'buttery and mellow, with hints of lemon'
August 28, 2015 5:11 PM   Subscribe

"Good fresh goat cheese is a special and important thing. It should be moist and creamy, without a hint of graininess. Its flavor should be clean and fresh, mouthwateringly tangy but not astringent, lemony but also milky and balanced. An unaged cheese has nowhere to hide its faults."
Beyond Chevre: 10 Essential Goat Milk Cheeses to Know and Love - by Liz Thorpe at Serious Eats
"Unfortunately there's a lot of faulty, gluey goat cheese out there, metallic and sour without any nuance. And that stuff, I suspect, is what turns people off goat milk cheese entirely. But there are a lot of goat cheeses out there to try besides chèvre."
More cheese articles in Serious Eats's cheese category, "All About Cheese".

Just if you're not too busy, if you've got the time.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (27 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
It should be moist and creamy, without a hint of graininess. Its flavor should be clean and fresh, mouthwateringly tangy but not astringent, lemony but also milky and balanced.
It should speak no fewer than seven languages, including one from each continent. Its voice should be as a choir of angels, its color like that of the Marble Tower in Istanbul. A good goat cheese should perform the chanoyu flawlessly. It should walk as if spotlit even in darkness. It should be wise and yet humble, flawed and yet pure. At no point should it suggest the ripe smell of goats peeing on themselves.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:18 PM on August 28, 2015 [27 favorites]


Give them to me.


The cheeses.


All of them.


CHEESE.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:19 PM on August 28, 2015 [7 favorites]


Oh man Wolfdog delivers some flawless Posh Nosh.


I tip my most fabulous hat to you, Sir.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:22 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


It should speak no fewer than seven languages, including one from each continent. Its voice should be as a choir of angels, its color like that of the Marble Tower in Istanbul. A good goat cheese should perform the chanoyu flawlessly. It should walk as if spotlit even in darkness. It should be wise and yet humble, flawed and yet pure.

Also trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:49 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


There's a goat-cheese farm a little south of here. It's evidently a Mennonite (or similar) couple who let the goats do what they like, come in to get milked at will, and even give them herbal tea! They're artisinal, farmstead, all that without being even remotely hipster.

Their Couer de la Crème is simply fantastic. Unaged, and like the FPP says, you can't hide anything in fresh cheese. Shit, getting hungry....
posted by notsnot at 5:59 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'll be the contrarian and say that I generally can't stand goat cheeses. Feta is the exception, as long as it's more sheepy than goaty.

Carry on
posted by Zedcaster at 6:16 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Greg_Ace, where's my goat cheese merit badge?
posted by a halcyon day at 6:24 PM on August 28, 2015


MORE FOR ME
posted by louche mustachio at 6:25 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mouth watering for some Garrotxa... And I just had dinner!
posted by town of cats at 6:38 PM on August 28, 2015


Aged Goudas in general are a revelation for their crunchy, crystalline texture, like some delectable crayon.

I love aged goudas, and I've had good goat ones. But the one time I bit into a crayon as a kid out of curiosity was not remotely suggestive of what I like about these cheeses.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:00 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


also wax is almost the exact opposite of crystalline
posted by Wolfdog at 7:06 PM on August 28, 2015


That's what I mean. "Waxy" is not how I'd describe an aged gouda. Maybe if you left the wax on...
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:09 PM on August 28, 2015


Wolfdog: "It should speak no fewer than seven languages, including one from each continent."

My cheese is fluent in penguin.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:18 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


Greg_Ace, where's my goat cheese merit badge?

Here y'go. ;)
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:37 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sadly, I have to rely on my two local supermarkets for reasonably good cheese. But they really never stock anything much beyond the mass-produced export stuff with a few bigger-name "artisan" cheeses.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:59 PM on August 28, 2015


Man, I love tyrosene crystals.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:17 PM on August 28, 2015


Greg_Ace: "It should speak no fewer than seven languages, including one from each continent. Its voice should be as a choir of angels, its color like that of the Marble Tower in Istanbul. A good goat cheese should perform the chanoyu flawlessly. It should walk as if spotlit even in darkness. It should be wise and yet humble, flawed and yet pure.

Also trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent
"

Ideally, it should also be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for cheese singles.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:29 PM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


It just occurred to me that Metafilter cheese threads are basically Metafilter spider threads in reverse.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:33 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


So many areas of my life I have been kept from snobbery or cultivated a proletarian attitude. Brought up teetotal, never acquired a taste for alcohol, so it probably isn't going to be wine. And sure, I love me some weird art music but pop from U2 to Taylor Swift is fine.

But cheese.

Without work, cheese is one day going to steal me down the road of carefully distinguished tastes, fine points of origin and technique, assiduously cultivated serving and presentation, and eventually, yes... straight up snobbery.
posted by weston at 9:01 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Careful - you wouldn't want to become a brie-tasting elitist, and end up reading "Doonesbury"!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:11 PM on August 28, 2015


The Humboldt Fog cheese is one of my favorite cheeses ever. Delicious, and beautiful too.
posted by bloggerwench at 9:28 PM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


I love this article. The insane enthusiasm about cheese is both charming and fucking hilarious.

"I have no proof, but my gut tells me that the French seized goat brie as an opportunity to create a buttery, rich cheese made with goat milk for an American audience that's always shied away from the piquant, animal flavors associated with traditional French Loire and Poitou goat cheeses."

I think this is incredibly unlikely, but the fact that you're having gut instincts about the workings of the French cheese industry tells me everything I need to know about the progress of your obsession. Push on, brave writer, to goat pastures new.
posted by howfar at 1:59 AM on August 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


Today I learned about using ash in cheese-making.
posted by MtDewd at 5:43 AM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


No Ragstone in this list ;_;

Ragstone is excellent.
posted by ACair at 5:59 AM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


I disliked goat cheese all my life until a recent holiday, where we had a goat-cheese, pickle, and turkey sandwich with alfalfa sprouts and it was incredible. Upon returning home I bought a log of goat cheese from Costco and recreated the masterpiece at home.

I have had a turn - with goat cheese!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:03 AM on August 29, 2015


This post has filled me with sfw goat cheese desire.
posted by Oyéah at 8:58 AM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Brie de Meaux AOC and Camembert de Normandie AOC are both regionally protected cheeses, hard to find and illegal to bring to the States.
Land of the free, indeed.
posted by brokkr at 11:49 AM on August 29, 2015


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