Making Cottage Cheese at Home
How to make Cottage Cheese
You can count on homemade cottage cheese! It's a tasty, nutritious, easily digested, and surprisingly low-caloried food. Eat it plain. Add a little salt and popper or a dash of some other seasoning. Combine it with fruits or vegetables in a refreshing salad that's a main dish or a dessert. Keep a supply in your refrigerator for a snack. This page will show you how to make homemade cottage cheese and how to make cottage cheese taste good.
Cottage cheese is a soft, unripened cheese and can easily lie made at home from skim milk or reconstituted instant nonfat dry milk. The freshly made curd has a mild acid flavorand a smooth texture. Cottage cheese has many of the same nutrients found in fresh milk. Most homemakers who make their own cottage cheese like having a steady supply of cheese with home-made flavor. Families that have large quantities of surplus skimmilk for making into cheese may save money. too.
The two major types of cottage cheese are small-curd, high-acid cheese made without rennet, and popular large-curd, low-acid cheese made with rennet. Rennet is a substance that speeds curdling and keeps the curd that forms from breaking up easily. Adding rennet shortens the cheese-acid and larger-curd cheese, and re-duces the amount of curd poured off with leftover liquid.
Cottage cheese made either withor without rennet can be creamed. Adding cream to cheese increases its smoothness and improves its flavorand texture. Creaming cottage cheese also adds calories and slightly lowers protein content. Fruits, vegetables, or other flavor-cheese, to make a variety of sidedishes and salads.
INGREDIENTS
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Milk - Use pasteurized skim milk or reconstituted nonfat dry milk. One gallon of milk (8.25 pounds) will yield about one pound of cottage cheese. The equipment specified on this website will handle about 1 and a half gallons of milk. The milk should be fresh, because you cannot make high-quality cheese from poor-quality milk. Even if milk is stored for only a few days undesirable bacteria can develop and cause off-flavors or odors in cheese made from the milk. You can make cottage cheese from unhomogenized whole milk if you first let it stand a few hours, and then skim off the cream that rises to the surface. You cannot skim cream from whole milk that has been homogenized. You can make satisfactory cottage cheese from reconstituted instant skim milk. The noninstant commercial bakers will not make good cottage cheese.
EQUIPMENT -
You probably already have most of the necessary equipment for making cottage cheese. You'll need an 8-quart container for the milk. One made of stainless steel is best, but you can use any acid-tinned container. A milk pail or water-bath canner would be satisfactory. But do not use any kind of galvanized metal or aluminum container. A large galvanized pail, tinlard can, or dishpan will do.
A thermometer that measures temperatures between 75 degrees and 175 degrees F. The floating, dairy type is best, though a candy or jelly thermometer is acceptable. A long-handled spoon or stirrer that reaches to the bottom of the 8-quart container.
Measuring spoons.
A knife with a blade long enough to reach to the bottom of the 8-quart container. A piece of cheesecloth, 18 inches square. A colander, and a pan big enough to hold the colander. A mixing bowl made of anything but aluminum or galvanized metal. A covered container for storing cheese in refrigerator.
MAKING SMALL CURD CHEESE
Prepare starter culture. Starter culture should be prepared a day or two before you intend to make cottage cheese. If the skim milk you are using is not already pasteurized, pasteurize 2 pints.
Refrigerate 1 pint of the pasteurized milk. To the other pint, add alactic culture (either liquid or powder) according to manufacturer's directions. Or add 1 tablespoon of buttermilk, if you can be sure it's fresh. Either procedure will "inoculate" your milk with the micro-organisms that cause milk to curdle into cottage cheese.
Hold the inoculated milk at 70F to 75F for 16 to 24 hours, or until it curdles. With a scalded and cooled teaspoon, add a teaspoon of the curdled
How To Pasteurize Milk
All the milk you use in making cottage cheese should be pasteurized. Pasteurization will kill harmful bacteria in cottage cheese. Almost all fluid skim milk and nonfat dry milk that you buy has already been pasteurized. If the milk you are going to use has not been pasteurized,you can pasteurize it yourself. Use an electric, commercially made pasteurizer if you have one. Follow the manufacturer's directions. Otherwise, improvise a large double boiler and follow this method: Heat water in outer container until the temperature reaches 145F. Keep milk at this temperature (You will probably have to adjust the heat to maintain the temperature throughout the half hour.) Cool the milk to 72F.You can do this simply by emptying the outer container and refilling it with cold water. Either start making cottage cheese immediately, or cool the milk to at least 50F and refrigerate for later use.
Warming skim milk in an improvised double boiler you've been keeping in the refrigerator. When this second culture has also curdled (in 12 to 18 hours at 70 to 75F.) it is ready for use as a starter to ripen milk for making into cottage cheese.
Preparing the milk
Like the milk you use for preparing the starter culture, the milk you plan to make into cottage cheese should be pasteurized. See directions above.
Warming the milk
Milk to be made into cottage cheese should be at room temperature. Maintain this temperature throughout the cheese-forming process until curd is formed, cut, and ready for final heating. Warm the milk indirectly, by placing it and its container inside a larger container filled with water. Heat the water until milk reaches room temperature. Add 1/8 to 1/4 cup of starter for each gallon of milk. If starter, instead of a special lactic culture, add 1/4 cup or more. Cover the container of milk with a clean, loose-fitting cover, or with a clean cloth. Curdling the milk. Do not stir the milk. Let it stand at room temperature for 16 to 24hours. (You may have to occasionally reheat the water in the outer container, to maintain the temperature the best cheese, your milk should curdle during this 16- to 24-hour standing period. If your milk curdles before this, use less starter the next time you make cheese. If it does not curdle satisfactorily during this time, use more starter nexttime.When curdling occurs, a jelly-like, firm substance (curd) forms,and a small amount of watery liquid-surface. To determine if the curdis ready for cutting, insert a knife of the container and gently pull thectird away from the container side. If the curd breaks quickly and smoothly, it is ready to be cut.
Cutting the curd
Curd is ready to be cut when it pulls quickly and smoothly awayf rom the side of the container. Insert knife blade through the curd to the bottom of the container. Keep the knife, held vertically, towards you. Withdraw the knife and repeat the cutting,e very 1/4 inch. Turn the container a quarter-turn. Repeat the first step, again cutting the curd every 1/4 inch. Turn the container to its original position and cut the curd at an angle. Again turn the container a quarter-turn and repeat the cutting. When the curd is cut roughly into 1/4-inch pieces, let it stand for 10 minutes. During this time, whey separates from the curd and the curd begins to become slightly firm (though it is still much too soft to be stirred).
Heating the cut curd
This is a critical step in making cottage cheese. Add water (72F) to the outer container until it is slightly above the level of curd and whey in the inner container. Heat the water slowly and as uniformly as possible, to raise the temperature of the curd and whey to 100F. In 30 to 40 minutes—a temperature increase of about 1F per minute. During heating, stir the curd gently with a large spoon—about a minute at a time, every 4 or 5 minutes uniformily. This prevents curd particles from sticking together.
Cutting the Curd
Make perpendicular cuts from backo front and left to right. Follow cuts of first step as nearly as possible holding knife at angle.r
Heating the cut curd.
When the curd and whey reaches a temperature of 100F, heat it The temperature of the curd and whey should reach 115F in 10 to 15 minutes. Then hold at this temperature while the pieces are firm and do not break easily when squeezed. If the curd doesn't become firm enough at this temperature, heat it to 120F, or even to 125F. Stir the curd and whey constantlyness. When the curd is firm enough,s top the heating process.
Removing the whey
When the curd has firmed sufficiently, dip off most of the whey. Pour the remaining curd and whey onto a fine-meshed cheesecloth spread over a colander that you've set into the sink or another pan. Let the curd drain for 2 or 3 minutes Note: Don't let the curd drain too long, or curd particles will stick together in large clumps.
Washing and cooling curd
Gather together the corners of the cheese cloth containing the curd. Immerse both cloth and curd in a pan of clean, cool water.Raise and lower the "bag" of curd several times, for 2 or 3 minutes, to rinse whey from the curd and to cool the curd. Rinse the curd again, for 3 to 5 minutes, in ice water to chill the curd. Put the curd in a colander set inside a larger pan. Shake the colander occasionally, until the whey stops draining. If you prefer unsalted, un-creamed cottage cheese, you can now remove the curd from the cloth, pack it in a suitable container, and store it in the refrigerator. How-ever, unsalted cheese will have a definite acid taste
Rinsing the curd
Rinse the curd in a cheese-cloth "bag" by dipping it into cool water.
Salting the curd
After transferring the curd from the cheesecloth to a mixing bowl, add a teaspoon of salt for each pound of curd. Mix thoroughly.
Creaming the curd
For each pound of curd, add 2 or 3 ounces of either sweet or sour cream, or of half-and-half. Mix thoroughly.
Refridgerate and Enjoy
Cottage Cheese
