Hear ye! Hear ye! Calling all dairy lovers. I have a new love for the summer of 2020. While 2019 was the year of Goat’s Milk Greek Yogurt, 2020 will be dubbed the year of Goat’s Milk Skyr. What is Skyr you ask? And how is it different than Greek yogurt? Well, let me explain.
Skyr is Iceland’s version of thick yogurt, and has been around for centuries upon centuries. You may know the name brand “Siggy’s” that can be seen in some grocery stores. While technically Skyr is a soft cheese because it is made with rennet, it is in fact consumed as a yogurt. It’s thick, creamy, has a whipped-like texture, and is absolute heaven. Traditionally it is made with skim milk so it is low in fat. Yet, through the powers of rennet it still can achieve that thick and creamy consistency. We are a high fat household, so this is not something that is appealing to me from a dietary standpoint per se. However, if you have a milk animal that is lower on the butterfat percentage scale and you struggle to get super thick and creamy yogurt, this is the recipe for you!
Just like with any other yogurt, there are several different ways to make Skyr. You can buy a dehydrated starter culture or use some fresh yogurt to culture. You can make it in the instant pot or other means of incubation. You can make goat’s milk skyr or cows milk skyr. I am going to show you how I make it and what works for me! If you have already followed my greek yogurt and mozzarella recipes, then you already know the steps. Goat’s milk skyr is like if these two recipes had a baby. A beautiful, creamy, and highly addictive baby.
What You Need
- 1 gallon Raw Goats Milk (you can use pasteurized as long as it isn’t ultra pasteurized)
- 1/2 cup Skyr Culture – I used a 5 oz container of plain Siggy’s to start
- Instant Pot – make sure it has the yogurt button!
- Cheese Skimmer
- Instant or Quick Read Thermometer
- Greek Yogurt Strainer
- 1/4 teaspoon QUALITY liquid animal rennet dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
The Process
If you’re using raw milk follow steps 1-3 below to pasteurize. If you are using milk that’s already pasteurized, simply warm the milk up to 105°F-110°F then start with step 4
- Add your milk to your Instant Pot and put the lid back on. Hit the “yogurt” button until it says “boil”. Then walk away! Go carry on for whatever you have to do for the next hour while the IP pasteurizes your milk until it beeps and it says “yogurt”.
- Once it’s done pasteurizing remove the lid and temp it. Instant Pot has an acceptable range to which it will pasteurize milk, but mine doesn’t always get the temperature I need for yogurt.The temperature that you NEED for thick yogurt is 185°F. So, take the temperature. Did it pasteurize it to 185°F on its own? If it did good, put the lid back on. If it didn’t, don’t sweat it. Hit the saute button once so it’s on “low” and constantly stir while checking the temperature. Even if your IP brought it to the lowest acceptable temperature within range (167°F), it will only take a few minutes to get it up to 185°F. Continually stir so you don’t scorch the milk, and once you achieve 185°, turn off the IP, and put the lid back on sealed
- Go about your day and let the milk drop down to 105°F-110°F. Once it cools, remove the skin that forms on the top of the milk. If you need to speed up the cooling process you can put the pot in the sink with cold water stirring to cool it down.
- In a small bowl add 1/2 cup of your Skyr starter culture yogurt and ladle in a couple spoonfuls of your 105°F-110°F milk. Whisk to break up, and add more milk until it is a runny and smooth consistency. No lumps!
- While gently whisking the milk in the instant pot, slowly pour in the starter culture/milk slurry. Stir well to make sure it’s thoroughly combined.
- Add your (7) drops of liquid animal rennet to 1/4 cup of cool non-chlorinated water and give it a slight swirl. (don’t do this step in advance, do it right before adding) Add the rennet and water mixture to the milk, stirring in and up and down motion for 15 seconds.
- Put the lid back on sealed, and hit the “yogurt” button until it’s at normal and set your time to at least 5 hours. 5 hours is the amount of time the yogurt needs to incubate to properly set a curd. This time frame yields a thick but very mild yogurt, with no tartness. If you are after more of a tart yogurt, you can incubate longer (this will not make it any thicker, just more tart). Remove the lid and taste test periodically as it incubates until you reach your desired tartness, and remember what your ideal time length is to set your IP in the future.
- Once your incubation time is up, you should have a nice set curd with visible whey around the sides and top. Use a long knife to cut parallel lines into the curd to bottom of pot. Turn pot 90° and cut parallel lines perpendicular to the first ones creating small cubes.
- Using your cheese skimmer, gently scoop the curds from the pot and put them into your Greek Yogurt Strainer. Just like with the mozzarella, you want to be gentle with the curds. Scoop gently, don’t dump the curds!
- Let strain in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours for thin Skyr, or overnight if you like it on the thick side. (*Note my favorite batch I incubated for 7.5 hours and then accidentally left it out on the counter to drain for a full 12 hours. It was my most perfectly tart batch yet!)
- Once your Skyr is strained to desired thickness, scoop it out of the strainer and put into a large bowl. It won’t look like the most beautiful thing in the world, but the next step is where the magic happens.
- Using a hand beater preferably or good ole’ elbow grease and a whisk: whip it good. It will transform into the creamiest, thickest, lightest, most heavenly texture imaginable. I personally am a plain yogurt person 99% of the time as I like to flavor my yogurt differently each time I eat it. But, if you want to flavor it, this would be the time to add some pureed fruit, vanilla bean paste, etc. I am on a kick currently where I blend in some fresh pureed berries of whatever is in season. It’s like frozen yogurt without being frozen.
- Put into an airtight container and keep in the fridge. The culture will be the most active for the first week or so, so remember to save a half a cup to culture your next batch!
Happy Skyr Eating,
Last summer I became a full fledged goats milk greek yogurt addict. I was making it several times a week, and would gorge on a heaping bowl everyday topped with whatever wild fruit was in season at that particular moment. Honestly, it’s a wonder that at the volume I was consuming it, my digestive system didn’t go into full fledged revolt.
Well, it didn’t take long for my addiction to further spiral out of of control, and I started to dip my taste buds into the world of frozen goat milk yogurt. Goagurt? It is single handedly (and I’m not exaggerating here) one of my favorite things in the world. I then and went and turned my friend Anne into an a frozen goat milk yogurt manic last summer, who has been eating it ever since. It truly is a refreshing summer treat.
This frozen goat milk yogurt recipe can be adapted for quite literally any fruit. Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, whatever! Fresh or frozen! Or, *sigh* any yogurt if you are into the whole bovine versus caprine thing. The only thing that may need to be adjusted is the amount of sugar and lemon juice depending on the fruit. Some are naturally sweeter or more tart than others. Think sweet peaches versus tart raspberries, you wouldn’t add the same amount of sugar and lemon juice for both?! The good news is once you make the base, you can give it a taste test and add more of what you think is needed.
I am writing the recipe as general “berry” frozen yogurt, but strawberry is the most common one I make. I consumed approximately 234,783 gallons last summer in addition to my Nana’s Strawberry Pie. Again, feel free to substitute any fruit that’s in season, or use frozen if none are in season, and adjust to taste. I personally never measure and always just add and taste as I go along. Add too much fruit? Blend in some more yogurt. Not sweet enough? Add more sugar. In order to write this blog post, I actually had to measure everything out I was eyeballing so just know it’s extremely flexible and forgiving!
There are only two things that I ask of you if you’re going to make this recipe:
- Please for the love of all that is holy DO NOT skip straining the seeds. Yes, it’s one measly little extra step, but it makes all the difference in the texture of the yogurt. I promise.
- And PLEASE, unless you’re consuming it all within a couple of hours of making it, don’t forget the alcohol. It won’t get you drunk, it won’t get your kids drunk, and you certainly won’t taste it. What it will do, however, is keep your yogurt from turning into an icy, unscoopable cinder block in the freezer. For reals.
Remember that the quality of fruit varies (and matters). When in season, some are so deliciously juicy and flavorful, while others are a bit bland. If you have bland berries, you may need to add more than the recipe calls for, and you still probably won’t get a super concentrated flavor. So, the quantities I call for are general guidelines and I erred on the side of caution when it comes to sweetness and acidity. Less sugar, less acid. You can always add more, but you can’t take it away once it’s there. The amount you add will depend on the particular fruit as well as your own personal taste. I don’t particularly care for any of mine to be super sweet, so I always use less sugar.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is use this recipe as a guideline. Add less at first, taste, and adjust to your liking. Don’t be afraid to try new flavor combinations and get creative, this is a solid base for you to expand upon.
Ingredients
- 5 cups fresh or thawed frozen berries
- 1/2 cup raw sugar
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- A good glug of vodka ~1.5 tablespoons
- 2 cups Greek Goats Milk Yogurt (the thicker and fuller fat the better, obvi)
**I have never subbed honey or other natural sweetener here because in the grand scheme of things I use so little. I would imagine though if using honey, due to it being a supercooled liquid that it would also prevent the yogurt from freezing solid much like the vodka.
Create Your Base
- Take berries thru vodka and add it to the bowl of your blender or food processor. Give it a quick toss, then let sit until syrupy and juices have extracted. Then blend until smooth scraping down sides, then add yogurt and blend until incorporated.
- Pour through fine mesh strainer fitted over a canning funnel if you have it, into a storage container of sorts (mason jar works!). Press/stir around with rubber spatula to help push the liquid base through, scrape out seeds and put in your Big Marie slop bucket as needed. The goal here is to remove the seeds and allow the smooth yogurty goodness to strain through and leave the seeds behind.
- Put the base in the refrigerator covered and let it get good and cold.
Churn and Burn
- Pull out your best friend’s ice cream maker that you borrowed two years ago and never returned back to her.
- Add your chilled base to the frozen ice cream maker and let it churn until it reached your desired thickness. I let mine go around 20-25ish minutes usually.
- Eat it soft serve straight from the ice cream maker bowl, or put into another container and stick in the freezer for a few hours to let it firm up even more.
- Put on your elastic waistband sweatpants, sit back and enjoy!
Happy Goagurt Eating,
If you follow me on Instagram and pay attention to my stories, then you know that I have eaten no less than 4,237,432 gallons of goat’s milk greek yogurt so far this year. To say that I have an addiction may be a slight understatement, but I just can’t help myself! It’s that good.
I tried and failed to make yogurt all last year. The reason for my failure? Improper incubation.I tried all those homemade methods. Crock pot wrapped in towels, in a cooler with hot water, heating pad, I tried them all. Sometimes they worked, but mostly they didn’t. The inconsistency and waste of milk was infuriating. So, this year I decided I was going to break down and get an Instant Pot. Thanks to its “yogurt” function, It allows you to properly incubate the culture which consistently produces delicious yogurt every single time. No more guessing if it will work or not, it’s as reliable as my Ole’ Boone Dog.
If you’re serious about making yogurt, I encourage you to invest in an Instant Pot if you don’t have one. I got mine on sale on Amazon for $85 and just in yogurt alone it has more than paid for itself this year on top of other things it can do! Here is how to make perfect, thick, creamy, goats milk yogurt every time:
What You Need
- Raw Goats Milk (any volume of milk you have that will fit in your IP)
- Bacteria Culture (I personally use the ABY2C)
- Instant Pot – make sure it has the yogurt button!
- Instant or Quick Read Thermometer
- Greek Yogurt Strainer (optional but I like it really thick)
Note that there is no powdered milk or gelatin…you don’t need it! I will show you how to achieve thick goat’s milk greek yogurt without any additives… it’s possible people!
Another quick note, this is not considered raw yogurt. I start with raw milk because that’s what I drink, but I do pasteurize. Why? Because while raw milk is full of good, healthy bacteria, so is yogurt culture. If the milk was left raw, you would have good bacteria competing with each other which could create some funky yogurt. So, I pasteurize the milk in my process so that there is nothing competing with my yogurt culture. I drink plenty of raw milk to get my dose of good gut boosting raw milk bacteria, don’t need it in my yogurt too!
The Process
- Add your milk (I never make less than a gallon at a time) to your Instant Pot and put the lid back on. Hit the “yogurt” button until it says “boil”. Then walk away! Go carry on for whatever you have to do for the next hour while the IP pasteurizes your milk until it beeps and it says “yogurt”.
- Once it’s done pasteurizing remove the lid and temp it. Instant Pot has an acceptable range to which it will pasteurize milk, but mine doesn’t always get the temperature I need for yogurt.The temperature that you NEED for thick yogurt is 185°F. So, take the temperature. Did it pasteurize it to 185F on its own? If it did good, put the lid back on. If it didn’t, don’t sweat it. Hit the saute button once so it’s on “low” and constantly stir while checking the temperature. Even if your IP brought it to the lowest acceptable temperature within range (167°F), it will only take a few minutes to get it up to 185°F it needs to be. Continually stir so you don’t scorch the milk, and once you achieve 185°, turn off the IP, and put the lid back on sealed
BINGO
3. Now, go about your day. The milk has now been pasteurized but has to drop back down to the range your culture specifies before it can be added. I personally pasteurize my milk first thing in the morning after milking. It takes all day long to cool off to the 106°- 110°F range my culture needs, and then it incubates overnight and is ready to chill when I finish milking the next day! It is the perfect system for me.
4. Once the milk has cooled down to your cultures specified range, (again mine is 106°-110°F) remove the skin that formed on the top of the milk and add the amount of culture specified on the bottle that is needed based on the amount of milk. Give it a good stir to make sure its fully incorporated into the milk. Put the lid back on sealed, and then hit the “yogurt” button again until it’s at “normal” and set your time anywhere from 10 hours minimum, to 12 hours. 10 hours is the minimum goats milk needs to properly set, anything beyond that really is a matter of personal preference as well as what time it will end (for example if 10 hours means it’s going to be finished at 4 am I will incubate for 12)
5. Walk away! The IP will maintain the perfect temperature to incubate your culture and do all the work for you while you go about your evening and sleep.
6. Once the 10-12 hours are up, you want to remove the entire pot filled with yogurt. Now, you can do one of two things here. You can put the yogurt into containers in the fridge as is and eat it that way, or if you like really thick and creamy greek style yogurt such as myself, you can strain it
7. If you like your goat’s milk greek yogurt thick, put the entire pot with the yogurt in the fridge.Thoroughly chilled yogurt strains better than warm, so leave it in the fridge until it good and cold. I usually leave it in there until the evening, which is about 12 hours. Then, once it’s chilled, pour it into your Greek Yogurt Strainer, each one holds a half gallon – which is why I have two!
8. Put the strainers in the fridge until it reaches your desired consistency. I used to strain for ~12 hours, but I have been straining for a full 24 to get a really good and thick yogurt. If you happen to forget about it and overstrain, no worries! Just mix some of the whey back in. Put it into containers and store in the fridge. While it never lasts long around here so I can’t give a firm shelf life, I will say I have had yogurt that was 2 weeks old and will still just as good as the day I pulled it out of the strainer!
9. Prepare to become a yogurt addicted monster such as myself and enjoy it with anything and everything you can possible put in it. May I suggest frozen goatgurt?
Tips for Yogurt Making
- Have a dedicated seal JUST for making yogurt. I bought a five pack of seals on Amazon (they’re cheap) and my red one is dedicated to milk only purposes.The silicone seals absorb odors, so if you make something savory say chicken stock, and then turn around and make yogurt with the same seal, you could have chickeny tasting yogurt.Gross.
- The butterfat content of your milk is going to make a big difference in your yogurt. The fuller fat the milk, the creamier and thicker the yogurt.
- Fresh is best. Unlike my mozzarella recipe, fresh milk is best for making yogurt. I always use milk from that day or the previous day when making it, never older.
- When you strain your yogurt to achieve the really thick stuff, there is going to be a lot of whey loss. Whey is wonderful, but it makes it runny! So, be prepared that if you are going to strain it like I do and start out with a gallon of milk, you will yield about a half gallon of finished yogurt after 24 hours.If you let it go even longer you can achieve a cream cheese consistency. It’s all a matter of personal preference! Whey is great for making bread and biscuits though, and pigs love it too! So it never goes to waste here
After eating a lot of hard, rubbery, and just all around bad goats milk mozzarella, I finally achieved what I thought was the impossible… I figured out a method that made soft, stringy, tender, and delicious goats milk mozzarella!
You know those 30 minute, microwave, and other quick mozzarella recipes? Skip right over them, don’t even look at them much less waste your milk. They do not work. At least for goat’s milk anyway. Goats milk mozzarella takes a little bit of finesse due to the nature of the milk itself, but it’s fairy inactive with the exception of the stretching and folding step. If you’re really on your game and are properly prepared, this can be made and ready to cook with from start to finish in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Only about 30 minutes of that is actual hands on work.
Your patience will be rewarded with incredibly tender, delicious, and oh so satisfying goat’s milk mozzarella. It will make you love your dairy goats even more, and forget about the kicked milk buckets and temper tantrums on the stand…mostly
Ingredients & Special Materials
- 1 gallon raw goats milk *
- 1.5 teaspoons citric acid
- 1/4 teaspoon QUALITY liquid rennet dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
- Sea salt
- Brine: 1/2 cup sea salt dissolved in quart of water
- Clean dish gloves ( I have a dedicated pair for cheese making)
- Instant read thermometer
- Cheese skimmer
* I drink my milk raw, so that’s what I use. But, I would imagine it will work just the same with pasteurized.
Directions
- Add goats milk to heavy bottom stockpot over medium heat and bring to 55°F stirring occasionally. Add citric acid, and stir to dissolve
- Continue to heat milk to 90°F, then add rennet + water mixture to milk, stirring in up and down motion for 15 seconds. Cover, remove from heat and let sit for 15 minutes until curd is set, letting sit longer if needed.
- Once curd is set firm, use a long knife to cut parallel lines into the curd to bottom of pot. Turn pot 90° and cut parallel lines perpendicular to the first ones creating small cubes.
4. Return pot to medium heat and slowly and gently stir curds until their temperature reaches 100°F. Don’t be rough with it! Gentle, gentle, gentle! Once the temperature has been met, remove from heat, cover, and let sit for a half hour or so.
5. After a half hour, remove curds from whey with cheese skimmer to colander over a bowl to collect whey. Add palmful of salt to whey in the stockpot and return to medium high heat until it reaches 160-170°F. Create brine mixture of 1 quart water + 1/2 cup salt dissolved in a bowl and set aside.
6. Once whey heats up to 160-170°F, working in batches tear off small golf ball-ish sized pieces of curd, and dip and stir around in hot whey. When curds are very hot and soft stretch and fold until it is elastic and doesn’t break. With properly heated whey, this will only require a couple stretches and folds. The cheese should pull and stretch not break and fray. If it does, it needs to go back into the hot whey longer before it’s ready.
DO NOT OVERSTRETCH IT
Make sure the curds have that melty soft texture before stretching. When properly stretched, dip into hot whey again, form into a ball, and add to brine. (**see notes below for tips)
7. Repeat the process with remaining curds, adding each ball of mozzarella to the brine. Use immediately, store in airtight container in brine in the fridge, or wrap and freeze.
**My cheese is technically considered raw, so I use it within a couple days of making it or I will freeze it. If it sits too long, it’s still perfectly fine to eat but it will develop a goaty taste that i’m not a fan of. So I either plan on making it for a meal, or freeze it if I don’t use it within the next couple days!
Helpful Hints
Making mozzarella really is a straightforward simple process, but it’s the tiniest details that mean the difference between a hard ball of rubbery cheese and a soft delicate pillow. Seemingly pointless steps like stirring gently in an up and down motion when adding rennet and allowing the curds to sit in the heated whey all contribute to the texture and workability of the cheese.
Goats milk is very different from cows milk or buffalo milk, which I believe is why goats milk mozzarella can be a bit finicky in comparison to other milks. A big part of successful mozzarella comes down to how the milk itself is treated.
Here are some extremely helpful tips that will make all the difference in the world in the outcomes of your cheese:
- Don’t use fresh milk. Mozzarella is best made with milk that is a couple days old (I shoot for 3) versus fresh. This allows the milk to slightly acidify and makes a better curd and better cheese.
- Do not over work the cheese or milk. The gentler you are with the milk when stirring and stretching, the more tender your cheese will be. Before I learned to be gentle and treat it gingerly I had a lot of tough and hard cheese. As soon as I developed a softer hand it made an immediate difference.
- Make sure your whey is very hot. The whey should be extremely hot, which is why you need gloves. You should be able to feel how hot the whey is through the gloves, and it still be hot. Nice and hot whey will make the curds soft and allow it to properly stretch. Whey that’s too cool requires more stretching, which leads to overworked and tough rubbery cheese. DO NOT OVERSTRETCH YOUR CHEESE
- Don’t make your balls too big. Small mozzarella balls are more manageable and will allow you to not overwork it when stretching. With experience you will get more comfortable and can make them bigger. Yeah it’s cool to see professional cheese makers stretch bowling ball sized mozzarella balls. But, they’re professionals, so don’t try to be a superstar right off the bat.
- The Brine: The brine allows salt to properly penetrate the cheese and I believe adds to the tenderness and freshness. I have made it both with and without the brine, and now I always use it. It does certainly add considerable saltiness to the exterior of the cheese, so if you’re eating it fresh or are concerned about accidentally over salting your meal just rinse the ball under cool water and it removes that briny saltiness.
Making mozzarella cheese from your own goats milk is incredibly satisfying and a wonderful addition to any dish. It is a great way to use up a stockpile of milk in the fridge, and while it may get a little drier, it does freeze well. But, chances are you’re planning on melting it, so it’s a non issue and is a great way to preserve fresh cheese throughout the winter!
With this recipe and method, you too can make tender, meltable, and delicious goats milk mozzarella as well! Your first try it likely will not turn out perfect. But, like anything else you will learn..don’t get discouraged! In my quest to find the perfect process for goats milk mozzarella I almost gave up and started making a lot of goats milk ricotta instead (which is phenomenal in its on right). But, persistence (and stubbornness) allowed me to prevail and it is totally worth making a couple bad batches at first.
If you balls turn out a little tough you may look back and be able to pinpoint where you overstretched the cheese or you didn’t let the curd get hot enough in the whey. So, next time make sure you have it good and hot before stretching and you only do it a couple times and don’t go overboard. It’s all part of the learning process, but I assure you this is the recipe and method for successful goats milk mozzarella when done properly!
Happy Cheese Making,
Who said that gnocchi is only for potatoes? I certainly thought this was the case until a couple years ago when I stumbled across homemade ricotta gnocchi. It’s light, quick, easy to make, and goes perfectly with a simple tomato sauce. My life has never been the same since…
This recipe is so simple, and you can easily double the recipe to flash freeze half for an even quicker and easier meal next time. I personally love to make this with homemade goats milk ricotta, but obviously you can make this with store bought or cows milk ricotta!
The thing that’s great about ricotta versus potato gnocchi is that it doesn’t get gummy or overworked as easily as its potato counterpart due to the high protein content in the cheese. It stays tender even if you overwork the dough a bit. Think cheesy little pillows dancing on your tongue, it’s delicious! You don’t need a ricer or food mill, so it’s less steps, less dishes, and comes together quicker!
The one thing that you need to be aware of in this recipe is the amount of liquid retained in your ricotta. When making the dough, the ricotta should be quite dry. I will usually let mine hang in cheesecloth for hours and then smear it between paper towels patting it dry if it isn’t quite dry enough by the time I’m ready to make it. If you use store bought, you can drain it through a fine mesh colander and do the same paper towel method. You want the cheese to maintain some moisture, but it should no means be wet. How wet it is will determine how much flour you end up using which is why there is a range!
Some methods call for making the gnocchi’s by turning a ziploc bag into a piping bag. I prefer to use the method where you roll out the dough into logs and cut the gnocchis, which is what I explain below. This is a very basic recipe that you can find with a simple google search. But, I have made some minor tweaks in the dough as well as the process that I feel make it easier and better!
The Recipe
- 1 pound (2 cups) ricotta cheese drained of liquid
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
- 2-3T finely miced herb of your choice (I like parsley or basil!)
- 3/4-1 cup flour, plus more for dusting work bench
- salt and pepper
Directions
- Make your ricotta cheese and strain it to desired dryness, or prep store bought as described above. Whatever you’re doing with the drained off whey, make sure you reserve some in case you need to add it back into the dough.
- Combine ricotta, egg, parmesan, salt, pepper, and minced herb until thoroughly mixed. Slowly add flour, gently folding in with rubber spatula trying not to overwork it (this is very forgiving unlike potato gnocchi if you do!) The dough should be tacky, but not overly sticky and messy. Add more flour if needed (means your ricotta was wet) or, add reserved whey if needed to get desired consistency (your ricotta was dry!).
- Turn out dough ball onto the counter and give it a few kneads until it comes together and forms a nice ball. It should not be messy and sticking like crazy to your counter, but not crumbly or dry.
- Wrap in saran wrap and let rest for at least a half hour in the fridge, I prefer an hour. This will make rolling out the rope shaped pieces easier.
- Using a bench scraper cut the ball into fourths and then fourths again, giving eight small pie wedge shaped pieces.
- Take a wedge of dough and roll between your hands creating a rough log like shape, then roll out on the countertop creating a long rope. Flour the counter if needed to prevent sticking. I try to shoot for 1/2″ diameter size, but the most important part is making sure they’re all the same size so they cook consistently!
7. Once you have a rope that’s approximately 1/2″ inch in diameter, use your bench scraper to cut it into little gnocchi’s. Again, this is kind of personal choice as to size, I just eye ball it and make my way down the log trying to keep them around 3/4″ish in size. Just try to keep it consistent for cooking purposes!
8. Repeat the same process for the rest of the wedges. Either cook immediately in salted boiling water or put on parchment paper on a cookie sheet, dust with flour to prevent sticking, and stick in the freezer to flash freeze and cook later.
9. When cooking, the water should be a light boil (these cook very fast fresh) not a rolling vigorous one. The gnocchi are delicate, and an aggressive boil will potentially cause them to break up or make them tough. The gnocchi are cooked when they float to the top. Scoop out with a spider and enjoy with your choice of sauce!
These homemade ricotta gnocchi’s are one of my favorite meals to make, especially during the summer! I have fresh milk to make the ricotta, I have a doomsday preppers supply of canned tomato sauce from our heirloom tomatoes, and freezers chalked full of meat to pair it with. Making this is one of my favorite ways to use up the goats milk when I am getting a fridge full, so that I can freeze a bunch of it and have it on hand for meals. It’s just a nice easy and light meal that gets dinner quickly on the table after a long busy day.
Milk. Glorious fresh, raw, creamy goats milk. It is quite possibly one of the things I am most proud of to be producing right here on our small farm. Our girls are fed an organic, non-gmo, soy free feed, with more browsing than they can eat. Their milk truly is as good as it gets and I get it fresh twice a day, everyday! When you have a couple of does in milk it’s easy to get overwhelmed with milk. I can’t keep up just drinking it alone! FYI, this is a very good problem to have. I love any and all dairy products, so my goal is to produce as many as I can with the milk that I have on hand.
Ricotta is one of the easiest and quickest cheeses that you can make with the simplest ingredients. It doesn’t have to age and is ready to use within a half hour or so, nor is it as temperamental as mozzarella. Bonus! Basically, it’s a great cheese to get your feet wet and isn’t everything better with a little ricotta? Some make ricotta with leftover whey from other cheeses, which makes a skim/low fat ricotta. I however am a full fat/whole milk kind of girl, so I make my ricotta with milk not whey. Here’s how to make it:
Ingredients & Directions
- 1 gallon milk
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water (some use vinegar here as the “acid” but I have citric acid on hand for mozzarella so this is what I use)
- Add one gallon of fresh raw milk to a stockpot. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water to the milk.
- Bring stove up to medium- medium high heat and slowly heat up milk stirring frequently and slowly to prevent sticking and scorching.
- Once the milk reaches a temperature of 190-195 degrees F, you will see the curds begin to separate from the whey. At this point continue to slowly stir until you are seeing distinct curds begin to form.
- At this point, remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes.
- While its sitting, line a large colander rested over a mixing bowl with two large pieces of cheese cloth.
- After the ten minutes are up, ladle the curds and whey into the cheesecloth lined colander. **Do not press to make more room this is why you’re using a large colander and bowl
- After you have added all of the curds and whey, pull up the corners of the cheesecloth, wrap and tie a string around them to secure and hang. You can hang from a cabinet door knob, or I have a hook on the side of a cabinet next to my sink that I use.
- Allow the whey to drip and drain (collecting in a bowl for use in other dishes or feeding to your pigs!) until the desired consistency is reached. I usually let mine go about 30 minutes, you can always pat dry later if you want drier ricotta!
- Remove the ricotta from the cheesecloth and put in an airtight container. Store in the fridge and enjoy!
Cheese Notes
- I use raw milk because that’s what I produce. If you don’t have access to raw, use vat pasteurized or as minimally pasteurized as possible. AKA not ultra pasteurized milk
- The key with goat’s milk in other cheese types is to not be too “rough” with the milk because of the structure of the molecules in goats milk. Rough treatment = tough cheese. So even with ricotta I treat the milk the same way. Be kind to it, stir gently!
- Do yourself a favor and use an over sized colander and bowl. You don’t want to be trying to transfer it in the middle of your ladling because you tried to save on the size. You will make a mess, and could lose some of your goodies! A gallon of milk is a lot more than it looks like.
- If you happen to over strain the ricotta, and it’s too dry for you, just fold some whey back in.