{"id":3544,"date":"2023-12-07T03:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T03:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/cottage-cheese-101\/"},"modified":"2023-12-07T03:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T03:03:52","slug":"cottage-cheese-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/cottage-cheese-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Cottage Cheese 101"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s note: A cottage cheese comeback? We called it when we saw a housemade version of it making an appearance on <\/em>a high-end tasting menu a couple years ago<\/em><\/a>. High in protein and low in calories, it\u2019s healthy and delicious. Read on to discover the details about how it\u2019s made and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Furniture and appliances aren\u2019t the only mid-century throwbacks making their way into our kitchens and hearts of late. Cottage cheese, the humble dairy product that reached peak popularity in the 1970s as a staple of the diet craze has suddenly, improbably, become the it girl once again. It\u2019s hard to trace the origin of social media-based trends for an easy answer as to who exactly is responsible, but cottage cheese has been having a moment basically all year, with Instagrammers and TikTokers blitzing it into dips and spreads and styling it with all manner of sweet and savory accompaniments.<\/p>\n

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Praire Farms cottage cheese<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the recipient of more than one \u201csalad\u201d composed of a few wan pieces of iceberg lettuce topped with cottage cheese and canned peaches growing up in the 1980s, nobody is more surprised than me by its rise to influential glory. (To be honest, though, I really liked those salads. Still kinda do.) \u201cI\u2019m not sure what really did it but I\u2019m not going to argue because we\u2019re very happy over here,\u201d says Charlie Mack, Product Development Manager for Prairie Farms<\/a>, a farmer-owner dairy co-operative and one of America\u2019s winningest cottage cheese brands. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been around, we\u2019ve always been producing high quality products. So I\u2019m just very pleased that people are turning their attention to cottage cheese. It checks a lot of boxes on people\u2019s lists when they\u2019re looking at a high protein, high quality diet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having previously brought you Cream Cheese 101<\/a>, with Mack\u2019s expertise, here we dive into the ins and outs of another member of the fresh dairy, is-it-actually-cheese? department. (Short answer: yes, it is.) Not only does its ingredient list squarely qualify cottage cheese as actual cheese, what\u2019s more, cottage cheese actually has more in common with certain aged cheeses such as Cheddar, gouda, and Alpine-style varieties than a similar-looking fresh cheese such as ricotta.<\/p>\n

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Cottage Cheese is a Cut Curd Cheese<\/h2>\n
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Cottage cheese is a fresh dairy product<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not exactly the same as cheddaring, but the curds in cottage cheese are formed more similarly to Cheddar\u2019s curds than ricotta\u2019s curds. Cottage cheese is a cultured dairy product, whose individual curds are formed by cutting rather than just acidification and cooking, as is the case with ricotta. \u201cWe install knives [in the vat] and basically do a vertical cut for the length of the curd, and then you have cross cut knives that do a single cross cut back and forth to actually produce the curd itself,\u201d says Mack. After a period of rest following cutting, the curds in cottage cheese also go through a period of agitation to help expel additional whey.<\/p>\n

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Cottage Cheese is a Rinsed Curd Cheese<\/h2>\n

Similar in the make for gouda, cottage cheese also experiences the rinsing of its curds after the cooking process, which removes any lingering whey content. (Bad news for proselytizers who always believed Little Miss Muffet\u2019s \u201ccurds and whey\u201d referred precisely to cottage cheese.) It also contributes to cottage cheese\u2019s slightly sweet profile, without the tang of yogurt. \u201cYou wash the whey off with lightly treated water, and you\u2019re cooling down the curd in the process,\u201d says Mack, after which all the water is also drained off. \u201cAt the end of that you essentially have a vat of dry cottage cheese curds.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cottage Cheese is a Dressed Cheese<\/h2>\n
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Cowgirl Creamery Clabbered Cottage Cheese<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like stracciatella, the creamy interior of burrata cheese, the curds of cottage cheese are mixed with a cream-based \u201cdressing\u201d to complete its process. This is also what makes the precision of its curd-cooking process so important. \u201cIf you cook it out too firm, it won\u2019t actually absorb the dressing,\u201d says Mack. Conversely, if not enough whey is adequately expelled, the final product \u201cturns to mush,\u201d he says. The dressing for cottage cheese typically consists of cream, milk, citric acid, and salt. Of note, salt is not added to the milk at the beginning of the process, so any sodium content from cottage cheese comes from the dressing component. Additionally, since cottage cheese begins with mostly skimmed milk, the varying fat contents of cottage cheese derive from the dressing rather than from the curds themselves. In fact Cowgirl Creamery<\/a> calls their cottage cheese \u201cclabbered\u201d which is the old fashioned word for the dressing. Theirs consists of cr\u00e8me fraiche, cultured milk and salt.<\/p>\n

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Cottage Cheese is Worth Dressing Up<\/h2>\n
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Antelope and Cantaloupe photo credit Molly DeCoudreaux<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whether you find it old fashioned or newfangled, cottage cheese is a staple of the dairy aisle worthy of its current acclaim. High in protein and low in fat, its uses are myriad, as a snack or \u201csalad\u201d in its own right, or as an alternative to either ricotta or cream cheese in lasagnas and cheesecakes, etc. \u201cMy default is fresh tomatoes, or peaches,\u201d says Mack, simple savory and sweet options when it comes to partnering cottage cheese. Or check out this cottage cheese pizza toast<\/a> from one of our favorite influencers, Meg Quinn.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: A cottage cheese comeback? We called it when we saw a housemade version of it making an appearance on a high-end tasting menu a couple years ago. High in protein and low in calories, it\u2019s healthy and delicious. Read on to discover the details about how it\u2019s made and more. Furniture and appliances … Okumaya devam et “Cottage Cheese 101”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}