How To Make Gouda Cheese

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How To Remove Wax From Gouda Cheese

How to make Gouda

Depending on how much you intend to eat, cut a piece off the cheese wheel and then simply peel off the wax. Be sure to clean the knife off any wax before using it again to cut the cheese youll be eating.

Another alternative would be to use a vegetable peeler to peel off problematic layers of wax on your cheese to expose the goodness underneath.

Provides Large Amounts Of Vitamin K2

There are two distinct types of vitamin K

  • Vitamin K1
  • Vitamin K2

Vitamin K1 is present in a large variety of plant-based foods, and green vegetables are an especially good source.

On the other hand, we can find vitamin K2 in animal foods and foods that undergo bacterial fermentation such as natto and sauerkraut. Among animal-based foods, aged hard cheese is particularly high in vitamin K2 .

Additionally, vitamin K2 is much easier for the human body to absorb than vitamin K1, and it has a longer half-life in the body. On this note, peer-reviewed research suggests that K2 may be up to 10x more bioavailable than K1 .

While research on vitamin K2 is still in its relative infancy, the compound is thought to be important for cardiovascular and skeletal health. Most notably, research indicates that higher vitamin K2 intake may reduce the risk of arterial calcification, which can lead to heart disease .

On the positive side, Gouda cheese is one of the best dietary sources of vitamin K2.

If vitamin K2 is of interest, then Jarlsberg cheese appears to provide the most concentrated source of this nutrient.

How Much Vitamin K2 Does Gouda Provide?

In recently published research on the menaquinone content of cheese, we can see that Gouda provides more vitamin K2 than most other cheese varieties.

Based on the data from this research, the table below shows the vitamin K2 content of various types of cheese .

Vitamin K2 Content of Gouda vs. Other Types of Cheese

Type of Cheese

I Started Making Goat Cheese

My childhood love of goats and good cheese were the perfect recipe for becoming an artisan cheesemaker. Milking three goats for a decade, with each goat producing over a gallon of milk a day, I was drowning in milk. Even after feeding a hungry family of five all the milk we could drink and making easy, soft cheese like Chèvre and yogurt, milk started stacking up in our fridge. So, I experimented with making hard cheeses in my kitchen.

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What Is Smoked Gouda

First off, what is this stuff?

Smoked gouda, as weird as it sounds, is gouda cheese that has been smoked the same way youd smoke meat or fish.

While most people naturally associate smoke with fire and heat, smoked cheeses like gouda are actually made through a process called cold smoking.

Cold smoking ensures that you get plenty of flavorful smoke over the product without losing your cheese through the grate of your grill.

Smoked gouda can be made using a few items that you probably already have and a few you can order online and have before the weekend.

You can make it on a gas or charcoal grill outside, or inside using an electric smoker.

Heres a great video by Cowboy Kent Rollins to get you started going over the basics of smoking cheese:

Gouda Cheese During Pregnancy Is It Safe

Marblemount Homestead: How to make Gouda cheese

It is among the tastiest cheeses that are also safe for consumption by expectant women. This is important to know because food-borne illnesses can pose serious risks to both the mother and the unborn baby.

Expectant women are ten times more prone to complications arising from consumption of cheese compared to the general population.

That being said, you can rest easy and enjoy your Gouda knowing your pregnancy is safe.

Do you have any questions or comments? Join the discussion over at the Curd Nerd Forum. We would love to hear from you!

We hope you have enjoyed making our Gouda cheese recipe at home as much as we do.

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Recommended Gouda Cheese Recipes

Able to be enjoyed on its own or it can also be incorporated in some amazing recipes. It matches perfectly with fruits and nuts as well. The cheeses texture makes it easy to cut, grate, and also melt.

This cheese will assuredly make any recipe you try a gourmet dish without putting g in any extra effort.

If you need some suggestions, however, look no further, we have some recipe suggestions thatll excite your taste buds and leave you yearning for more. Take a look below

Zucchini, Tomato, and Gouda Cheese Tart:

Pastries that involve cheese are an instant delight from the word go. This simple recipe makes use of simple yet delightfully tasty ingredients.

These tarts are a huge deal in my home and everybody goes nuts for these. Besides being incredibly easy to put together, a Zucchini, Tomato, and Cheese Tart is one amazing taste experience waiting to happen.

Chicken and Macaroni Bake:

This is one of those must-try recipes if you consider yourself a true cheese aficionado. Who doesnt love mac and cheese? Throw in some chicken and you have yourself a worthwhile treat.

This recipe incorporates a host of healthy ingredients not forgetting the tasty Gouda cheese. It is also easy to make and doesnt take too long to prepare. If you asked me, thats the winning trifecta.

Grilled Cheese, Onion, and Bacon sandwiches:

Make Your Own Dutch Gouda Cheese

Follow the steps below to make your own delicious Dutch cheese. If you have any questions or would like to ask a question about how to make your own cheese, please contact Esther, the cheese maker. Are you happy with this recipe and with your homemade cheese? Please give consider giving a donation. You can also post your photo of your cheese on and tag @kaasworkshops or write a review as a way to give thanks.

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How To Actually Cut Different Kinds Of Cheese

If you arent sure how to cut and portion your block of cheese, Toth suggests studying it to get a sense of its texture and shape, and think about how to best cut it.

Its about functionality, Polowsky says: But then, theres the more nuanced, romantic side of whats going to look good.

Wheels can be evenly divided into wedges, blocks easily sliced into slabs, and triangular-shaped cheeses cut well into smaller triangles, for example. Runny and gooey cheeses, such as brie or Camembert, are difficult to cut into even pieces, so you can serve them in a full block or just cut in half.

Make surehowever you portionit includes at least a bit of the rind, Toth says about cheeses like manchego, brie, comte, or Gruyere.

In most cases, eating the rind is a personal preference, but keep in mind that some rindslike ones made of wax and clothmay not be palatable.

Depending on the type of cheese, Toth and Polowsky offer a few guidelines for cutting it up and serving:

Standard block with no rind: Simply cut it into cubes.

Crumbly cheeses: For aged gouda, feta, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, use a dull knife to pry off bite-sized chunks.

Simon Birt via Unsplash

Soft, wheel-shaped cheeses: Brie and Camembert may be ripe and runny, which makes them difficult to portion. Cutting these in half will offer an entry point. If its firmer, cut it into wedges.

Ball of mozzarella: Cut the ball in half, then slice it into half-moon shapes.

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Controlling Cheese Quality And Consistency

How to Make Gouda Cheese

Miel manages cheese quality and consistency mostly through instinctive understanding and monitoring of visual and textural characteristics of the milk and developing curds. He has built up this knowledge over years of making cheese. Miel still seeks advice from his father and benefits from his years of experience.

Key factors that contribute to the quality of the Gouda cheese include:

  • the quality of the milk
  • the firmness of the coagulum before cutting
  • the size and moisture content of the curds before moulding
  • the pH of the cheese before brining
  • turning the cheese during moulding and ripening
  • the temperature and duration of ripening.

Testing at key points in the process is essential for quality and making decisions about when to proceed to the next step. Many of these are recorded so consistency between batches can be monitored.

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How To Smoke Gouda

When youre ready to smoke Gouda, its best to decide what wood to use. My recommended wood is hickory , but maple and fruit woods would taste amazing with Gouda as well.

Prior to smoking, you can choose to remove the wax seal or leave it on. Taking it off prior to smoking will allow for more smoke penetration all around the cheese. In contrast, if you choose to leave the wax on, it will keep the cheese a bit fresher, but you wont have as much smoke flavor near the seal.

Lets begin:

  • Prep for cold smoking. When cold smoking, I prefer to use a smoke tube. Fill the tube with your preferred flavor of pellets. Light the end of the tube and allow the flame to burn for 4-5 minutes. Blow out the flame, and the pellets should be producing a nice, steady stream of blue smoke. Place the smoke tube in your grill or smoker and close the lid.
  • Smoke the cheese. Remove the Gouda from the wrapping and place the Gouda directly on the grill grates or use the ice modification specified above .
  • Refrigerate. Remove the cheese from the smoke, and wrap it in parchment paper. Place the cheese in the refrigerator for 2 days, or 48 hours. After those initial two days in parchment paper, vacuum seal the cheese, place it back in the refrigerator, and allow the cheese to refrigerate for another 2 weeks before eating.
  • Eat and enjoy. After your cheese has been vacuum sealed and allowed to rest in the fridge for 2 weeks, you can open the cheese, slice, and enjoy.
  • What Is Gouda Cheese Good With

    Gouda cheese is a perfect match with fruits, crackers, bread and mustard. If you enjoy Goudas complex nutty flavor, you can it an aged Gouda cheese on its own.

    Depending on Gouda cheese age, it can be paired with beer, wine or whiskey. For beer, Gouda goes well with brown or amber ales, which have nutty and caramel flavor.

    Aged Gouda cheese pair well with doppelbock, Belgium dubble, or a stout that has roasted coffee and chocolate flavor.

    Gouda cheese goes well with a single malt scotch from Speuside. An aged Gouda pair well with an aged bourbon or rye whiskey or a Highland scotch. A smoke Gouda cheese is good with a peated scotch or whiskey.

    See more:

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    Where To Buy Gouda Cheese

    Excellent Gouda options of all ages are available online from www.igourmet.com and www.murrayscheese.com and www.cheeselandinc.com. If you prefer to try before you buy, a cheese counter at your local Whole Foods or specialty cheesemonger.

    Some very young Gouda-style cheeses by supermarket brands like Sargento and Boars Head are available at most Deli Counters, but they do not rival the flavor that an imported Dutch Gouda will achieve.

    Salt And Moisture Diffusion

    The Complete Procedure on How to Make Gouda Cheese at Home ...

    Brining of Gouda cheese takes place by immersing the cheese loaves in a strong salt solution, typically about 18% NaCl . During the brining process cheese loaves absorb salt, concomitantly a considerable amount of moisture is lost. Since the process of salt uptake and moisture loss takes place at the edges of the loaves, steep salt and moisture gradients develop between the surface and centre of the cheese that persist during the rest of the production and remain during ripening. With respect to taste attributes the moisture and salt content in the centre is relevant. Moreover, different brining/drying combinations result in approximately the same moisture and salt content, causing differences in taste. Understanding of the local behaviour of salt/moisture inside the cheese throughout the brining process and during storage is therefore important.

    The cheese is approximated as a porous matrix containing a mixture of water and salt . The general MaxwellStefan transport equation for a solution in a porous matrix is given by Equation 24.1 :

    where R is the universal gas constant, T is the temperature and a is the activity, which is defined as the molar concentration x multiplied by the activity coefficient . The activity of the salt solution is described by the Debye-Hückel relations .

    The molar flux of component i is defined in Equation 24.3:

    Timothy P. Guinee, Patrick F. Fox, in, 2017

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    How To Make A Cheese Sauce

    Making a cheese sauce is actually easy and it is a great staple since cheese sauce can be used on pasta, rice, veggies and, of course, fries. It is easy and fun to vary the taste of your cheese sauce just be using different kinds of cheeses.

    Read more: how to make homemade ravioli sauce | Family Cuisine

    To make the smoked Gouda cheese sauce I started by making a simple cream sauce, combining butter and flour in a small saucepan. I put the sauce pan on low, and used a whisk to combine the flour with the butter as it melted.

    Once the butter and flour are smooth it is time to add some milk. I slowly stirred the milk into the butter mixture and turned the burner heat up to medium.

    This is the only even slightly complicated part of the making the cheese sauce, since you do need to keep stirring the mixture while it heats up. After about 3 minutes the milk starts to bubble and thicken, at which point it can be removed from the heat.

    Then I stirred in some creamy, shredded, smoked Gouda cheese into the milk mixture and stirred it with a wooden spoon until it all melted.

    Additional Resources For How To Make Cheese At Home

    Supplies Some of my favorite companies to order from are:

    • New England Cheese Making Supply Company. Here you will find ingredients, starter cultures, cheese presses and other equipment for making cheese. Their prices are a little higher than what you will spend when following this cheese making tutorial on Molly Green.
    • Cultures for Health. Lots of products and information about making natural cultured foods. In addition to cheese they have starter kits for kombucha, kefir, yogurt and sourdough.

    Websites See above under supplies. All these suppliers have great info on their websites. Also, my website and blog are fun to learn from.

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    Gouda Cheese Everything You Need To Know

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    One of the oldest surviving varieties of cheese, Gouda has been in continuous existence since at least 1184. It is highly valued for its rich, caramelly flavor conferred by the grass where cows graze in the valley.

    Over 300 farms in the Netherlands still make Gouda using old-fashioned production methods. Still, it also exists in modern, industrialized forms, which have popularized it across Europe and the United States.

    Below we’ve outlined our comprehensive guide to everything gouda. Leave a note at the bottom of the page if you have any questions/comments.

    Cold Smoking Gouda On A Gas Grill Or Propane Smoker

    How to Make Gouda Cheese (Infused with Tea)

    You can cold smoke your gouda cheese on a gas grill using all the same methods describe above for charcoal.

    Just instead of lighting charcoal to heat the smoker box you will light a single burner on the far side of the grill away form the cheese.

    Put the cheese up on an ice bath, and, if you can fit it, up on the warming rack as far away from the lit burner as you can get it.

    Even better, use a lit smoker tube as described above and you have not need to even light a burner!

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    Gouda Wine Pairing Suggestions

    Depending on the age of your cheese, there are a couple of wine pairings that would go really well with it. Here are some suggestions.

    • For an aged Gouda you can try a Cabernet Sauvignon, also called the King of Red Wines. The high tannin concentration in a Cabernet Sauvignon pairs beautifully with the lactic acid crystals.
    • Some Chardonnay and spicy wines such as Pinot Noir also go quite well.
    • For younger a Cheese, you can try a Pinot Grigio. This light wine doesnt overpower the mild taste and whats even better, most light wines have a fruity undertone that is simply out of this world when coupled with Gouda.

    The Manufacturing Process At Meyer Gouda Cheese

  • Pasteurising the milk: This kills pathogenicbacteria. The milk is heated to 72 °C, followed by rapid cooling. Pasteurisation is a legal requirement for cheese made in New Zealand and helps ensure a safe product.
  • Forming the curd:
  • Bacterial culture is added to the milk in the vat at 29 °C to acidify the milk. The bacterial culture introduces good bacteria, which play an important role throughout the manufacturing process. The temperature creates ideal conditions for the bacteria to grow, and the acidic environment helps prevent foreign bacterial contamination.
  • Rennet is added to the milk when it reaches a certain pH. This causes casein protein in the milk to coagulate and separate from the liquid whey.
  • Cutting the curd: When the coagulum is firm it shows a clean break when tested cutting blades stir through the coagulum to cut it into small pieces. Cutting the curd allows more whey to escape and lowers the moisture content of the final cheese. Gouda is a semi-hard cheese so the curds are cut relatively small compared to softer cheeses to release more moisture.
  • Releasing the whey: When the curds are small enough, which they test by feeling the curd size in their hands, the cutting attachments are changed for stirring attachments. A large portion of the whey is released from the vat, then hot water is added and the temperature is raised while stirring continuously. Diluting the whey and raising the temperature helps release more whey from the curd.
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