Making Goat Cheese

One of our new obsessions is making goat cheese!

We had goat cheese for the first memorable time while in Korea.

A Korean guy made goat cheese as a hobby and sold it online.

We ordered some with our co workers and, man o' man, we went crazy for it!

Goat milk is readily available here in China.

We can buy it at any grocery store so we decided to give making cheese a try!

Especially since, cheese is not readily available in China.

Except the thin slices, which if you know me at all, you know I don't enjoy them. I

have nightmares of white bread and flimsy, unmelted Kraft singles,

getting stuck to the roof of my mouth while eating.

It's giving me the chills just thinking about having to pry that mush off with my tongue.

In my adult life, I have come to appreciate those flimsy slices melted,

on grilled cheese with tomato, though, but NEVER alone.

I had read online and heard from a friend that making crumbly cheese was super easy! And it's true!

Have a try!

Homemade Goat Cheese

Supplies needed: Cheese cloth, milk, pot, lime, lemon or vinegar,and technically you should also have a candy thermometer. We did not have a thermometer so we just eyed it and it worked fine for us.

First, get your milk of choice. (You can also make it with cow milk.)

This is how most milk comes in China- in a bag.

Also, most of it is UHT milk, so it can sit on a shelf for months without being refrigerated.

Not the best choice in making cheese, so I have read online, but it was our only choice. :(

Actually not the best choice in anything, in my opinion.

Pour 2 quarts of milk into your pot.

Turn the burner on medium low and slowly heat the milk.

If you are using a candy thermometer you should slowly heat the milk to 180 degrees. Since we weren't using one, we read to heat it to the point just before it forms a milk film.

We actually just kept sticking our fingers in it. We were both baristas and the standard for making drinks is to heat the milk to 160, so we knew that if we could still stick our finger in comfortably, it wasn't ready. We also knew that once we pulled it out and screamed some garble of words, than it was heated too long. So, we shot for a feeling in between.

We heated it to a very small boil, but then turned it off immediately.

Once you reach your desired temperature add your acid.

We used lemon our first time (1/4 c juice) and vinegar other times. I have heard that lime is also very tasty.

Add the juice or vinegar slowly until you start seeing the milk curdle. We stirred the milk around, slowly, to make sure the rest was forming curdles, though some people advice against this online. We did it anyways. :)

Spoon the milk into layered cheese cloths. We used two cheese cloths but our cheese dripped and was finished in 5 minutes, which still worked well for us. Online, most people say their cheese takes almost an hour. So probably, to form a drier and firm cheese, you should add more cheese cloth to get a slower drip.

Hang the cheesecloth over a bowel to catch the drippings.