Labne - using sheeps milk yoghurt

Well yesterday I noticed a special when I was in the dairy section at the supermarket. Two tubs of sheeps milk yoghurt for $3 off per tub. One of the things I have been wanting to try was a labne, or yoghurt cheese, so it was very fateful that the yoghurt happened to be on special and I happened to notice it when i happened to have a pretty free next few evenings.

I have held off a bit previously making labne because I would really like to make the yoghurt myself and then make the labne. But I haven't wrapped my head around the making the yoghurt yet and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity of a sheeps milk yoghurt where I would never really be able to make that myself.

Labne is a yoghurt cheese. Older mentions and recipes talk about goats and sheeps milk with cows milk being a historically more recent adaptation. Labne itself is very very simple. Take some yoghurt, lightly salt it and drain it of whey, make little balls out of the 'cheese' and store in oil. No heating, no added cultures, nothing. Nice. Straightforward. Simple. So here is what I am doing.

Sheeps yoghurt!

Salting the yoghurt.

 

You can see in the middle picture that the whey is already eager to drain!

Hanging to drain.

Now it needs to drain for 12-24 hours, and at the 16 hour mark it was still dripping slowly so I am going to leave it the full 24.

I will update with more pics as this goes. Hopefully tonight. But I will put the labne into olive oil with some fresh mint for the additional flavour.

And a pic of the final product.

I added some mint to the oil because yum and I wasn't disappointed. However, weirdly, I tasted as I put it into the jars (there were two in the end) and it was delicious! I tasted it a couple of days later and I was very meh about the taste. But then I tasted it two weeks after and it was delicious again! I need to have a look into the 'aging' of labne and how that effects taste because it has made me curious.