You can dehydrate cheese and save it, without refrigeration, for future use. Dehydrated cheese is a nice addition to homemade trail mix, cereal snack mix, and fruit and nut mixes.
Dehydrate your homemade cheese
Homestead abundance is overwhelming sometimes. The daily milk harvest can quickly engulf a family. Even when you add cheese making, sour cream making, yogurt making, kefir making, whipped cream, and butter making into the weekly chores, you can still end up with more dairy products than a family can consume before it goes bad.
To age cheese properly to store it without refrigeration you need a climate-controlled cabinet that controls both temperature and humidity. While you can build it, it is out of the reach of most beginning homesteaders. Many of you are still waiting for your cheese press, right?
You could put the extra cheese, sour cream, and butter in the freezer for winter. But cheese changes texture in the freezer and becomes more crumbly. Because of the high-fat content, cheese placed in the freezer is only good for about 3 to 6 months. After that, it takes on a “freezer” taste and isn’t as nice. Last winter we fed a lot of cheese to our dogs, because of the freezer taste. They loved it. But making cheese is a lot of work for dog food.
Recently my friend, Connie, came to visit and offered me a taste of a trail mix that she had made with dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and dehydrated feta cheese. The dried cheese was good. It was chewy, sweet, crunchy and just a little salty. (Thanks, Connie, for the inspiration.)
In my goal to reduce food waste….
#NoFoodWasted is my goal but I failed this week.
I just tossed out a pound of feta cheese, that I made from our goat’s milk because it had gone funky in the fridge. That’s the second pound of cheese I’ve thrown out since we started milking in April. I hate wasting food. Don’t you? And I know that I’m not the only homesteader that can’t eat the food I produce faster than the bad microbes consume it.
So the new batch of feta cheese I made went into the dehydrator after it had aged a week in the fridge to develop the flavours. And the result was amazing! It’s mild tasting, not the sharp acid taste I was expecting. It was sweet and caramel-y with a hint of saltiness. It squeaks a little when you first bite it, but then it’s crunchy and chewy at the same time. It adds protein, minerals, and vitamins to your trail mix or granola. And it’s versatile. There are way more uses for dehydrated cheese than just trail mix. I’ll definitely be making more dehydrated cheese. I hope you’ll try this to extend the shelf life of your precious homemade cheese, too.
(There are questions in the comments about using store-bought cheese in this recipe. I haven’t tried it with store-bought cheese. Some store-bought cheese has additives to make it melt more easily at lower temperatures. If you choose to try this with store-bought cheese let me know how it works for you. I’ve only done this with farm-fresh, homemade cheese with no additions except probiotic culture.)
Step by step guide to making dried cheese
- After making your feta or farmhouse cheese, allow it to age for 5 to 7 days in the fridge. If your cheese seems too moist, rub the outside of the cheese with salt, and let the salt draw the excess water out of the cheese, in the fridge, for 12 hours. Rotate the round of cheese, after 6 hours to dry both sides. Then wipe the excess salt from the cheese, blot any extra moisture from the cheese surface. Wrap in plastic wrap or an eco-friendly alternative, and leave it in the fridge for a week or so. This develops flavours and evens out the moisture levels within the cheese.
- Remove the cheese from the fridge and cube the cheese into ½ inch cubes. You could make them smaller, depending on their end-use. The ½ inch cubes took 36 hours to dry in my dehydrator. I had my dehydrator on anyway to dry the pulp from my juicer, so it didn’t use any extra electricity to dry the cheese.
- Place in a single layer on the dehydrator tray. Place in the dehydrator in the coolest spot. If you dry the cheese too quickly the sugars in the cheese could burn.
- Rotate the trays after each 12 hour period and test for doneness.
- The cheese will be hard and crunchy when done and may be lightly browned. There will be no rubbery-ness. There may be a light layer of oil on the surface as the butterfat content of homemade cheese in the spring is high.
- Remove the finished cheese cubes from the dehydrator and allow to cool completely before packaging in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid.
- Store in a cool, dry place to extend the shelf life of the dehydrated cheese. It should last for several months in cold storage or longer if you can vacuum seal it.
A dozen ways to use dehydrated cheese
- Add to the granola after it’s cooled down.
- Add to trail mix
- Put the cubes on a tossed salad in the place of croutons
- Put the cubes in Greek salad in the place of feta cheese
- Use to top a casserole, as you would bread crumbs
- Eat it as a snack – a few cubes are a high energy snack
- Put them in your emergency supplies and your bug out bag – replace them every 12 weeks to keep your stores fresh.
- Grind it to a powder and use as a cheesy spice mix, add chives, parsley, and Himalayan salt
- Add the powdered cheese to a white sauce to turn it into a cheese sauce
- Add 1 tbsp of the powdered cheese to Caesar salad dressing in place of parmesan cheese
- Powder it and use it as popcorn seasoning
- Powder it and add it to cheese biscuits and pizza dough
I hope you were inspired to try this and extend the shelf life of your precious homemade cheese.
Your Turn:
If you’ve tried to dehydrate cheese, how did it turn out? What types of cheese have you dehydrated? How do you enjoy using your dehydrated cheeses? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.
You can do this with store brought cheese also if you shred it and put on paper towels while you dehydrate it. The paper towels will blot up the oils. You may have to change out the paper towels several times during the process especially if you are dehydrating cheddar cheese. It is a long and tedious job but it can be done . I have done American cheese this way and I was very successful at that. I know this is an old post but thought maybe someone might still be interested.
Yes, you are correct. Paper towels help to absorb the oils. I do this when I freeze dry cheese as well.
Thank you this is just what I needed!
Thank you!
How about after dehydration we wiped off any oils accumulated on the dry cheese, then hard vacuum pack the cheese either in mason jars or mylar bags? How much shelf life would we get that way?
Goat cheese dry the best good on anything, omlete,chips ,soups, salads etc, need to use parmesan greater
I have canned cream cheese, butter, and cheddar so I was looking everywhere for information on canning Feta when I found this site. Dehydrating it never occurred to me! I’ve dehydrated many things and now I know what to do with my abundance of Feta! I don’t trust the grid much anymore as it keeps going down, and refrigeration or freezing didn’t seem the way to store it, at least not long term. Thank you for your website! Great information!
Alaska Prepper on YouTube has a video of tasting store-bought cheese he dehydrated and sealed in mylar bags 5 years earlier (I think it was 5?). He said the shredded cheese was much better for melting but the slices were still good as chips!!
Thanks for this.
What a great Idea! I will be trying this for sure. Just need to know how long does dehydrated cheese keep for?! In air tight container, in dry cool place? If you don’t know can someone give me their best educated guess? Thank you!
Does anybody know if its possible to dehydrate cream cheese? And if so, could you tell me how please? Thank you
Smear thinly on grease paper, a few millimeters thick.
Put in dehydrator (or very low oven); dry at perhaps 50 C.
If it’s dry, grind it into cheese powder if wanted.
What is grease paper? And what temperature do I set my dehydrator on?
Lost all my canned butter and cheese in house fire so starting over
Yes you can. Soften your cheese and spread out as thin as you can on dehydrator non stick sheets. Place in the dehydrator at a temp of 125 and process 6-12 hrs until completely dry.. It will be brittle. I put my dry cream cheese through a coffee grinder to make powder. Then I put it in food saver bags and vac and seal it. Now it’s shelf stable. Here’s another one for you.. You can do sour cream the exact same way. Hope this helps you with your question. Good luck and enjoy. P. S. To use the powder do a 1 part powder to 1/2 measure of water.. Example 1 Tbl poser to 11/2 tap water.. You can add more water to get the consistency you like.
Thank you for this info!
Great post! Came across your website when I was looking for more recipes using dehydrated cheese powder as I’ve mostly been adding it to dough for homemade crackers or in jalapeño cheese bread.
The one thing that’s helped me when using cheddar or other higher fat content cheese is to actually melt the cheese at a low temp prior to dehydrating. As you’re melting the cheese, some of the oil/fat separates out and you can blot/pour it off. I cool the cheese on a plate/parchment paper lined cookie sheet(depending on how much I melted) on the counter then cut it up into pieces before putting it in the dehydrator. Not sure if the extra step helps a lot as I live in Colorado where things are naturally much drier but it seems to cut back on the amount of oil and dry time.
Nice info I will remember that next time I do cheese. I have too much oil in mine while dehydrating. I knew there had to be a better way.
awesome will try this!
I’m also in Colorado. I am new at dehydrating but can not wait to make cheese powder! Love the idea, thanks
Home made feta is easy to make, far superior, easy to season with herbs, and so much cheaper. One gallon of milk will make one pound of cheese. I got everything I needed from our local homebrewers store (or you could pick up a kit on line). I will certainly try to dehydrate, a pound of feta is a lot to eat
What temperature do you have your dehydrator on?
I did this with cheddar and the powdered it. But the cheddar is grainy when added to a white sauce. I tried it hot, less hot, cooler, fast, slow, etc……. Help!!! Tysm!
I’ve heard word that some people will blend the cheddar in a food processor along with some corn starch to make it a little less grainy!
instead of snack crackers, i cut a loaf of sliced bread into triangles and dehydrate for 4 hours..i can eat them all day long, which leads me to the question…what about the nutrition?..i would never eat 3-4 slices of bread at a time, but these light, airy, tasty treats seem so harmless..any thoughts?
Same amount of calories as all you do is drive the water out. Some minor degradation of other nutrients may occur especially at higher drying heats.
There’s a much easier way to do this, just slice or cube any good cheese and put it in a tray UNCOVERED, in the fridge for a week or more. The cheese will slowly dehydrate and you will be left with a delightful dried cheese! You can vary the texture and consistency by varying the thickness of the pieces and the length of drying time. If you slice a good cheddar or Gouda or Swiss cheese real thin and wait about ten days, you’ll get some cheese chips to die for. Try it,
wow! sounds amazing!
I’m wondering if it’s possible to dehydrate very fresh milk? Or if it would be better to freeze-dry it or something….depending on the technology…would be better than commercial dried milks!
I was online looking for a recipe for kefir croutons. I want to use my kefir cheese as croutons…..I’m going to drip out the whey, and then add some dried herbs from my garden and smoosh it out flat and then dry it in my dehydrator on 95 degrees. I hope this works. I’m going to post something here if it does. I love croutons….trying to eat less flour…..have a lot of kefir that doesn’t get used. Thanks for this post…even though it was a long time ago.
plez let me know how this worked fo you…
So dehydrate the cheese at 220F, right?
I tried dehydrating store bought low moisture cheese but found it began to melt, what temp. Did u put your dehydrater on.
what would you use for the cheesy spice mix, add chives, parsley, and Himalayan salt?
great post!!
The cheese is quite salty, so I wouldn’t add additional salt.
What temperature do you have your dehydrator on?
Do other types of cheese work? I’m specifically wondering cheddar or American.
I haven’t tried other types. I think cheese that has a high fat content might be problematic.
Have you tried to shred the cheese before dehydrating. It might dry a bit faster.
I make my own hiking meals, and I’ve been debating trying to dehydrate cheese. Thank you for posting this! I’ll be trying it out with store-bought cheese soon.
Hi, Kim – did you try this? I want to do it for an upcoming hike too and I’m interested to know if store-bought worked for you and what temp you did it at!
i tried this w mozzarella and the cheese melted,,,
Your dehydrator was too hot.
Great article with lots to think about!
Would dehydrating purchased cheese also work? Any tweaks you’d suggest? Thanks!
yes
Wow, I had no idea! I might try this next time I order cheese. Thanks for the tip.