With powdered goat milk, you can make delicious goat milk cheese virtually anywhere. This ball is slated for a hearty layered beet salad and a spicy lamb (or caribou!) pizza.

After last year’s success with homemade “ricotta,” we included powdered goat milk (widely available) in our annual shopping list. We love the flavor and texture of soft cheeses, and with some recipes there is no adequate hard cheese substitute. At the end of summer, we sent a small quantity of various soft cheeses up to our Arctic home. Since it doesn’t matter if they get crumbly, these cheeses are good candidates for the freezer till they’re needed. But that supply has come to its end, and so it was time to try making our own goat cheese.

Following our own directions for a ricotta-style cheese, the hands-on time for creating this cheese took just five minutes. The remainder of the time needed is for draining the whey – a process that took about eight hours. The resulting cheese was creamy, mildly tangy in just the right way, and ready for salads, pizza or crackers and smoked salmon. Slightly salting the finished cheese improves its flavor and shelf life.

Soft Homemade Goat Cheese

Ingredients

• 1 cup powdered goat milk
• 4 cups water
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Mix powdered milk and water well in a medium pot.
2. Over medium heat, bring the milk to between 165 degrees F to 180 degrees F.
3. Remove pot from heat.
4. Stir in vinegar. Milk should curdle. (This is the whey separating).
5. Cover pot with clean dish towel and let sit for 2 hours.
6. Lay a piece of cheesecloth over a sufficiently large container. (I used a 4 cup food storage container.) Secure the cheesecloth in place with a rubber band.
7. Pour contents of pot onto cheesecloth. Whey should drain through, while curds remain in cheesecloth. You can toss the initial drained whey.
8. Place container in refrigerator overnight to continue draining. It does not matter if the container is covered or not.
9. In the morning, turn out cheese ball that is in cheesecloth to a larger bowl and mix in salt, to taste.
10. Store goat cheese covered in refrigerator.

Recipe makes approximately 1 1/2 cups of goat cheese.