Goats Milk Cheese Recipes – How to Make Feta The Easy Way

If you have goats you need to have lots of ideas for things to make with goats milk. Because in the spring, if you decide to milk  your goats you have lots of extra around.  While I do freeze much of my goats milk, I have come across a couple super simple recipes for making cheeses. But you don’t even have to have goats to make these 3 goats milk cheese recipes! You can buy goats milk in the store.

The first of the milk cheese recipes I’m going to teach you is how to make a cream cheese:

To make cream cheese – which I like to spice up you will first need to make yogurt out of your goats milk. You can buy plain Greek yogurt and make it from there.

How to make yogurt from goat’s milk:

 

• 1/2 gal milk
• 2- 3 tbs fresh plain yogurt

Heat up to 110 degrees then pour over yogurt, set 1/2 gal jar on top fridge for 12 hours

I’m pretty sure he went and found that lid pretty quickly. You never want to leave your yogurt exposed like that because you will end up with not very friendly bacteria quickly.

Now to make the cheese spread, also known as Labne, this is what you will do:

 

You can also use Italian herbs instead of garlic and mint. You don’t have to use the olive oil. It goes really great with zucchini or yellow squash chips. These are dehydrated zucchini sliced into chips.

Now for the Feta  Goats Milk Cheese Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 gallon of whole milk – Pasteurized NOT ultra pasteurized
Warm milk to 80 degrees
2 teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon 30% calcium chloride solution dissolved in 2 Tablespoon of water (if you are using raw goats milk you don’t need this)
1/8 teaspoon mild lipase powder dissolved in 2 Tablespoon of water
1/8 teaspoon Mesophilic A culture
30 drops of vegetable rennet dissolved into 1/4 cup of water

I use raw goat’s milk, salt, yogurt, lipase powder and junket tablets. You can get them in the grocery store. Use 1/2 tablet per gallon of milk.

For a cheese press I have a #10 can that I took the top and bottom off of, a bowl, cheese cloth. Use Muslin, not the cheese cloth that you get from the grocery store. And a weight, which for me is sometimes a mason jar filled with water. Or you can use a bar bell.

You would take out the lid piece put your cheese cloth down inside so that the edges go out over the top, then put in  your curds. Next folld the cloth back over the curds then put the “follower/top” back on. Finally put your weights on that. If you use a shallow bowl like this one you need to hang around and every little go dump out the whey/water that will collect in the bowl.

Before you get ready to press your curds you can also add in dried tomatoes, and/or Italian seasonings or basil. You can always leave it plain, but in my world view, spice is the zest of life!

Simple Farm Style Goats Milk Cheese with Monterrey Jack with Peppers

• 3 gallons of milk (I like mine raw)
• 2 tablets of junket (you can find these in the baking aisle of most grocery stores)
• 1/2 pint of buttermilk
• salt
• dried peppers

Heat your milk and buttermilk up to 90 degrees slowly (well as slowly as your temperament will allow). Let this sit and mellow for a couple hours.

Next step is to add the junket tablets to water (non chlorinated works best) about 1/4 cup just to dissolve the tablets before adding to the milk. After they dissolve add the mixture to the milk. Stir for about a minute to make sure the rennet gets well distributed.

After an hour or so (or even over night) your curds should be separated. Cut them into cubes in the pot. Using a long knife make a checker board pattern all the way down the curds, then start cutting through the curds at an angle all around the pot. The object is to have lots of one inch pieces of curds.

Now that  you have the curds cut, heat the curds and whey back up to 100 degrees slowly, stirring the curds gently.

Let them sit for another hour.

The next step is to strain the curds into cheese cloth (muslin) lined in a colander mix in your salt and peppers to taste. I use about 3 tbs salt and peppers for this recipe.

Ladle  your curds into a press and press under as much pressure as you can for eight to twelve hours. I use hand weights with my presses, but you can use water in jugs, put a can on the follower. (that piece that goes on top of the cheese cloth – I use the end of the #10 can) then put a plate or board over that and add your weights.  The harder you press your cheese the firmer it will be.

Of course you could always buy a real cheese press and then  you wouldn’t have to be jury rigging stuff LOL

Once it is pressed, cut it into the size of pieces your family will use within a couple days (this doesn’t hold very well and will mold). Rub salt on the exposed parts, wrap in paper towels and then put in a plastic bag that you suck the air out of with a straw before completely sealing.

Freeze these. Let them defrost at room temperature before using.

NOTE:

Don’t throw your whey away!! Use it to make Whey good bread or pizza dough by substituting the whey instead of water in  your recipe. You can freeze it in plastic ziplock bags for use when you are ready to make your bread or pizza dough.

Make cheese, it’s easy and fun and there is something about eating and serving homemade cheese that makes it special, because you know where it came from and what went into it.

 When I first started making cheese this is the kit I used to “get my feet wet”. Simple recipe/directions are included and everything (except the milk) you need to make mozzarella and ricotta cheese. Now if you are wanting to use up your goat’s milk because you have so much of it you don’t know what to do with, perhaps you might want to start with this kit that has the ingredients you need to make goats milk cheese.

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