Thanks to Sous Vide Everything's recent video on making Queso Blanco cheese with sous vide (see video at end of post), I decided I wanted to give it a try. All I needed was a gallon of milk, which was easy enough. I already had the vinegar, cheesecloth, and circulator. In researching a few other similar methods, I also discovered some options for goat cheese, which I also wanted to try. So I stopped by Central Market, where I knew I could get good organic cow's milk as well as goat's milk. On the way home I swung by a homebrew shop to get some chevre starter and a mold/form similar to the one in the video. I also grabbed some rennet for future cheesemaking attempts, and grabbed a couple chef pans from Seattle Restaurant Supply to make the process a little easier to set up now and in the future, since I don't have a good large shallow pan for larger sous vide operations.
Once home, I set straight to work on the Queso Blanco. Immediately I got the sense the this was a more labor-intensive way to do this than the good old fashioned stovetop. Setting up sous vide is worth it for the right applications, but is just trading stove-tending time for set up and break down time in other cases, as well as a lot of wasted water (in summer I will water my garden with it and it isn't so wasted, but in winter...it tends to just go right down the drain, which I am not pleased about). Such was the case here. I simply had to bring the milk up to about 180 degrees without scalding it, then add the acidic element--in my case apple cider vinegar--to form curds. Then strain with cheesecloth, season, and set into the mold. Voila.
I started with hot water from the tap, but in a large shallow container like this, it was cooling as I was filling. So it took a bit of time to get the water up to temp, and even longer of course to get the milk to come to 180. I just went and watched a movie, knowing that I couldn't possibly scald it or overheat it--that was the one good reason to have it sous vide. Unfortunately partway through, our Nomiku decided to just stop working. Luckily I was nearby to see the screen tell me as much, as it gave no other warning. Luckily, we had our Anova nearby so I swapped it out and kept going, but now we may have a dead Nomiku? Hrm... No time to troubleshoot.
Basically everything went just as demonstrated in the video. I added significantly less vinegar however, as most recipes I saw called for 1/4-1/2 cup compared to their fully 1 cup serving. I ended up using a half cup and it was plenty. Any more and I think the cheese itself may have tasted vinegary. At this point, we had plenty of curds...and a very bland cheese.
I poured it into the cheesecloth, squeezed out excess moisture, then turned it into a bowl. I seasoned with Kosher salt, stirred with my fingers to incorporate it, and pressed it into the mold. Today I have a beautiful little cheese. Probably a beautiful little bland cheese.
Edited to add: I did finally try the cheese. Despite feeling like I salted the hell out of it, the salt is very very light. I remember this from a cheese-making class we took maybe 10 years ago, now. Salt it more than you think, as it will mellow. The vinegar flavor is coming through, not in an entirely bad way; but if we had used an entire cup I think it would have been unsavory to us. Ultimately, the cheese is pretty...plain. I mean, I guess that's the point of queso blanco--to be a more neutral kind of base cheese? I think if I made it again, I would a) add more salt definitely and b) herb it up. We're going to try it on tacos for dinner tonight (using the whey from the process to marinate the chicken, which is also a new thing we're trying), and will see how it goes. I can also make a flavored dip from it
I can say the mold was nice to have, for aesthetic results, but is entirely unnecessary.
So on to the goat cheese. This one needed to be heated to a much lower temperature, 87 degrees, and then had to be held at 73-ish for 12+ hours. This is where I thought the sous vide would really shine, being able to hold the cheese at a precise temperature all night long, letting the cultures do their work in an optimal environment.
I washed the the inner liner from the cow's cheese and poured in the goat cheese. Since the water bath was coming down from over 100 degrees, and the milk coming up to try to reach 87, I set it in right away. After 45 minutes, the milk was getting close to 87, but the bath was still over 100, so I dropped in some ice cubes and voila. The happy medium occurred and I hit 87. Dropped the sous vide temp, dropped in more ice cubes to bring it down, and then added the chevre starter. I THINK this may be where things went awry...?
I don't buy cookbooks, because most everything you want to make has free recipes online. Cheesemaking is no exception...except! Lots of people using lots of different methods and different products, all which require subtly different treatment of the materials at hand. So I had a chevre starter which didn't require rennet or extra citric acid, but doing searches for "goat cheese home made with starter" and similar, I was getting a lot of people who had different starters, or combinations of starters. Looking without the starter or culture in the search terms, I got the same farmer cheese methods as the queso blanco, with lemon or vinegar to trigger a curdle, which supposedly has less flavorful results. Only a couple had done theirs with a chevre starter, but none mentioned the brand, so I couldn't be sure it was the same. But both of them used half the volume of milk the packet was to cover, so they used half the starter. That seemed logical and I did the same, erring on the side of more starter.
I set it to go for the night, watched some television, and went to bed, expecting a "goat yogurt consistency" by morning. 13 hours later...it was very very thin. Some culturing (is that a verb?) had occurred, but it seemed like a watered-down yogurt at best. But looking at videos, other people's results were from a regular yogurt to a thicker custard consistency. I tried to find ways to fix it, but none of the recommendations had any insight for me other than "next time", including one site I found that I hadn't the day before saying using less than a packet of starter, even if you use less milk, will cause it to fail. So perhaps my culture was more like the one in that company's line, and I should have used the whole packet? I don't know. But as soon as I started spooning out the "curds" it was dissolving into slippery milk. It wasn't holding.
I tried pouring it through a cheesecloth, and it was thickened enough that it wouldn't go through without squeezing, but it was not whey coming out but plenty of the fats as well that hadn't properly cultured/curdled. I tried adding some lemon juice to see if it would curdle further, but it didn't do a thing.
I gently squeezed a while, getting goat milk all over the inside of my sink as it squeezed out of any ready hole in the cheesecloth. I got it down to about half volume and decided to string it up and hang for the morning anyway, to see what comes of it. Probably I will just have a pot filled with milk and a limp wet cheesecloth, but we'll see in a few hours...
So ultimately? I don't think the sous vide is necessary. Even the goat cheese, which could be held at precisely 73 degrees, most people just set the pot on a counter with a towel over it and the residual heat, while sitting at room temperature, does the trick. So the water, power, and effort to set up/teat down sous vide for that seems unnecessary.
Sadly, the non-homogenized organic local goat milk cost me $10 for a 1/2 gallon, so I am not just running out to the store to try again when I can get really delicious local, organic, farmstead cheese sold to me in a neat package at my store for less. I will try again sometime, but at that price point, I am not sure the result will be "roll my eyes back in my head so worth it" kind of cheese...?
EDITED TO ADD:
Here is the video from Sous Vide Everything, for those interested
Once home, I set straight to work on the Queso Blanco. Immediately I got the sense the this was a more labor-intensive way to do this than the good old fashioned stovetop. Setting up sous vide is worth it for the right applications, but is just trading stove-tending time for set up and break down time in other cases, as well as a lot of wasted water (in summer I will water my garden with it and it isn't so wasted, but in winter...it tends to just go right down the drain, which I am not pleased about). Such was the case here. I simply had to bring the milk up to about 180 degrees without scalding it, then add the acidic element--in my case apple cider vinegar--to form curds. Then strain with cheesecloth, season, and set into the mold. Voila.
I started with hot water from the tap, but in a large shallow container like this, it was cooling as I was filling. So it took a bit of time to get the water up to temp, and even longer of course to get the milk to come to 180. I just went and watched a movie, knowing that I couldn't possibly scald it or overheat it--that was the one good reason to have it sous vide. Unfortunately partway through, our Nomiku decided to just stop working. Luckily I was nearby to see the screen tell me as much, as it gave no other warning. Luckily, we had our Anova nearby so I swapped it out and kept going, but now we may have a dead Nomiku? Hrm... No time to troubleshoot.
I poured it into the cheesecloth, squeezed out excess moisture, then turned it into a bowl. I seasoned with Kosher salt, stirred with my fingers to incorporate it, and pressed it into the mold. Today I have a beautiful little cheese. Probably a beautiful little bland cheese.
Edited to add: I did finally try the cheese. Despite feeling like I salted the hell out of it, the salt is very very light. I remember this from a cheese-making class we took maybe 10 years ago, now. Salt it more than you think, as it will mellow. The vinegar flavor is coming through, not in an entirely bad way; but if we had used an entire cup I think it would have been unsavory to us. Ultimately, the cheese is pretty...plain. I mean, I guess that's the point of queso blanco--to be a more neutral kind of base cheese? I think if I made it again, I would a) add more salt definitely and b) herb it up. We're going to try it on tacos for dinner tonight (using the whey from the process to marinate the chicken, which is also a new thing we're trying), and will see how it goes. I can also make a flavored dip from it
I can say the mold was nice to have, for aesthetic results, but is entirely unnecessary.
So on to the goat cheese. This one needed to be heated to a much lower temperature, 87 degrees, and then had to be held at 73-ish for 12+ hours. This is where I thought the sous vide would really shine, being able to hold the cheese at a precise temperature all night long, letting the cultures do their work in an optimal environment.
I washed the the inner liner from the cow's cheese and poured in the goat cheese. Since the water bath was coming down from over 100 degrees, and the milk coming up to try to reach 87, I set it in right away. After 45 minutes, the milk was getting close to 87, but the bath was still over 100, so I dropped in some ice cubes and voila. The happy medium occurred and I hit 87. Dropped the sous vide temp, dropped in more ice cubes to bring it down, and then added the chevre starter. I THINK this may be where things went awry...?
I don't buy cookbooks, because most everything you want to make has free recipes online. Cheesemaking is no exception...except! Lots of people using lots of different methods and different products, all which require subtly different treatment of the materials at hand. So I had a chevre starter which didn't require rennet or extra citric acid, but doing searches for "goat cheese home made with starter" and similar, I was getting a lot of people who had different starters, or combinations of starters. Looking without the starter or culture in the search terms, I got the same farmer cheese methods as the queso blanco, with lemon or vinegar to trigger a curdle, which supposedly has less flavorful results. Only a couple had done theirs with a chevre starter, but none mentioned the brand, so I couldn't be sure it was the same. But both of them used half the volume of milk the packet was to cover, so they used half the starter. That seemed logical and I did the same, erring on the side of more starter.
I set it to go for the night, watched some television, and went to bed, expecting a "goat yogurt consistency" by morning. 13 hours later...it was very very thin. Some culturing (is that a verb?) had occurred, but it seemed like a watered-down yogurt at best. But looking at videos, other people's results were from a regular yogurt to a thicker custard consistency. I tried to find ways to fix it, but none of the recommendations had any insight for me other than "next time", including one site I found that I hadn't the day before saying using less than a packet of starter, even if you use less milk, will cause it to fail. So perhaps my culture was more like the one in that company's line, and I should have used the whole packet? I don't know. But as soon as I started spooning out the "curds" it was dissolving into slippery milk. It wasn't holding.
I tried pouring it through a cheesecloth, and it was thickened enough that it wouldn't go through without squeezing, but it was not whey coming out but plenty of the fats as well that hadn't properly cultured/curdled. I tried adding some lemon juice to see if it would curdle further, but it didn't do a thing.
I gently squeezed a while, getting goat milk all over the inside of my sink as it squeezed out of any ready hole in the cheesecloth. I got it down to about half volume and decided to string it up and hang for the morning anyway, to see what comes of it. Probably I will just have a pot filled with milk and a limp wet cheesecloth, but we'll see in a few hours...
So ultimately? I don't think the sous vide is necessary. Even the goat cheese, which could be held at precisely 73 degrees, most people just set the pot on a counter with a towel over it and the residual heat, while sitting at room temperature, does the trick. So the water, power, and effort to set up/teat down sous vide for that seems unnecessary.
Sadly, the non-homogenized organic local goat milk cost me $10 for a 1/2 gallon, so I am not just running out to the store to try again when I can get really delicious local, organic, farmstead cheese sold to me in a neat package at my store for less. I will try again sometime, but at that price point, I am not sure the result will be "roll my eyes back in my head so worth it" kind of cheese...?
EDITED TO ADD:
IT WORKED! My goat cheese actually turned out! I may even have had more of it if I hadn't so aggressively squeezed the cheesecloth at the outset. I let it hang out for most of the day yesterday and then turned it out of the cheesecloth into a small ramekin before I went to teach, leaving what looked for all the world like a tiny scoop of ice cream (photo left). It was still quite wet and not as dense as I would like, and I wasn't certain it was "turning out". I covered it and put it in the fridge overnight. And today? The texture is sooo smooth, earthy flavor, a hint of the lemon I added at the end of the process to try and get the curd to solidify better. I have salted it with some kosher salt, stirred, and stored it to have later with some crostini!
Here is the video from Sous Vide Everything, for those interested
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