KITCHEN-CRAFTED COTTAGE CHEESE

(Page 5 of 5)

September/October 1972
By Betty Brinhart 
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3. An unclean flavor can also be created by unsatisfactory storing conditions or inferior milk, cream and culture.

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4. Field or feed odors are usually caused by such odors in the milk from which a batch of cheese was made. They're unpleasant but they don't render the curd unfit for use. Kill this problem at the source by tasting any milk you plan to turn into cheese.

5. A dry or too-hard curd indicates lack of sufficient moisture because the particles of cheese broke down too small during forming, the curd was overheated during firming, the cheese drained too long after being washed with cold water or not enough cream was added to the finished curd. The condition, however, is favorable if you wish to press the cheese into a disk for freezing or slicing.

6. Soft, sticky or pasty curds are the result of too much moisture . . . attributable to the development of too much acid, oversized curd particles, rapid heating, soft centers in the curd and/or insufficient firming of the cheese before removing it from the stove.

7. Milk may fail to sour and coagulate properly because:

(a) the buttermilk is too old,
(b) not enough fresh buttermilk culture is added to the milk,
(c) the culture and skim milk is held at too low a temperature for too short a time,
(d) the milk came from a cow recently treated (within 5-to 7 days) with antibiotics—such as penicillin—for an udder infection.

Your chances, again, of ever running into one of these problems are slight . . . but there they are. Don't let them scare you because making cottage cheese in your own kitchen is actually quite simple and easy . . . and once you've discovered how good homemade curd can be, you'll never buy it in a store again!

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  • Andy 3/19/2009 6:44:05 AM

    I don't understand how the milk forms a curd in the set of instructions in this article.

    If you add buttermilk to milk and let it sit, it will make more buttermilk. It won't coagulate. Like milk left on the counter will make sour milk, not curds and whey.

    It seems to me that the author is missing a step: either adding rennet and letting the curd form or heating the acidic buttermilk mixture to near boiling to make a sort of ricotta.

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