Cottage cheese… mmmm. We like cottage cheese. The store bought stuff has a HUGE list of ingredients… more of which no one really wants to be eating. Solution: whip some up your self. I promise you’ll be able to name everything in it 🙂 Plus it is super easy… only about 10 minutes of hands on time and maybe 45 minutes total.
I was shocked at how good this was. Thomas was too. It’s about 10 x’s better than store bought. It was REALLY tasty! You should try it just so you can say you made cottage cheese!
Cottage Cheese
1 gallon skim milk
3/4 cup vinegar (white or apple cider, I would use apple cider, more people use white)
coarse Kosher salt
1/2 cup cream
Place milk in a large pan and bring up to 120 degrees over medium heat. When milk reaches 120 degrees, take it off the heat and slowly pour in vinegar while stirring. A big ole’ curd will form. Cover the pot and allow the milk or giant curd to sit for 30 minutes.
After the time has passed, place a cotton tea towel in a colander and drain the curd from the whey. Once the curd is in the towel, gather up all of the corners of the towel and wash the curd, under cold water, for 5 minutes. Does that make sense? You are going to have this big chunk of curd inside the towel, hold to towel and future cheese under the water and massage the curd to wash it… the water will run clear. After you are done washing, squeeze all of the extra water through the towel. You will end up with small, dry curd when you are done.
Add the cream and salt (to taste) to the curd right before you serve it…. if you are only going to eat half… only add half the cream to half the curd 🙂
The curd after washing and before adding cream.
I’m so glad you posted this! I have been wanting to buy cottage cheese but I don’t want to buy the low-fat kind so I wanted to make it myself. I’m excited to try it!
Wow! You are AMAZING! I am so glad you do this blog! I am impressed and learn so much by it!
-Shan
Wondering if you HAVE to wash the curds…dont know anything about cheese making…would it ruin the cheese if you didnt wash it? I have veiwed several cottage cheese recipes and your is by far the easiest! I want to make it for my hubby and daughter who both like cottage cheese. Also, do you save the whey for use in other recipes? I have seen some ideas to use it to soak things and use in making oatmeal. I can use it for oatmeal but what else?
The cottage cheese will be sour tasting (like sour cream or plain yougurt) if you don’t rinse it. I would recommend not skipping that step. It’s nice when it is sweet creamy and not sour creamy. Am I making sense? And you can add whey to smoothies, use it in bread, and who knows what else. I only use it for soaking grains and the other two suggestions. I would google it 🙂 Good luck and let me know how it turns out! It’s so tasty 🙂