For this month's cheese, I had to buy cheese starter. To make ricotta and cottage cheese, you just need ingredients that you normally have in the pantry. But for almost all other cheeses, you need to use a starter or rennet. Chevre just requires goat's milk and a starter packet, so I decided to make that since it is simple. My husband and I love the chevre that we buy at the farmer's market, so I was looking forward to seeing if I could make it at home. We pay $8 for a small container of it - pretty pricey. Half a gallon of pasteurized goat's milk costs about $6 and the starter packets were about $1 a piece. The recipe called for one gallon of goat's milk and one full starter packet, so I only used half of a packet.
I heated the milk in a stainless steel sauce pan on medium heat to 86 F. Well, that is what I was supposed to do, but 86 is really not that hot. So in the 15 minutes that I turned on the heat and then was puttering around taking pictures, the milk actually heated to over 100 F. So I then had to let it cool down, which took double the amount of time as the actual heating! Note to self - stay at the stove and check the temperature often.
When the temp dropped back to around 86 F, I added half of the starter packet (because I only had 1/2 gallon of milk). The instructions say to let it rehydrate for a couple minutes. I expected to see the starter (a white powder) sitting on top of the milk and expanding, like yeast, but it just sunk right in. So I added a bit more and stirred it.
Then you are supposed to let it sit at 72 degrees F for 12 hours or until thickened. I was worried about that, because our house is never that warm except for when it is like 85 degrees outside. I put the lid on, placed it on a thick tea towel, and then covered the top with a towel. That seemed to do the trick. I checked on it about 10 hours later before I went to bed and it looked pretty thick. I decided to move on to the next step.
I lined a metal colander with 3 layers of cheese cloth (actually the cloth from our apple press). You are supposed to use butter muslin, which I had bought, but I haven't washed it yet. This worked fine. Make sure to put a bowl under the colander to catch the whey. I poured most of the whey in first then scooped out the gloopy gloppy curds.
My husband lifted up the cheese cloth to get the whey flowing through. We then let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. It is supposed to drain for at least 4 hours.
The next morning, I excitedly opened the fridge to see what I had!
Thick gloopy gloppy chevre! After scooping it into a jar, it looked more like real goat cheese.
And eaten with some bagel chips, it even tastes like real goat cheese!
I did not add any salt because the recipe did not say to. The next batch I will add a little salt along with some herbs. From the half gallon of milk I got a full small Weck jar of cheese and 1 3/4 cups of whey, which I used to make bread and dog treats, so nothing was wasted. A success!
