When Good Goat Cheese Goes Bad

July 17, 2007 8:31 AM

How long does Chevre keep?

I bought some of this local chevre (a soft goat cheese) and ate most of it during the first week, but now that it has been a week I am hesitant to throw it out. It has no indications of spoilage, though it is a little less fluffy. Should I toss it? Will I get sick from eating it?

posted by melissam to food & drink (12 comments total)

A week is fine. Goat cheese when opened should last a couple of weeks. You'll notice the taste and texture will be off, maybe, but it won't make you sick.
posted by mendel at 8:38 AM on July 17, 2007

As with most cheese, if it smells and looks ok it is probably safe to eat.

The only thing you should toss it into is something like a warm beetroot salad. Yummy...
posted by uandt at 8:44 AM on July 17, 2007

It sounds fine to me, as long as it doesn't have any obvious mold or funny smell to it. Here's an old Askme about cheese spoilage (with some bread to go with it).
posted by hazyjane at 8:46 AM on July 17, 2007

If it doesn't have pink mold spots (green, blue, or grey are ok - just cut them off), and if it isn't slimey, it's fine.

Excellent use for odd bits of kinda old cheese (goat is good, but nearly any combination of good cheese - i.e. not processed American cheese food - works):

Fromage Fort
Gather old cheese bits; cut off mold
Throw cheese into Cuisinart with as much garlic as you think you'll like
Add some white wine (not too much at first)
Add some fresh herbs (parsley, a little fresh oregano or marjoram, etc.)
Add a little good olive oil
Give it a whir
Add liquid as needed to produce a dip-like consistency
Serve on crackers, or with tortilla chips, or mix with hot pasta

Delicious!
posted by rtha at 8:46 AM on July 17, 2007 [11 favorites]

Usually cheese is always edible. If it starts to go moldy, cut off the mold and eat the rest.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:59 AM on July 17, 2007

rtha, what's with the pink spots? Are they some particularly harmful variety of mold?
posted by Greg Nog at 9:03 AM on July 17, 2007

I don't have much luck trimming mold off of soft cheeses -- they've usually permeated and ruined the cheese. But if there's no mold, you're totally fine. The edges will dry out a bit, that's all.
posted by desuetude at 9:10 AM on July 17, 2007

Piggybacking: how about an unopened log of chevre? I keep buying them, losing them in the back of the fridge and then finding them three months later.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:34 AM on July 17, 2007

Cheese doesn't go bad. It may dry out or accumulate mold on its surface, but it doesn't go bad.

If it gets extra-tangy and this grosses you out, then don't eat it.
posted by rxrfrx at 9:49 AM on July 17, 2007

rxrfrx, soft cheeses can go beyond "tangy" and into "disgusting-tasting in a not-tangy way" when some molds take root. Not talking about the mold from the roquefort migrating over, but actual spoilage.

And I'm a girl who happily cuts the mold off of bread or cheese without being a bit squicked.

Cunninglinguist: Your unopened logs of chevre are fine.
posted by desuetude at 11:51 AM on July 17, 2007

Clarification: I'm talking about young soft cheeses.
posted by desuetude at 11:53 AM on July 17, 2007

Pink mold: I wish I could remember the explanation, but back when I was being trained to work in the cheese dept. at Whole Foods, we were told that pink mold was bad bad bad. It doesn't appear very often, fortunately, but when it doesn it tends to not just rest on the surface of the cheese but invades the interior as well. Interior mold, unless it's in a bleu cheese or something like the Montgomery English cheddar, is undesirable, and means you should chuck the whole piece.

If the log of chevre is one of those vacuum-sealed things, it's probably fine, though it might not taste great.

Once I brought home an exquisite fresh (only about a week old) artisanal California goat cheese, which was wrapped in wax paper (cheese likes to breathe). I put it in the cheese drawer, and meant to eat it that night. Forgot about it for about several weeks. Found it...and discovered it had aged into an even more exquisite chevre. Look, ma, I'm an affineur!
posted by rtha at 1:47 PM on July 17, 2007