I love spreadable herbed goat cheese… the kind that comes in the tiny little cylinder at the deli counter that costs you an arm and a leg. So expensive, but so yummy. It’s great on pesto pizzas with chicken and arugula. Perfectly delicious on its own spread on a sliced baguette. And… it’s stupid simple to make homemade chèvre. No special cheese making kit or rennet tablets required.
While chèvre made with rennet tends to be firmer, this is dead on in taste and texture with the spreadable deli counter variety goat cheese that I love so much. The more you let it drain, the firmer it will be.
This process is very, very similar to my method of making ricotta out of cow’s milk. You can use pasteurized store-bought whole goat milk (if one doesn’t have a goat handy), and it appears to curd well enough. For equipment, all you need is a heavy pot, a candy thermometer, a colander, and some cheesecloth. Your other ingredients? Lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and whatever you wish to crust your goat cheese with, if anything at all.
Apply heat, add acid, let the acid denature the proteins and cause the whey, water and casein proteins to separate. Stir and drain. Some homemade goat cheeses are made using the acidity of cultured buttermilk and lemon alone. Adding vinegar, however, imparts a sharper taste and firmer curd than lemon juice alone, which means more cheese out of the same amount of milk, and less lost through the cheesecloth.
You may wonder why one would bother making their own. Well… cost. Even using store bought ingredients, I paid $12 for 4L of goat’s milk and $1 for a couple of lemons. I used my dried thyme and fresh rosemary out of the garden. So without any sort of bargain hunting, I can get more than twice as much goat cheese for the same amount of money.
Also, cheese making is fun!
- 1 quart whole goat's milk (fresh unpasteurized will yield better results, but store bought is OK)
- 2 tablespoons white vinegar
- 1/4 cup lemon juice (the juice of about one and a half to two lemons)
- 1/2 tsp table salt
- Herbes de Provence or herbs of your choice (I used dried thyme and fresh rosemary)
- In a large, heavy bottomed pot, add the cold goat's milk.
- On medium heat, stirring frequently, heat the goat's milk to 175-180F. Milk should begin curdling but not boil. Remove from heat.
- Add lemon and vinegar, stir well, and let sit for 5 minutes.
- While goat milk is separating, set a colander over a bowl, and line the colander with at least 4 layers of cheesecloth (curds will be fairly fine).
- Slowly and carefully, pour the curds and whey into the colander. Let drain at least 10 minutes.
- Set the bowl and colander in the sink, lift the corners of the cheesecloth, and suspend the cheesecloth with a knot from your sink faucet hanging over the bowl for 1 hour. Do not squeeze!
- Carefully dump the curds onto a plate and knead table salt into the curds with your fingers. Shape salted curds with your hands into a cylinder, and crust by rolling the cylinder in finely chopped or dried herbs (if desired).
- Place the cheese in a Tupperware container, and leave in the fridge to set firm and take on the flavours of the herbs... at least 1 day if herb-crusted.
- For a stronger, more cultured taste, cover the pot with the goat's milk loosely with Saran wrap and let it sour naturally a bit at room temperature, at least 8 hours, before heating.
- While the temptation is great, do not squeeze the cheese in the cloth to hasten draining... you will smoosh the cheese through the cloth, and it's impossible to get out.
- Preserve the leftover whey (there will be about 750ml) for use in baking or smoothies to decrease waste. It's good, and you can freeze it if you don't plan to use it within a few days.
Oh. My. Word.
I need to do this.
This recipe is not right. It is not long enough to separate. I just found a new recipe from a lady who makes her own goat cheese all the time from her goats at her farm. Says to leave at room temperature after cooking for 8-12 hours. I tried your way and it did not work at all.
The recipe is not wrong, as I’ve made a few batches this way, but I do know that there can be some factors that are roadblocks to success. Using store bought milk can be a bit of a touchy thing, cause it’s sometimes subjected to UHT (ultra high temp) pasteurization. UHT pasteurization can prevent curding (I’ve got more on this in the article about making ricotta) and I’ve also noticed that the age of the goat milk can affect it significantly too. Fresher seems to curd better. You can give it a try with another brand to see if it curds better; your farmer friend’s milk may not be pasteurized at all.
After an hour of draining…still seems drippy. Let it continue to drain? does fine weave cheese cloth work bwtter?
Oh another one that got me once… don’t use bottled lemon juice, that one failed on me too.
This is how I make it using my own goats milk works really well for me there can be many unknown factors that could cause it to not work doesn’t mean it’s wrong just didn’t work for you
I tried this method exactly but after 5 minutes of allowing it to sit it is still very liquid form. I used fresh lemons, the milk is 4 days old and unpasteurized. Is there anything I can do or does it have to be tossed now? Perhaps a troubleshooting area in the article would be helpful?
Hi Meara, unlike regular cheese production, making cheese this way will not produce a large gelatinous slab of curd to be processed. The pot will have a lot of liquid and that’s OK: whey with lots of tiny fine curds. You’ll want to separate the curds from the whey by pouring it through a very fine sieve made of several layers of cheesecloth and let it drip dry.
Oh my goodness the taste is amazing!!! I have not completed the whole process yet. I let is set in cheese cloth for 10 minutes and then added the salt. I have put it back in the cheesecloth for the hour. Have I totally messed up? Should I just go ahead and put it in a container now? The curds are not creamy at all. I am not sure it will bind together to form anything. Is this normal? Thank you!
I have added the salt too soon.
Goat cheese curds by this process are very fine compared to other kinds of cheese making, so you need to have many layers of cheese cloth so they don’t slip out during the draining. The creaminess happens after the curds drain and are compressed together. I don’t believe adding the salt then would affect it a great deal. I usually have no problems but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I need to add a little more lemon, and I’ve had old milk refuse to curd properly. One of these may have contributed if yours failed.
Mine isn’t curding at all. I followed the directions above, my milk is raw, less than 48 hours old, fresh lemon… it’s been a half hour, and there is NO curd what so ever… I’m going to let it sit for another while to see what happens., fingers crossed!
I did it with fresh goat milk and the flavour is amazing, just for one moment I felt an acid odor but was just the whey! At the end I had to knead it to take the shape!
I made 3: basil, eggplant and Chili pepper
aftr draining for over an hour….still seems drippy…Just keep draining or add the saltand move on? It is still hanging. Does fine weave work better?
I’d let it work in it’s own time, just because the curds are small and forcing it will lose a bunch of cheese in the cloth. 🙂
my goats milk di not curdle while cooking. started to boil so removed from heat and added lemon and vin. then it curdled ? dripping now, so not sure of my results yet.
The lemon and vinegar are an important part of the curdling process
Thanks for the recipe! I found it on Pinterest and was nervous to try it because of some of the comments, but I did and it’s yummy!
I used fresh goat milk, bottled lemon juice, and snuck a taste before I put in in to chill. I coated it in the herbs de provance and am looking forward to tasting it later with the herbs ?
Awesome! Thanks for reading 🙂
Have done this twice now, and the batches have both ended up more like feta rather than creamy. Still good, but not quite what I was hoping for. Any suggestions?
If you got a lot of really big hard curds, you’ve definitely got the opposite problem than most 🙂 Try cutting back on the acid, or maybe a different brand of goat milk. It probably will require a little experimentation. But the acid instigates the curdling process, so that’s where I’d begin.
I’ve used this recipe multiple times and love it! I usually make it, then use the whey to make bread to go with the cheese. Very yummy!