white goat cheese that can be pressed to make a harder cheese that will slice when cold but not as well as a store hard cheese.  It can be mixed with cream cheese to make a lovely spread. It can have some of the whey left in to create a softer cheese that will not harden or crumble as easily.  Or you can drain all the whey off, cool and let the cheese harden and crumble.  Each is just a slight adjustment with nothing fancy required depending on your desired end use of the cheese.

1 gallon of goat milk (I use raw, some like to pasteurize)

1/2-1 cup of white wine vinegar

Nubian Princesses

salt and pepper to taste

herbs to taste

Bring the goat milk slowly to a just starting to roll boil, add in the 1/2-1 cup (you can use less vinegar but I like to use 1 cup for 1 gallon) of vinegar and stir.  Turn off the heat as you are stirring the vinegar in and you will see the curds and whey start to separate almost immediately.  You must stir as the milk heats up and while separating the curds and whey or the milk can burn and stick to the bottom of the pan.   This will affect your cheese taste.  The curds will be very small and if you let it set on the stove off the heat for a couple of minutes I have found the curds will start to drop to the bottom with the whey separating more to the top.  I use a very finely wire mesh strainer and pour off as much of the whey through the strainer into a bucket or pan as possible without getting much of the curds in.  This I do to start with so that the curds don’t get trapped in the mesh immediately and slow down the draining.  Once I get most of the whey poured off, I start to pour some of the whey and curds mixture left into the strainer and let the whey continue to drain off.  I have a clean dry tub or bowl ready and put the curds that the whey has drained off into the bowl.  I continue to do this with new portions until all the whey has been separated and I have just curds left.  Then I salt and pepper it to taste.  I generally need more salt and pepper than most folks would expect but it is specific to your tastes as well as what you plan on using the cheese for.

Plain:  I just use a small amount of salt and pepper and then cool

Rosemary:  I use salt and pepper and dried crushed rosemary

Garlic Chive:  I use salt, pepper, garlic powder, and fresh chives chopped very fine from garden

Holiday:  Substitute apple cider vinegar for the white wine vinegar to give a sweeter taste, add some agave or brown sugar, than spice with salt, cinnamon, all spice, and nutmeg.  chop some raisins or currants very fine and add.  Chop any nuts of your choice finely and add.

Be brave and try spicing it with various things.  Add a packet of cream cheese to the mixture while still warm and mix to give an added smooth texture for spreading.  cool in the fridge and enjoy.

Don’t forget, your chickens will love you if you give that whey to them for breakfast the next day!

4 Seasons and premature Doeling

Since my last posting,  Emma did finally kid.  She had a very lovely marked bouncing boy!  we named him Monty and he literally bounces around.  He can be seen at times catapulting through the air, and landing in his favorite spot…on the broad back of Brownie the sheep!  He has attempted it on various other smaller sheep with varying results. 🙂

The little premature doe, April, is sitll with us.  she has not been feeling well so we don’t know how she will go.  she has scours and we have no clue why.  Tried various medicines and so far she seems to be determined to keep the scours.  I did wean Jet, Ringo and Blue and put them in the big boy pen a while ago.  The weaning may not have been too premature, but the big boy pen I think may have been.  I do not think they got enough food even though I thought they were.  Ringo was down in the pen at the beginning of this week and than his brother Jet was.  Charlie just said that Jet died during the night.  They were weak from lack of food, so we made them a special pen out of alfalfa hay bales and have had them separate with unlimited food for days…I thougth they were coming on, but Jet gave up the fight.  When Ringo got knocked at the beginning of the week, I thought he was injured internally and would not make it.  He has however still been with us for another FIVE days..so there is hope with him.  We took Blue out of the big boy pen even though he was thin but not as weak as the others.  he has been having fun in the doe pen but he is so close to that age where he could be too fertile.  When we remove the last of our sale animals this week, we are going to separate the really big boys into that far pen and leave the smaller boys in the middle pen so that they can be separate from the girls but still be safe from being in with the big boys until they grow a lot more.  I hope this helps the issues.  sometimes the angora goats just grow so slowly.  Monty is at least a month younger than them and is probalby twice their size and 4 times more energetic!!

After working night and day on my fiber entry for the show, they cancelled it!  🙁  so it won’t be displayed but here is it.  Four Seasons:

It starts at the left with the white one as winter, than spring, than summer and than fall going clockwise.  I used Wensleydale, Lincoln Long Wool (coloured and white), alapaca, mohair (coloured and white) throught out the weavings.  there is raw fleece tied in, rovings, hand spun yarn, mill spun yarn from my rovings, but there is no synthetic yarns from any shops or anything other than pure fiber as even the hooks to hang it were braided from left over warps.

I listed six different listings last night on www.albaranch.etsy.com so go have a look and enjoy! it is a great collection of fine yarns that I had got back from the mill.  Mohair, Merino, and some merino/mohair blends.  some white and some colours.  I finally listed some of the red yarns, a medium and a dark fawn mohair yarns!

I have been making goat cheese every week recently, and boy it is certainly nice to have it again.  Sales are starting up on the etsy shop again, go stop in and buy something!! 🙂