Cream cheese

I looked up the ‘Cream Cheese Frosting’ recipe in your Pantry Cookbook. It called for either packages of cream cheese or fresh cream cheese softened. How do you make your own cream cheese? Can you make it from goat’s milk? Does it get firmer with refrigeration? How long will it keep? How do you wrap it?
J from Missouri

Unless you have a cream separator it is hard to get enough cream to make cream cheese from goat’s milk. But the good news is that you can make chevre, or fresh soft cheese, from goat milk that can be used just like cream cheese. And, yes, it is firm yet not hard. It will keep 2 weeks or more in the fridge and will freeze although it does tend to get granular like cream cheese when frozen. I just put mine in plastic snap-top refrigerator containers.

Here’s the recipe:

5 quarts whole fresh milk
1/2 cup cultured buttermilk
2 Tbsp. diluted rennet — to make this, add 3 drops liquid rennet to 1/3 cup cool water.

Warm milk to 80 degrees by setting pot in sinkful of hot water. Stir in buttermilk; mix well. Add 2 Tbsp. of diluted rennet. Stir well and cover. Let set at room temperature for 24 hours or a little longer. It should look like thick yogurt.

Drain curd through a clean old pillowcase or piece of clean sheet; cheesecloth won’t work; you’ll lose a lot of cheese. Line a colander with this and pour curds slowly into center. Hang to drain 6-8 hours or until dripping stops.

Your chevre should resemble cream cheese. Add salt to taste and refrigerate in a covered container. You can also add herbs, bacon bits, olives, canned sweet or hot peppers, fruit, etc. to make a killer spread! — Jackie

Canning pork loin

I have been canning some pork loin by raw packing using the instructions in your book Growing and Canning Your Own Food and wondered what you do with the scraps that you trim off? I’m sure you have a great way to use them! I put some in a crock pot with soup beans for supper but I was curious as to if there was another use for them.

Marlana Ward
Mountain City, Tennessee

I can up most of them, too! I add them to such things as omelets, barbecue pork sandwiches, soups and stews, refried beans, and casseroles. — Jackie

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