Goat Cottage Cheese, From Our Kitchen
Around here the goat milk goes into the pot the same week it leaves the goat, and this is where a lot of it ends up. If you have ever made cheese of any kind, you know the hardest part is not the cheesemaking. It is standing over a pot of milk, stirring and watching a thermometer, because milk left alone for two minutes catches on the bottom and the whole batch tastes scorched. We do not do that anymore.
The Instant Pot took that job off our hands. The yogurt setting has a boil option that brings a full gallon up to temperature slowly and evenly, no stirring, no thermometer, no burnt pot. You press the button and go do chores. That is the kind of shortcut we look for: it saves the time without costing any flavor. Goat milk curds set smaller and more tender than cow milk, with a gentle tang the store version never has, and drained curds like these run around 21 grams of protein per 100 grams, roughly twice what Greek yogurt gives you. Toast with honey, next to sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper, folded into scrambled eggs. It rarely lasts the week in our fridge because it never gets the chance.
Ingredients
- 1 gallon fresh goat milk (good cow milk works too; avoid ultra-pasteurized, it will not curdle right)
- 3/4 cup white vinegar
- Salt to taste
- A splash of cream, optional
Method
- Pour the gallon of milk into the Instant Pot, hit the yogurt setting, and adjust it to the boil option. Walk away. It beeps when the milk is up to temperature.
- Stir in the vinegar. The milk splits into curds and thin, greenish whey inside a minute or two. We use vinegar every time; lemon juice takes longer to curdle and does not always behave the way you expect, especially with goat milk.
- Let it sit 10 minutes undisturbed, then pour through a colander lined with cheesecloth or a thin dish towel. Drain 5 to 10 minutes; longer makes a drier, crumblier cheese.
- Rinse the curds briefly under cool water to mellow the acid, break them up with your fingers, salt to taste, and stir in a splash of cream if you like it wet-style.
- Keeps about 5 days in the fridge, in theory. The whey goes in bread dough or the pig bucket; nothing wasted.
Photo: grongar, Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
