Dairy products including organic milk, yogurt, cream, butter, cheese etc are all good for health. You can buy cheese from your nearest cheese store or you can make your own cottage cheese at home with very little effort. Cottage cheese is used in preparation of many cheese foods like in South Asian cuisine, Palak Paneer (spinach cheese) is a well known cheese meal. Its very healthy as compared to other cheese flavors like cheddar or mozzarella. For more cheese recipes to try at home, refer to the book Home Cheese Making.
Ingredients:
1 kg milk
1 tspn lemon juice
Procedure:
1. In a deep sauce pan, boil milk on medium flame. Make sure that the sauce pan must be of good quality and the milk would not burn from the base or all cream would not stick to the pan otherwise there will be more water in it and less amount of cheese may obtain.
2. When milk completely boils, remove the pan from the stove and ad lemon juice in it. Stir continuously so that lemon juice mixes in the milk.
3. After few minutes, lumps start to form in the milk. Continue stirring for 5-10 minutes more until milk is completely separated into liquid and lumps.
4. Leave the pan, at room temperature so that all the lumps settled at the bottom.
5. After that take a soft and thin cotton (muslin) cloth and spread it on the top of another pan, slowly pour the milk mixture over it so that all the liquid water drain out from the lumps.
6. When all the mixture pour on the cloth, hold the four corners of the cloth and bind them together to form a bag. Now press this bag using hands so that rest of the liquid drain out. Hang this bag for sometime to dry the lumps.
7. When liquid stops dropping from the bad, put this bad as it is in the fridge for one day.
8. Take out the bag from the fridge and open, homemade cottage cheese is ready to use.
It didn’t work for me. Not sure what I did wrong. I used whole milk, fresh and not homogenized. would that make a difference?
This is actually a recipe for Panir Cheese, used in Queso Blanco. It is best not to boil the milk, but slowly heat to 185 then add the acid (lemon juice, lime juice, or vinegar) while stirring and then drain the curds from the whey. It is a very very bland cheese and best to add herbs and salt after draining.
True Cottage Cheese is made with Rennet or Junket.
On another note, the proper ratio is half gallon milk to 1/4 cup vinegar (or lemon juice).