Editor’s 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’s healthy and delicious. Read on to discover the details about how it’s made and more.
Furniture and appliances aren’t 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’s 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.
Praire Farms cottage cheese
As the recipient of more than one “salad” 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.) “I’m not sure what really did it but I’m not going to argue because we’re very happy over here,” says Charlie Mack, Product Development Manager for Prairie Farms, a farmer-owner dairy co-operative and one of America’s winningest cottage cheese brands. “We’ve always been around, we’ve always been producing high quality products. So I’m just very pleased that people are turning their attention to cottage cheese. It checks a lot of boxes on people’s lists when they’re looking at a high protein, high quality diet.”
Having previously brought you Cream Cheese 101, with Mack’s 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’s 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.
Cottage Cheese is a Cut Curd Cheese
Cottage cheese is a fresh dairy product
It’s not exactly the same as cheddaring, but the curds in cottage cheese are formed more similarly to Cheddar’s curds than ricotta’s 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. “We 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,” 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.
Cottage Cheese is a Rinsed Curd Cheese
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’s “curds and whey” referred precisely to cottage cheese.) It also contributes to cottage cheese’s slightly sweet profile, without the tang of yogurt. “You wash the whey off with lightly treated water, and you’re cooling down the curd in the process,” says Mack, after which all the water is also drained off. “At the end of that you essentially have a vat of dry cottage cheese curds.”
Cottage Cheese is a Dressed Cheese
Cowgirl Creamery Clabbered Cottage Cheese
Like stracciatella, the creamy interior of burrata cheese, the curds of cottage cheese are mixed with a cream-based “dressing” to complete its process. This is also what makes the precision of its curd-cooking process so important. “If you cook it out too firm, it won’t actually absorb the dressing,” says Mack. Conversely, if not enough whey is adequately expelled, the final product “turns to mush,” 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 calls their cottage cheese “clabbered” which is the old fashioned word for the dressing. Theirs consists of crème fraiche, cultured milk and salt.
Cottage Cheese is Worth Dressing Up
Antelope and Cantaloupe photo credit Molly DeCoudreaux
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 “salad” in its own right, or as an alternative to either ricotta or cream cheese in lasagnas and cheesecakes, etc. “My default is fresh tomatoes, or peaches,” says Mack, simple savory and sweet options when it comes to partnering cottage cheese. Or check out this cottage cheese pizza toast from one of our favorite influencers, Meg Quinn.