If you have cultured buttermilk, then you are on your way to making cottage cheese!
There are tons of recipes for cottage cheese that simply have you clabber your cheese with vinegar or citric acid. However, it’s bacterial culture that clabbers cottage cheese (just check the ingredients on a store bought tub). If you use vinegar or lemon juice, then you are actually making paneer and/or ricotta. This means that they are not fermented… it also means that they are rather flavorless (which is why they are usually accompanied by more flavourful sauces).
For this recipe, you will need a decent thermometer, and some cheesecloth.
Cottage Cheese
Cottage cheese is traditionally made with buttermilk culture, which means it’s an easy cheese to make at home. Here is a recipe to get you started!
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 4-6 cups 1x
- Category: Cheese
- Method: Clabbered
Ingredients
- A gallon (4 liters) non-fat (skim) milk (using a higher fat milk is a waste, as the fat will just be drained off with the whey)
- 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk
Instructions
- Pour milk into a large pot with the buttermilk.
- Leave on counter for 12 to 14 hour, until clabbered (curdled into a big mass).
- Cut into curds by slicing on the diagonal in the pot (2 cm cubes).
- Heat 8 cups of water to 100 F, then add to curds.
- Keep at 100F by putting it on the stove in a basin of water. Gently stir every 5 minutes.
- You’re finished when the curds have separated from the whey (curds will be firm and sink to the bottom of the pot, which takes about 30 min to 1 hour).
- Pour into a strainer lined with cheese cloth. Rinse with cold water and allow to drain until most of the whey is gone, but not until the cheese is dry.
Keywords: traditional, buttermilk, easy, simple, beginner, cheesemaking, DIY, homemade
Options for Finishing:
1) Use it as a dry curd cottage cheese for cooking.
2) Turn it into snack-style cottage cheese by adding heavy cream and non-iodized salt (to taste).
3) Add non-iodized salt (1-2 tsp) and continue to press moisture out of the cheese until it is a firm slicing cheese.
What does one do with a liter of cottage cheese? Well, it melted nicely on our pizza, made a lovely lasagna, and a tasty lunchtime snack; but in the end I used most of it up making a traditional Eastern European comfort food… vareniki (pierogies) -coming next week!
Is the milk pasteurize skim milk?
I use pasturized milk. But non-pasturized would be even better!
what do you mean by a basin of water? “Keep at 100F by putting it on the stove in a basin of water.”
do you mean a double boiler type situation ???
Sorry, this is an older recipe. I do mean a double boiler; however, there are other options. Here’s a more detailed post on heating milk for cheesemaking: https://www.fermentingforfoodies.com/archives/1747
Hello–how much cheese does this recipe yield?
Thanks!
Yield will depend on a lot of things… what kind of milk you use, how good the buttermilk culture is. On average 1 gallon of milk will make about 4 cups of dry cottage cheese.
I read your post about fermenting . I had a gallon of whole milk and a quart of butter milk . I followed your instructions .. One gallon in stainless steel pot with half cup butter milk – nine hours have passed and still looks like when i put it in the pot does the whole milk not work?
Actually, I had that happen recently with store bought buttermilk (I like to test my recipes in different ways). I decided that it’s probably because the buttermilk culture wasn’t very strong, so I left it for longer, and it took about 24 hours to clabber! Going to rewrite the recipe in the next few weeks with this issue in mind. Keep fermenting trying! It should be fine with whole milk.
Hi Emillie,
How long will it keep in the fridge? I have a bread proofing setting on my oven. When I looked it up, it said about 85-95 Fahrenheit. If the pot with the cheese mix is set in a pan of boiling water, and the oven is at that setting, would that work?
Thanks,
Susan
It will clabber at room temperature (unless your house is extremely cold!) For cooking after the clabber, then I guess you could use your oven. However, it will make stirring more work.
It should last for at last 2 weeks in the fridge, or longer if you sanitize everything.