A few (all right, two) people have indicated interest in learning to make cheese so I’m putting my recipe along with a few tips here. If any other cheese makers want to chime in with tips, suggestions or even just support, please join in!
Cottage Cheese
Tools:
Large pot
Instant read thermometer
Slotted mixing spoon
Measuring cups and spoons
Sharp knife or frosting spatula
Colander
Cheese cloth (I buy mine from Amazon because grocery stores tended to treat it as a seasonal item. Things might be different now.)
Clean dish towel (I have a mess of white tea towels that are only used for making cheese. All fabric should be washed in hot water with bleach only, no detergents, soaps or fabric softeners to avoid contamination.)
Not required but strongly suggested is Star San. It is a restaurant grade sanitizer that can be sprayed on surfaces and tools without needing to dry before using.
Ingredients:
½ gallon whole cow milk. Store bought pasteurized is fine, use the freshest you can get. Also watch out for ultra-pasteurized or lactose free milk, the cartons look like regular milk, they are more expensive, and they don’t work for cheese. Perfectly fine for drinking or cooking, though.
1/8 tsp liquid rennet diluted in a quarter cup of water. I only use the liquid but know that most grocery stores have the tablet form. (Usually on the bottom shelf in the area where the canning and baking supplies are found.) From what I’ve read, just follow the directions on the package, the measurements should be the same. Be careful to not over rennet your cheese, you don’t want crumbly curds.
2tsp and ¾ tsp kosher or canning salt. Avoid salt with iodine or anti-caking agents, they can retard or even destroy your curds.
2/3 cup cultured buttermilk. If you are going to continue to do this, buy a bottle from the store and then start culturing your own. Gently heat two cups of whole milk to 75F, add a Tbsp of buttermilk and mix for 20 seconds then put in a covered container and let ripen undisturbed on the counter for 24 to 36 hours. It’s probably done when you can see bubbles at the surface but open it up and take a sniff just to be sure. Your buttermilk will be good for 2 or three weeks in the fridge.
3 Tbsp heavy cream.
Start by sanitizing your tools and work area. If you don’t have a restaurant grade sanitizer available, put all of your tools except the dishtowel in the pot, fill the pot with water and bring to a boil while you wipe your counters down. Once the pot has come to a boil, remove from heat and busy yourself elsewhere while waiting for everything to cool down. Train yourself to always ALWAYS put your tools down on the towel instead of the counter.
You don’t really need to be that fussy with cottage cheese, but this is a beginner cheese and it’s best to get into good habits now instead of fighting bad habits later. I promise you will cry the first time you open a year old cheese and see that you allowed strange bacteria to ruin it.
So let’s cook!
Put the milk in the pot and heat it slowly, stirring now and then until you bring it up to 80F. Always use low heat because once you raise the heat past 90F at this stage, you kill off all the good bacteria and the milk won’t play nice anymore. Cow milk is picky to start with, it turns into a real bitch when you piss it off.
When it’s up to temp, remove from heat and stir in the rennet. Stir cheese in an up and down motion to help move the heat up from the bottom of the pan. Cover and put somewhere to culture undisturbed for 4 or 5 hours.
Of course you are going to want to look in the pot but you won’t see much for a while, then it will look like the milk is forming a film. Restrain yourself from touching it, just tap the sides of the pan to look at the wobble. When the milk has started to pull away from the pan and wobbles like a good pudding use your knife to cut a line across the surface then go do something else for 5 minutes. If the cut has healed when you come back, the cheese needs to ripen longer, if the edges are still open, use your knife to cut horizonal lines an inch apart, then rotate the pot and do it again so you have a grid. Don’t worry if you have wobbly lines, but do be sure to cut to the bottom of the pan. Now go away for another 5 minutes.
At some point you are going to need to line your colander with a couple of layers of cheese cloth, do it when ever.
Now, return the pot to very low heat and add 2 tsp salt. Stir gently in an up and down motion to carefully break up the curds. What you have now is not the curds you want yet, so break it all up but be gentle. Continue to cook, stirring and checking the temp every 5 minutes until you bring it to 115F. This should take 40 to 60 minutes. At about the 100 degree mark, the magic will start happening. It is amazing, suddenly you will see curds forming right before your eyes. This part is always so much fun! Keep cooking until you reach temp, then drain for 15 minutes. If you are so motivated, the whey makes good ricotta.
After draining you are going to see a solid clump of rather unappetizing looking cheese in the colander. Have no fear, mix up your buttermilk, cream and the rest of the salt then add the clump and gently mix. The clump will break up into the familiar curds and you can eat it right away, but I think it’s better after a day in the fridge. This will keep for about a week before separating and then you only have a couple of days left to use it.
Rinse your cheese cloth out with warm water and put it in your cheese making laundry basket with the towel because they need to be washed separately. Cheese cloth shrinks but you can still get 6 or 7 uses out of it if you cut it big to start.