Cheese makin' fool

We have our first batch of goat cheese! And it wasn't half bad, either. I found a recipe that uses apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, and dried tarragon (which I happened to already have). It was incredibly easy, and I can't believe I never tried making it before. Especially since I learned a couple weeks ago that Wal-Mart is selling goats' milk now.

Here are the recipe and instructions, in case you'd like to make some at home too. And pictures to show what it all looked like along the way.

Ingredients

2 cups goats' milk

juice from 1 lemon

1 tbs apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp rock salt (from my salt grinder)

Dried tarragon - not sure how much - it was what I could get off the stems. Maybe 2 tsp?

Instructions

1. Line a collander with 3-5 layers of cheesecloth (however many you need so that small pieces of cheese won't go down the drain when you strain the cheese).

2. Heat the milk in a saucepan, stirring slowly and near-constantly to keep the temperature evenly distributed. Use a digital thermometer to keep track of the temperature.

3. As soon as the milk reaches 180 degrees, remove it from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and vinegar. Let it sit for about 20-30 minutes. (The milk should have lots of little solid pieces in it, but there will be lots of liquid still.)

4. Pour the milk into the cheesecloth slowly.

5. Add salt and stir. (I forgot this step and added the salt with the taragon in step 8 instead, which may be why it didn't taste salty enough to me.)

6. Gather the corners of the cheesecloth ball and tie them together with string or a rubber band.

Hang the ball from the kitchen faucet, or over a pan to drain for at least 1 hour. (I let it drain for about 2 hours, just because I got busy and forgot about it.) There will be still be some liquid in the cheese afterward, but that's what you want in goat cheese.

*7. The original recipe didn't say to, but I rinsed my cheese a bit after it was done draining. It smelled a bit too much like the vinegar and lemon for me.

8. Fold tarragon (and in my case, the salt) into the cheese and refrigerate.

9. Eat at your leisure. And that's it! I got about 3/4 of a pound from this recipe.