Cottage Cheese Straining

The first time I tried making cottage cheese was a month before Jaron was born. I had just done the straining portion before the ultrasound that showed my cervix was shortening. The cheese sat out for a few days and lost quality. G still ate it and said it was good, but I stayed away from eating it just in case. 

This time, no medical emergencies! 😅 

The recipe said to use a cheesecloth that had been boiled for 20min. I used the old apple strainer stand to hold the cloth in place while I dumped the curds/whey into the cloth. 

I didn't want flies getting in that she used, so I tried to gather the cheesecloth at the top so I could rubber band it. Unfortunately, one of the sides of the cheesecloth slipped out before I could grab it and all of the curds dumped back into the whey. 🤦‍♀️ 

Try again! 

I was able to salvage some, so I tied that portion in a rubber band and hung it over a bowl. Once I had restrained everything, I carefully tied that bundle together to also hang.

Here's my hanging mechanism: 

The curds hang for 12h. At that point you can add a half a teaspoon of salt per cup of curds and hang it again to take out more moisture, or you can move it to the fridge and eat it as is. My timing resulted in the Kurds being ready to process around bedtime, and I was over messing with them by that point, so I just added salt and stuck it in the fridge. 

Stirring the salt in broke up all the curds, so the consistency is more like a soft cream cheese / sour cream / ricotta cheese. Very pleasant tang! We added some to a beef-tomato crockpot meal I made the other night and it really elevated the dish! 

It's a good thing we like this cottage cheese because I attempted to make yogurt again and the milk split into curds and whey before I could pause it at the yogurt stage. 

What to do with all that whey? I put some of the whey in the beef-tomato crock pot meal. The rest of it is going in the freeze dryer to make whey powder. After our next baby comes, I'll add some of the powder to my favorite protein ball recipe for an extra boost. 

You can use whey as a substitute for liquid in any bread or muffin recipe. I might try that sometime too! We have plenty more whey coming with this next batch of cottage cheese!