This past week I’ve made goat curd and haloumi for the first time.
The goat curd is pretty easy.
4 litres of goat milk
1 sachet of cheese culture for goat chèvre (mine came from Green Living Australia). This is who I get most of my cheese supplies from. However Udder Delights shop in Hahndorf also sell stuff from Mad Millie in New Zealand, so I can easily pop over there and pick up some culture!
The culture that I have came from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.
I have a 4 litre easy that I use to keep my milk solution warm.
- 1 pot with lid
- 1 esky
- 1 colander
- 1 slotted metal spoon
- Muslin
- Thermometer
Sterilize everything first! I wash with hot soapy water and then rinse well with boiling water.
Put warm water into the esky to warm it up.
Heat the goat milk to 30 degrees C in the pot.
Add the culture and leave it for a couple of minutes to rehydrate. Then stir well for a couple of minutes.
Pour the milk into the esky. It needs to stay at around 22 degrees C for 12 hours. It is a bit cool here so I just put it into the sink with some warm water around the esky, but it didn’t really need it.
You will see that the curd has started to separate.
Rinse the original pot. Place the colander over the pot and put the muslin into the colander.
Pour in the milk and cover with the lid.
Leave for 8 or more hours. The whey will drain off. The longer you leave it, the thicker the curd will become. Mine was quite soft and I could have left it longer.
Scoop out the curd. Feed the whey to your compost or garden.
The milk cost $20 and it made all of this curd, which I estimate would have cost $60-$70 to buy retail.
Haloumi
I made my haloumi from non-homogenised cow’s milk, which is easy for us to buy locally. There are at least 4 different dairies south and south-east of Adelaide.
My recipe came from Neil and Carole Willman’s “Home Cheesmaking” (which seems to be out of print.)
You will need
- a knife
- a slotted spoon
- esky
- muslin or unscented chux cloth
- cooking pot
- another pot and colander
- rennet
- 4 litres non-homogenised milk
Make a brine solution which you will need later. Boil 1 litre of water and allow to cool in the fridge. Add 300gm salt to make a brine solution (non-iodised table salt is fine).
Sterilise everything!
Warm the esky.
Prepare rennet by boiling some water and then putting it in the freezer to cool. Add 1/4 rennet tablet, crushed to some cooled water (I use about 1/8 cup)
Heat the milk to 32 – 34C.
Stir in the rennet water for about 2 minutes.
Pour milk into esky and leave for 40 minutes.
Cut the curd into 20 – 40 mm cubes.
Leave for 5 – 10 minutes to settle. Ladle back into the pot, trying not to let the curds break up too much. Use a knife to cut any large pieces of curd into smaller ones.
Very gradually heat the curd mixture up to 40C. Allow about 20 minutes for this.
Turn off the heat and leave for a few minutes for the curd to settle.
Strain the whey from the curd by pouring it into a colander lined with muslin over another pot.
Squeeze the curds together into a lump with your hands. Then close the cloth around the curds by bunching it together at the top (as if you were tying up a plum pudding) and twisting the cloth to drain out more liquid. I then place the curd, still in the cloth but loosened, on a plate with a flat surface on top with some weight on it in order to press the cheese into a rectangle a couple of centimetres thick.
More liquid will drain off the cheese which is fine.
Put the whey back in the pan and bring it to a boil. If there is any curd still in the whey, skim it off the surface.
Just the curd into blocks (I cut mine into 4 pieces). and place into the hot whey.
Now you cook the curd. The recipe doesn’t say at what temperature!! It only says heat for 45 to 90 mins until the curd rises to the top. I kept the whey very hot and the curd had risen in 10 minutes! So I turned the heat down to around 60-70C and kept it cooking for about 45 mins in total. I need to read some other recipes to find out the answer to this.
Remove and drain the cheese (I used those red plastic food storage contained from the supermarket which have white slotted racks in them) Decor brand?
Leave for about 20 mins and then you can salt with cheese salt if you have any.
Place in cooled brine solution in the fridge.
We toasted the offcuts. Excellent. This is pretty easy as far as cheese-making goes. Just add rennet and cook the curd!
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