Good Culture Cottage Cheese Recipe

Good Culture's cottage cheese is made from skim milk, whole milk, cream, sea salt and live cultures, with nothing else. To make a cultured cottage cheese at home, stir two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk into half a gallon of skim milk, let it set overnight at room temperature, cut the curd, warm it slowly to 120°F, rinse it and dress it with salt and half-and-half.

What is in Good Culture cottage cheese

Good Culture's Simply Cottage Cheese, 4% Milkfat lists skim milk, whole milk, cream, sea salt and live and active cultures, and the company says that is all there is in it. A half-cup serving, 110 grams, has 100 calories, 14 grams of protein and 4.5 grams of fat.

That is cottage cheese in its plain form: curd from skim milk, drained and mixed with cream and salt, as Wikipedia describes it. The recipe here follows the home method published by the University of Kentucky's extension service, scaled down from two gallons to half a gallon. It is not Good Culture's process, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Good Culture.

Recipe

Homemade Cultured Cottage Cheese

A cultured cottage cheese in the style of Good Culture — skim milk set overnight with cultured buttermilk, cut, warmed to 120°F, rinsed and dressed with salt and half-and-half. About one and a half cups.

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Prep

20 min

Cook

1 hr

Total

13 hr 45 min

Serves

3

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 8 cups skim milk (pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized)
• 2 tablespoons cultured buttermilk
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons half-and-half

Instructions

1. Warm the milk in a large stainless-steel pot to 72°F and stir in the buttermilk. Cover and leave at room temperature, 70 to 75°F, overnight, until the milk has set to a soft curd that breaks cleanly away from the side of the pot when pressed with a spoon.
2. Cut the curd into 3/8-inch cubes with a long knife: first one way, then across, then at an angle. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
3. Set the pot in a larger pot of hot water and warm the curd slowly to 120°F, taking about 30 minutes and stirring gently every 5 minutes.
4. Hold the curd at 120 to 125°F for about 30 minutes, stirring now and then, until the pieces are firm and no longer soft inside.
5. Pour the curd into a colander lined with cheesecloth. Rinse it three times with ice water, then let it drain for 15 minutes.
6. Stir in the salt and the half-and-half. Refrigerate and use within a week.

Skim milk for the curd, cream at the end

The label puts skim milk first and cream third, and the method explains why. The curd is made from skim milk, because the protein forms the curd and the fat adds little to it. The richness goes in afterwards as a dressing, which is why the last step is half-and-half. For a richer cheese use 4 tablespoons of heavy cream and 2 of milk.

The card carries no calorie figure. Most of the milk leaves as whey, so adding up the ingredients would give a number far too high. Good Culture's label, 100 calories per half cup, is a fair guide for a cottage cheese dressed this way.

Is the curd ready? Three checks

• A clean break. Press a spoon against the curd at the edge of the pot. Ready curd pulls away from the side in one piece. This is the test the extension method gives.
• Not set by morning: the room was too cool, or the buttermilk had no live cultures. The carton has to say cultured. Give it a few more hours somewhere warmer.
• Curds that stay soft when cooked: they need more time at 120°F. A cooked curd is springy when pressed between two fingers.

Use pasteurized milk. The extension method starts from raw milk and pasteurizes it first; milk from a shop has that step behind it. Ultra-pasteurized milk sets a weak curd and is the one kind to avoid.

Recipes with Good Culture cottage cheese

Homemade or bought, cottage cheese goes into these recipes on this site:

• Baked cottage cheese, a savoury bake with eggs, for breakfast.
• Blueberry cottage cheese breakfast bake, sweet and made ahead.

Blended smooth, it is also the base of the blueberry cottage cheese cloud bread.