Cottage Cheese Recipe

How to make it

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• Always use sterilized equipment. Boil utensils in ½” water for 10 minutes, covered.
• CaCl2 is an important step in this process for pasteurized milks. It increases the cheese yield by 33%.
• Combine milks and Calcium Chloride Solution in a heavy bottomed non-reactive pot, reserving ¼ c heavy whipping cream. Raise temperature of milk mixture, over medium heat, to 90C stirring often to prevent scorching. It should take about 40 minutes.
• Remove from heat and add vinegar. Stir gently. Curds should appear in seconds.
• Let rest for 10 minutes.
• Cool to 10C in an ice bath in the sink without stirring.
• *See "Alternately".
• Scoop out any floating curds and reserve.
• This is a small curd cottage cheese and will clog a tea towel on the initial separation of curds and whey.
• Gently pour whey into a fine mesh strainer over a bowl.
• Add reserved curds after whey has coarsely strained down.
• Save the whey, as we are going to make Ricotta/saved or at the least use it for baked goods and protein shakes.
• Transfer curds to a tea towel.
• *Alternately at this point you may use a paint strainer. They may be had at Lowes in the 1 and 5 gallon sizes. They are a very small meshed weave strainer and work very well without getting clogged up.
• You may, if you wish, rinse the curds in ice water to remove any taste of vinegar. I find this step unnecessary.
• Then gather up corners and tie up tea towel and suspended over a clean bowl for 3 hours.
• Add the strained whey to the reserved whey.
• (Alternately at this point you can make Paneer. Let the curds drain overnight. Twist tea towel at top and place, bottom up, on a perforated pan. Place a flat bottomed pot of water, as a weight, on top of curds in the tea towel and let drain overnight, pressing curds into a round shape. Open up tea towel and plate the solidified soft curds. This is known as Paneer.)
• Continuing with the cottage cheese recipe, container the curds after the 3 hour drain time. Add a couple to five tablespoons of heavy whipping cream back into the container of curds to make cottage cheese. Make it dryer or wetter to your liking.
• If you prefer a lower fat cottage cheese, use a lower fat milk and nix the 2c heavy cream and use 2% milk or 1% milk or skim milk to add back in instead of the heavy whipping cream.
• Salt to taste if you wish. I use it straight up.