Cottage cheese is simple and easy to make with milk kefir. A word of caution however, it can sometimes be tough to remove the grains from the cottage cheese curds so only try to do this once you have enough grains to be able to "loose" some.
Equipment needed:
- Plastic spoon
- fine weave muslin or a very fine weaved fabric
- Pan
- container to store cottage cheese in.
Method:
- Make your kefir as normal (make with cream instead of milk if you want really thick cheese or 50/50 cream/whole milk.
- once you have strained the kefir grains* however leave to stand at room temperature for 48 hours to create extreme separation, i use a bowl for this rather than a jar, and to make the curds really thick and creamy.
- When you are ready to make your cottage cheese boil the muslin or fine weaved cloth for at least 20 minutes in a pan of boiling water to sterilize the fabric)
- remove the fabric from the pan (CAUTION IT WILL BE HOT!)
- Allow to cool before straining your kefir
- once the fabric is cool, spoon the kefir curds from your jar into the fabric, once all the curds are in the fabric gather the sides up and squeeze all the remaining liquid from the curds (best done over a bowl or the sink!)
- undo the fabric and spoon the cottage cheese into a container.
- If you want to flavour your cottage add that to the container. I find that garlic and rosemary works well with a little crushed black pepper.
- Enjoy!
*it can be hard to remove the grains if the curds are thick at this point especially if you have used cream. if you are finding it tough you can just leave the grains in if you have spares and eat them with the cheese. If that doesn't appeal then simply keep pouring the kefir liquid that has gone through the sieve back through the sieve over and over again and the liquid should help soften the curds to help you find and retrieve the grains.