If you live in Scandinavia, you might have access to the rarity that is milk from the famous sleigh flyers themselves. (No Santas got run over by a reindeer in the making of this article.)

At Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery, we’re, shall we say, familiar with all kinds of pure Guernsey milk cheeses. But with the holiday season comes culinary innovation. In Finland, and anywhere else Santa’s pets abound, experimentation extends to reindeer cheese.

Juusto is a bread cheese that can be made from cow’s, goat’s, or reindeer’s milk, but it comes most often from the latter. The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity cites reindeer cheese (renost) as a traditional product of the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, the Sami. It has continued to be made throughout time by those who have access to the vaja (female reindeer)’s milk — primarily reindeer breeders — but the majority of renost samplings today are respectable imitations made from cow’s or goat’s milk.

By custom, reindeer cheese was left to sit until totally dry so makers could store it for several years. Once they were ready to eat the curd, they’d heat it over a flame to soften it toward roasted butteriness and then serve it with a variety of dishes.

Juusto is naturally dense, like feta, with a firmness that’s good for crumbling. It can be eaten on its own with a dash of honey, as a juusto “cheese bread,” made in some regions of Finland, or as a side dish to a morning cup of coffee.

Odds are, you don’t have access to reindeer milk this Christmas. But you can still be festive with cheese! Rudolph cheese balls have dominated some holiday-themed culinary blog posts. If you can’t make cheese out of reindeer milk, you can make cheese look like a reindeer, at least.

Here at Hoard’s Dairyman Farm Creamery, we excel at cheese. Our animals might not pull a magical sleigh, but the milk they produce is far from ordinary. Check out our offerings at www.hoardscreamery.com, and remember to thank a reindeer on Christmas Eve.

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