How to make goat cheese at home?

Goat cheese is very tasty and healthy.It tastes slightly different from the usual product made from cow's milk. And it's definitely worth trying, especially homemade, cooked with your own hands.

Goat cheese has a rather delicate structure and has an interesting aroma. It also contains a small amount of sugar and is rich in nutrients. Such a product is very quickly absorbed by the body. In addition, it contains a large number of bacteria that ensure the normal functioning of the digestive system.

Goat cheese is different from its other hypoallergenic. This makes it especially unique. Some doctors advise using such a product to combat bronchitis, without even resorting to medication. But it is useful not only cheese. For those who suffer from cystitis, it is recommended to take goat milk with a few drops of birch tar. And goat curd saves many people from joint pain.

Calorie cheese cooked at home is small. There are only 300 kilocalories per 100 grams of product. Of these, 85 kilocalories are proteins, 200 are fat, the rest is carbohydrate.

Of course, the main ingredient is milk, while it must be fresh. After all, from the soured product good and high-quality cheese will not work. So, from eight liters of milk you can get up to one kilogram of cheese.

Another important ingredient is rennet, which can be obtained from the gastric juice of cows. If it is not possible to get it, you can replace it with pepsin, which is most often purchased at a pharmacy. In addition, you can use the starter, derived from food fungus.

An interesting point is that small pieces of fat get into the whey when the milk is ripened, so the resulting cheese will not be as fat as the original product.

To slightly increase the coagulability of goat milk, it can be combined with cow's milk, because in it this process occurs ten percent better. Moreover, its small proportion does not affect the taste of goat cheese.

There is another way to improve clotting. For this you need to make more sour-milk bacteria. At home you can use yogurt or sour cream instead of yeast. The only drawback is that the quantity must be calculated by yourself.

Goat cheese can be made at home, and for this there are many different interesting recipes for its preparation. Based on your preferences, you can cook soft and hard cheese.

Required components:

• 10 liters of quality goat milk;
• 0.3 ml of rennet;
• 0.5 l of purified water;
• salt to taste

Step-by-step recipe:

• To make cheese you need to warm the milk to 37 C degrees.
• Connect it with the enzyme, which must be diluted in warm water.
• Wait half an hour to ferment the milk.
• The appeared jelly whitening clot, which easily lags behind the walls of the pan, will mean the end of the stage.
• Cut the formed layer into thin strips using a knife. And the smaller the pieces, the more dense the cheese will be.
• Put the milk on the fire and slightly heat it, stirring it at the same time.
• Using skimmers, choose the grains of cheese that will be formed during the peeling of the whey, and put them in a pre-prepared sieve covered with several layers of gauze.
• Wait for the fluid to drain.
• On top of everything you need to cover with gauze.
• When it takes about two hours, you can remove the cheesecloth and remove the finished cheese. It must be salted and put on a towel, sending it in the fridge.
• To give the cheese some spice, you need to add greens to your taste even at the stage of fermentation.

Required components:

• 9–10 l of goat quality milk;
• 0.5 tsp. leaven;
• 0.5 tbsp. l 10% calcium chloride;
• 0.5 tbsp. l rennet;
• 0.5 liters of warm water.

Step-by-step recipe:

• Milk must first be pasteurized and then cooled to 30 C.
• Add the leaven to it and wait for three minutes, then stop everything with a slotted spoon.
• In two dishes pour 50 g of warm water. In one, prepare a solution of calcium chloride, and in the second - rennet. Then add everything to the container with milk and mix thoroughly.
• In order for the clot to ripen, you need to close the resulting mass with a lid and wait half an hour.
• Cut the hardened mass with a knife into centimeter cubes. Then mix everything well for ten minutes. After this process, cheese grains will appear.
• Serum should be carefully drained, leaving 3 liters in the tank, and another five minutes to prevent all.
• Add 2 liters of warm water, thus reducing the acidity of the cheese itself.
• You need to knead the mass for another 25 minutes, maintaining the temperature at 40 C.
• Place the contents of the container in the drain bag, trying not to seal it strongly. This is necessary to give the product airiness.
• Cheese should be pressed for about 15 minutes, after which it must be turned over. In the same order is pressing on the other side. When turning it is necessary to pull the cheese out of the drain bag so that there are no traces on it.
• After pressing the cheese, salt and dry. Then it should be put in the aging chamber, where the temperature should be no more than 13 C. This process lasts up to two months. Daily cheese must be turned over.

This product is considered one of the most popular in Italy. It is made mainly by farmers, using goat or sheep milk. To prepare such a masterpiece, we need the following components:

• 8–10 l of fresh milk;
• 1/3 tsp thermophilic starter;
• 1/3 tsp rennet;
• 1/3 tsp calcium chloride.

Step-by-step recipe:

• Heat milk on the smallest fire to 37 C.
• Add a leaven to it and mix everything thoroughly. Let the product stand for one hour for the milk to pick up acidity.
• Dilute the enzyme in warm water and combine with milk. And you also need to add calcium chloride. After 40 minutes a clot should form.
• Cut it into pieces to two centimeters and knead gently for 25 minutes.
• Drain off excess whey (approximately 40% of the total mass). Then you need to knead the cheese mass again.
• Prepare the form, covering it with a thick cloth or several layers of gauze. Carefully place the cheese grains here, slightly compacting everything with your hands.
• Put everything on the steam bath and hold for half an hour. During this time, you need to turn the mass 3 times.
• Transfer the product to the grid and leave for 3 hours.
• Next, move the cheese in the refrigerator (up to 8 C) and stand there for up to six hours.
• Place the product in a pre-prepared brine (4 liters of water per 1 kg of salt and 1 tbsp of vinegar). This process lasts up to two hours.
• Cheese is dried and put on endurance. The process occurs at a temperature of up to 10 ° C. When a mold appears on the surface of the product, it must be removed with gauze dipped in saline.
• After ten days the cheese will be ready, however, the real taste will appear only after two months.

This cheese appeared a hundred years ago in France. It was prepared by ordinary peasants for their own use. This name is translated as "goat".

Required components:

• 7–8 l of healthy goat milk;
• 1/3 tsp rennet;
• 1/3 tsp calcium chloride;
• 1/3 tsp mesophilic culture;
• mold Geotrichum candidum.

Step-by-step recipe:

• Milk must be pasteurized and calcium added to it.
• Pour the mesophilic culture to the sourdough to occur faster, and leave it for half an hour.
• Heat the milk to 32 C and add mold and sourdough.After you need to close the lid and leave for half an hour.
• Add the enzyme dissolved in 50 ml of warm water, mix and cover. Then leave everything at 12 o'clock. Although a clot is formed earlier, it is not worth cutting it before the end of the specified time.
• Drain the serum and cut the clot into small pieces with a knife. Then everything must be kneaded and put into a drain bag, so that the liquid is glass.
• Six hours to salt the cheese. To do this, just rub it with salt on each side.
• Mass divided into identical pieces and form of cylinders of up to ten centimeters. You can make them with a bamboo mat.
• Spread out the formed mass on the grid and leave it to dry for a day.
• After 24 hours, send the cheese to the fridge for aging, the temperature should be up to 6-10 C.
• This process lasts up to a month. It is necessary to turn the mass every day.
• Only matured cheese will have a delicate structure, then its density will increase every day.

Goat milk cheeses are stored in the refrigerator. Best of all, if this is the middle shelf. As a storage tank, an airtight container is well suited, which will not allow the ingress of excess air inside. Such a measure will help protect the cheese from drying out and mold. And also many keep the finished product in salt water. With this choice, the shelf life may double.

As you can conclude, it is possible to make goat cheese at home, so you don’t have to worry about whether the real product was purchased in a store.

How to make goat cheese at home, see the next video.