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Brian sent me this recipe which he saw Alton Brown use on the food network. I don’t think this how to make true cottage cheese but it’s definitely a reasonable proxy that is very easy to make and quite tasty.
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What you’ll need:
- 1 gallon skim milk
- ¾ cup white vinegar
- 1½ tsp sea salt
- 1 pint heavy cream
Start by heating the milk over medium heat until it reaches 120° F. I used a meat thermometer with an alarm to notify me when it reached the desired temperature.
Once you get to 120° remove the milk from heat and let it sit for five minutes. Then add the vinegar to your milk and gently stir for two minutes. The curd will separate from the whey.
Pour the contents of the pot into a colander lined with cheese cloth or a tea towel. You may want to get someone to hold the cheese cloth to the edges of the colander to keep it from being pulled down when you begin to pour (Thanks Anne!). Otherwise pour carefully! Let the curd sit and strain in the colander for five minutes.
Pick up the corners of the cheese cloth to hold the curd inside. Rinse the curd under cold water for five minutes or so squeezing the curd until it is no longer warm. Then remove it from the water and squeeze it until fairly dry.
Deposit the curd and the salt into a mixing bowl and stir it together breaking up the curd into smaller bite size pieces as you stir. If you’re going to serve it immediately then add the cream now, if not then store it in the fridge and add the cream before serving. Makes about 2 cups.
In my opinion this didn’t quite taste like cottage cheese to me, it almost had a fresh mozzarella quality to the flavor and almost a riccotta-like texture. I think perhaps I didn’t rinse my curd well enough and that the heavy cream also curdled a bit when I added it because it lost a lot of viscosity after being stirred in with my curds. None of this took anything away from my supreme satisfaction with my resulting cheese though. It tasted great and was quickly consumed.