How to Make Cottage Cheese - The Easy Way!

today I want to share with you how to make cottage cheese the easy way hi sweet friends I'm Mary and welcome to Mary's nest where I teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods including bone broth ferments sourdough and more so if you're enjoy learning about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every time I upload a new video so I call this cottage cheese the easy way because we're going to make this without the need for remnant and ran into something that's used in the commercial cheese industry to make cheese but it's often not something that we as home cooks have on hand now you can certainly buy rennet you may have to order it or find it at a specialty grocery store and you can use that to make cheese at home but for the most part it's nice to be able to make cheese without having to worry about having that on hand so today we're gonna make cottage cheese using just milk and vinegar now as I said this is the easy cottage cheese is it exactly like the cottage cheese that you buy at the grocery store that may be made with rennet no but it's going to be very similar and as I said it's very easy to make and cottage cheese like a number of other cheeses or what I think of as on sort of a continuum of cheeses that are made on the stovetop in a pot or a saucepan and as a matter of fact you may even have heard of old fashioned pot cheese and that's sort of on this continuum of cheese making at home so to speak where you have cottage cheese you have pot cheese you have farmer's cheese and you have ricotta cheese and again now that's sort of the easy ricotta cheese it's not the true ricotta cheese that's made from the way after making mozzarella but it's a ricotta cheese that's made in a similar way to making cottage cheese like this in the saucepan and I'll make a video about how to make ricotta and that another time but I just wanted to give you that little sort of overall picture that these are all similar cheese's easy made cheese's like the cottage cheese the ricotta the pot cheese the farmer's cheese and the only real difference is exactly what temperature you're going to warm the milk to whether or not you're going to add cream whether or not you're going to add salt how long you're going to heat it for what temperature so on and so forth so they're all slight variations and they produce a slightly different product but basically they're all easy cheeses that are made right on your stovetop and the nice thing about all of these stovetop cheeses is they're all made without the need for rennet ok the class lecture is over let's make the cottage cheese so basically to start all you need are two ingredients you're going to want 1 gallon of milk and 3/4 of a cup of white distilled vinegar now you can also keep some salt and some cream on hand but we'll talk about that because that comes after we've made the cottage cheese and you can use raw milk or you can use pasteurized milk and another nice thing about making homemade cottage cheese is that you can use skim milk also known as nonfat milk you can use 2% milk or you can use whole milk so you can make this any way you want and the nice thing as I said about making this homemade and being able to choose what type of milk you want if you're following diet plans like the trim healthy mama program and you need fat-free cottage cheese you can make this version at home with nonfat or or skim milk and it's going to be much tastier and much nicer than the product that you can get at the grocery store that's called fat-free cottage cheese well what I've got here is pasteurized whole milk and I'm making this with pasteurized whole milk because that's the easiest milk I think for most of you to find but as I said you can also make this with Rome ilk which I have access to but I know a lot of you have told me that you don't have access to that so just go ahead and poor have a nice big heavy saucepan this is an enamel cast iron pan a heavy stainless steel and heavy bottom stainless steel pan will work well as all will work well well as well so this is as I said cast-iron stainless or a heavy bottom stainless steel pour all of your milk in now the next thing we want to do is heat this milk gently because milk you have to be careful with when you're warming because it can burn especially on the bottom so we just want to put this a little bit a medium heat and we want to keep our eye on it and we only want to heat this up to about a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit now if you have a food grade thermometer and you can monitor this to bring it up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit that's great but if you don't don't worry basically what you'll want to do is keep an eye on it and with clean hands test it periodically you know with one of your fingers to see if it's becoming warm like a nice warm bath and chances are that's going to be the right temperature and as you're bringing this up to a nice warm temperature just periodically give it a little stir just to make sure nothing sticking to the bottom and then and check it as I said periodically you don't want to get it too hot just a nice warm bath temperature well my milk has come up to a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit and I'm just gonna smooth clean hands I'm going to show you just put your finger in it feels very warm now my fingers my hands are very seasoned from years of cooking so it might feel quite warm to you I kind of describe it as a warm bath some people might say a hot bath but the bottom line is it's going to take about 20 to 25 minutes to warm a gallon of milk on medium up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit so and you know if you stick your finger in it and it feels very warm then you know you've you've reached the right temperature once we get to that hundred and twenty degrees we're gonna remove this from the heat then we're gonna take our 3/4 of a cup of white distilled vinegar and this is just the typical 5% acidity level vinegar that you'd find at the grocery store and we're going to add this gently into our milk now if you don't want to use vinegar you can use lemon juice however the lemon juice gives more of a distinct lemon flavor instead of more of a plain flavor that the vinegar imparts and you're gonna start to already see it begin to congeal and you just want to give it a little very gentle mix around and I'll take a picture from overhead so you can see how this looks but you just want to stir it for about a minute minute or two and you want to do it very gently and you're gonna start to see it begin to curdle now all we're gonna do is cover this pot and we're gonna let this sit here for 30 minutes while this is resting I just want to say one thing about getting your milk to the right temperature I don't want you to worry about that there's a lot of flexibility when making these homemade stovetop cheeses so if it's a little under 120 or a little over 120 it's really not gonna make a significant difference and even on that continuum continuum of cheeses that I talked about earlier the worst-case scenario is that if it's a little under 120 you'll get a slightly different texture or if it's over a hundred and twenty by any significant amount maybe you went up to 180 or even 200 degrees you'll get a little bit more of something that resembles a ricotta so I don't want you to worry about that it's going to turn out fine and in the case of making cottage cheese if you can put your finger into the milk and it feels warm or hot to you you're fine well it's been 30 minutes so we'll check on this oh it looks wonderful I'll take a picture and I'll overlay it so you can see exactly what this looks like the next thing you want to do is get a bowl and a colander or a mesh strainer either one will work and what we're gonna do is take some cheesecloth or flower sack towel if you've been with me a while you've seen all my bone broth videos you know I love using these flour sack towels but you can use cheesecloth too or any very thin cloth and we're gonna line our colander or if you use a mesh strainer that's fine too and then what we're gonna do is transfer all of this Kurds in way through this lined colander and you just want to be a little careful when you're doing this because it is still warm well I'm letting this drain into my bowl and as you'll see I had to transfer the way into this measuring cup but there's still more that's dripping off so I'm gonna leave this for another five minutes and continue to let that way drain off but as this is draining I'm gonna take a picture and overlay it so that you can see exactly what the curds are starting to look like as all this way is draining off now I just want to talk about this way for a minute this is what's known as acid way there's two types of whey there's acid way and then there's sweet way acid way is what we get when we drain yogurt or we drain kefir or we make a soft cheese like the type of cheeses the cheese we made today cottage cheese or any of the other stovetop cheeses stovetop cheese's that are known as soft cheeses sweet whey on the other hand is the byproduct of making hard cheeses or cheeses that are made where rennet is used sweet whey is very high in protein and you may have seen it sold in stores when it's dehydrated and sold under the name of whey protein powder acid way on the other hand is a lot lower in protein but don't throw it out it's very rich in vitamins and minerals and it can be used in place of pretty much any recipe where water is called for so if you're baking and it calls for water you can use way you can use whey when you want to make grains you can use whey when you're making rice you can even use whey when you're making bone broth as your acid to help extract the collagen out of the bones and make a gelatinous bone broth now acid whey is the type of way that's used when you make ferments but I prefer not to use the way that I get when making the soft cheese on the stove because this has all been heated I prefer to use this in all the other applications that I just mentioned when it comes to ferments I prefer the acid way that I collect when straining yogurt or straining kefir and the reason for that is that even though the milk for example when you're making yogurt the milk has been warmed it's then been inoculated and then it's been refrigerated and the inoculation of that good bacteria has not been heated yes it's been put into the good bacteria has been put into milk that was brought up to a hundred and ten degrees however a hundred and ten degrees is still often considered somewhat of a living food and the bacteria can really proliferate and grow and is very vital so to speak when strained from yogurt and then of course extremely vital when went straight from kefir because keith has not been heated at all but that's just in my humble opinion I know that some people will use this way for ferments but I prefer to use the way that I strain from yogurt or kefir if I'm going to use it in a ferment and one other thing I want to mention about using this way you can actually try and put this back into the pot back onto the stove add some more acid you could add the vinegar or some lemon juice and see if you can get any more curds out of it now the curds will be a little more similar to what you might or what might remind you of a ricotta cheese but that's often fun to try to see if you can get any more cheese out of this way well I let this drain for another five minutes I got some more way and I'm gonna overlay a picture so that you can see how beautiful this cottage cheese has turned out beautiful large lovely curds and it's just looking glorious now at this point you have a couple of options some people like to put this up into a tight ball and then rinse it under cold water for about three to five minutes I've never really found that step necessary the reason for putting this up into a tight ball and squeezing it to get out as much of the way as you can and then rinsing it real well in that tight bowl I'll show you what I mean by just pulling all of this up is then to rinse out any vinegar taste but I generally find with just using 3/4 of a cup of the vinegar or even a full cup of the vinegar that my cottage cheese really doesn't have a vinegar vinegary flavor but if you want to take that step you would just pull this into the bowl into a ball in your cheesecloth or your flour sack towel give it a good squeeze to get some of that way to keep draining off and then put it under your tap and just turn on your cold water and your sink and rinse and rinse and rinse for about three to five minutes while you're squeezing getting the water out and more of the way but what I find is that just by straining the cottage cheese you have a beautiful texture as I'm showing you here and I'll take a bit up close picture of this and I'll overlay it so that you can see it on the plate but this is a lovely texture and we'll give it a taste but I know from experience it has a lovely flavor and not one that I find vinegary so I often skip that step and also - I'm not a fan of washing this lovely product with chlorinated water from my tap and to try to rinse something for three to five minutes with filtered water especially I don't have an RO system or anything like that might become a little costly also too I find that when you squeeze it really tight and you rinse it very thoroughly you wind up with a very dry product and that's where the cream comes in handy if you decide to take that step where you're squeezing and rinsing you're going to wind up with a cheese that's much drier you're going to want to break it up into curds and then if you want to get it to have more of the consistency of what you're used to at the from what you buy at the grocery store then you'll want to add in a little cream and at that same time you can go ahead and add in a little salt now you can even go ahead and add in salt to this but I find with the vinegar the taste is really quite lovely so let's give this batch of taste mmm it's perfect there's not a strong vinegar flavor at all but the little tiny bit of Tang that's left over is delightful and I find that it really doesn't need any salt at all so if you're on a salt restricted diet this is a nice option because you really don't have to add any salt and I don't even think you're going to miss the salt now if you want you can also still add some cream to this under insta cottage version of the cottage cheese it's really going to be just a matter of personal taste as to how close you want to get it to resemble what you might buy at the grocery store but I highly recommend giving it a taste like this before you make any additions because I think you're gonna be very pleased now whether you leave your cottage cheese just like this as is or you bundle it up and rinse it under tap water either way this is gonna stay fresh in your refrigerator for about five to seven days and your way has a wonderful shelf life this is going to stay fresh in your refrigerator for about six months and if you freeze it even longer at least a year so if you'd like to learn more about homemade dairy products be sure to click on this video over here where I show you how to make homemade yogurt no machine required and I'll see you over there in my Texas Hill Country kitchen love and God bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 138,458

Rating: 4.9379377 out of 5

Keywords: How to Make Cottage Cheese - The Easy Way!, How to make cottage cheese, Easy homemade cottage cheese, cottage cheese demonstration, homemade cottage cheese, cottage cheese lesson, cottage cheese, cheese making, homemade cheese, cottage cheese recipe, cottage cheese making, home cheese making, how to make cottage cheese at home, cottage cheese making process, how to make homemade cottage cheese, quick cottage cheese recipe, homemade cottage cheese recipe, marysnest, marys nest

Id: Kyc9pGaDTXs

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020