What Goats Milk Gouda Tastes Like
What goats milk Gouda actually is
Goats milk Gouda is Gouda made with goat's milk instead of cow's milk. Ours is made in the Netherlands.
The ingredients list on the pack is short: pasteurised goat milk, salt, starter milk, and microbial rennet. That is the lot.
We bring it in as whole wheels. The cutting and packing happens here in Auckland, by people who cut cheese all day and know where a wheel wants to break. That means the piece you take home was cut in this country, not portioned overseas and shipped in its plastic. The retail pack is 150 g, which is about the size you would actually get through in a week of sandwiches and picking at the fridge.
If you have only ever met goat cheese as a soft white log, this is a different shape of thing. It is a firm wheel cheese, cut into pieces.
What it tastes like
It is balanced: creamy, mild, and gently tangy rather than sharp.
Mild is the word to sit with. Plenty of people come to goat cheese braced for something that will bite them, and then decide goat cheese is not for them. The tang here is gentle, and it is not sharp. So if that is the reason you have walked past goat cheese before, this is the one to try again with.
Creamy is the other word worth having. It means the cheese does not need help. You do not have to build anything around it or hide it under chutney for it to be worth eating.
Nothing about the flavour shouts. That is rather the point of a balanced cheese.
How to serve it
Take it out of the fridge before you want to eat it, and leave it on the bench while you get on with something else. Cold cheese straight from the fridge tastes like less than it is. Give it time to come up to room temperature and you get more out of the same piece.
Cut it into slim slices with a sharp knife rather than hacking off chunks. Slices go further, and they sit flat on a cracker.
For a board, put it out with bread, crackers, apple or pear, and something sharp on the side like pickles or a spoon of chutney. It does not need company, but it takes it well.
Then there is the rest of the week, which is where most cheese actually gets eaten. Slice it onto toast in the morning. Put it in a sandwich with ham and rocket. Cut a few slices to have with a beer when you get home and dinner is still an hour away. Send it to school in a lunchbox with crackers. This is a cheese for a Tuesday, not just for people coming over.
How to keep it once it is cut
The pack asks you to keep it refrigerated between +1°C and +5°C, which is the ordinary cold part of a home fridge — usually a lower shelf or the crisper, not the door.
Once you have opened it, wrap the cheese again rather than leaving the cut face bare in the fridge. Bare cheese dries out and picks up whatever else is in there.
Take out what you want to eat, let that come to room temperature, and put the rest straight back in the cold. Cheese does not enjoy going warm and cold and warm again.
For more on wrapping and handling, read How to Store & Handle Artisan Cheese.
Where to buy goats milk Gouda in New Zealand
You can buy Goat's Milk Gouda from us. It comes in a 150 g retail pack.
The wheels come from the Netherlands and are cut and packed here in Auckland, so you are buying from the people who cut it rather than from a chain of hands in between. If you are not sure whether goat cheese is for you, this is a sensible place to start, because it is mild and gently tangy rather than sharp.