How to Make Homemade Grass Fed Cottage Cheese

Brittany from SpakleKitchen and I recently did a podcast on the differences between raw, grass fed, organic, and conventional milk products and it got me thinking…I should probably share one of my favorite dairy products in the entire world: homemade cottage cheese!

I’ve always appreciated cottage cheese for it’s protein content and ability to keep you full for a long time.  But I never enjoyed store bought cottage cheese…it’s kind of sour, weirdly-uniformly chunky, and has the consistence of soft plastic. (Ok, so I’ve never attempted to eat soft plastic but that’s pretty much how I image it tasting like.)

In contrast to the stuff you can buy at the store, homemade grass fed cottage cheese is sweet and creamy…and also has the potential to be even more nutritious than anything you can find at a regular grocery store.  It’s also endlessly customizable with different spices, toppings, and flavors so things never get boring!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 gallon grass fed milk (I like getting raw, grass fed milk from a local farm)
• 3 oz plain grass fed yogurt
• optional: 1 tablespoon raw honey, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Steps:

1. Combine the milk and yogurt in a large oven-safe pot, stir, and cover.  I like putting the pot in my oven (not turned on).

2. Let sit for 24-36 hours. It will start to set and the entire mixture will start to look like yogurt.

3. Turn your oven on at 250 degrees.  Leave the pot in the oven for 2 hours.

4. At the end of two hours, take the pot out of the oven and check it out: you should have small-curd cottage cheese. (Depending on your oven, you might need to leave it in slightly less or slightly more.  Just take a peak every now and then to keep track of the progress.)

5. Strain your cottage cheese using a cheese cloth.  I usually do this by lining a mesh straining with cheese cloth and pouring the cottage cheese through it.  I actually keep the fluid I strain off and use it for baking, soups, and/or hair care (I add it to my henna mixes)!

6. I then add in optional yummy stuff to my homemade grass fed cottage cheese like raw honey, cinnamon, and fresh berries.  So delicious!