Q&A for How to Make Cottage Cheese

You can use whole milk to substitute for cream. Add a little at a time and cut it in with a fork.

Yes, it will work without any add-ons of creams and salts. The only reason to put salt is to add a little bit of seasoning and the cream is added for the texture, to avoid causing the cheese to be too dry. You can put half/half if you don't like heavy cream.

A single cup of cottage cheese contains 8 grams of carbohydrates if it has small curds, and 7 grams if it has large curds.

If your are using fresh, organic milk, there should not be bad bacteria to start with. When you heat the milk to make the cheese, you have just pasteurized your milk and, thus, your whey. A good raw milk, when left out, does not typically go bad, but rather clabbers.

Yes. It's very healthy to consume, since it's full of proteins and has no fat. Use it as stock or with milkshakes. As for how long it lasts, it depends on the milk. I use pasteurized milk, and both the cheese and whey are good for over 10 days; but if it's fresh milk it may not last as long.

Most people suggest fresh, organic, full-fat milk. You use pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized milk. The higher the quality, and the fresher the milk is, the better.

You can't make cheese without milk, but you might have a couple of options. First, if you don't like cow's milk but you like other kinds of milk (such as goat's milk or ewe's milk), you could try making it with that, though it would probably taste very different.

You can't use soured milk - in fact, you want to use the freshest milk possible. Heating is part of cheese making, but usually you don't actually boil the milk. Safety comes with using the cleanest possible equipment, pans, bowls, cheesecloth, etc. Wash hands. Bear in mind, it is bacteria that "make" cheese. Think of them as beneficial bacteria, like the ones that make yogurt, for example.

You can use whatever milk you want, but I find it is certainly easier to make cottage cheese with skim.

One, cottage cheese contains fewer carbohydrates, two, cottage cheese doesn't need to be cured, and three, cottage cheese is not very solid.

Yes, you can. Any milk that contains casein can be made into cottage cheese. Cottage cheese already has less lactose than normal milk as lactose is drained with the whey.

You don't need to add any cream. The cream is just for texture. You could also use a little bit of milk if the curds are too dry.

Yes, you can also use whole milk (4% fat) if you want. I think the person that submitted the recipe just chose skim milk to eliminate the milk fat.

1/2 teaspoon of citric acid is okay, but that's probably not enough lemon juice. I'd use at least 1/2 a lemon for this amount of milk.

If you don't rinse the curds, your cottage cheese will taste like vinegar or lemon juice.

100 g (3.5 oz) of plain, full-fat cottage cheese contains 11 g of protein. If you are looking to supplement the protein from cottage cheese with additional sources, it depends on your needs. A rough rule of thumb is about 1 g of protein per kg of body weight per day, so, for example, an 80 kg man should consume about 80 g of protein per day.

No, as in UHT all of the organic substances have been killed.

I use 4 tablespoons of white vinegar (7%) to a quart of milk. That works great for me.

Yes, you can use it. It is rich in whey protein. If you suffer from lactose intolerance, then avoid this because it contains lactose.