Be better cultured in new year with cottage cheese
It comes as no surprise that cottage cheese sales spike at the beginning of each year and have done so for decades. Since resolutions for the New Year frequently involve a change in eating habits, this dairy case staple becomes a convenient star for lunch.
Cottage cheese falls into the cultured fresh dairy products category, along with buttermilk and sour cream. Culturing is the addition of bacteria that will convert some of the milk sugar (lactose) to lactic acid.
The process is quite interesting. Cottage cheese curds are washed to remove a lot of the natural acidity. By doing so, the whey is washed away as well as some of the calcium. That’s why cottage cheese doesn’t have the high calcium content of some other cheeses.
Since the curds are wet after washing, they are allowed to drain. A quick drain means the curds will be used to make cottage cheese. If it is allowed to drain longer, it becomes pot cheese; then if longer, farmer’s cheese, which is actually quite firm.
Those drained curds are mixed with a creaming mixture called dressing. There are three curd sizes available: small, medium and large. Most supermarkets
You asked for it
Rebecca Carlson of Natchez would like to know if cottage cheese can be frozen. “I have some rather large tubs left over that I will have trouble consuming quickly,” she writes.
Well, that depends! Freezing cottage cheese is generally not recommended because it separates after thawing and becomes mushy. If you freeze it for a short amount of time (a month or less), you can do so if it is pureed and used as a sauce. I like to add salsa to pureed cottage cheese and use it as nice sauce and garnish. only carry small and large, which is sometimes referred to as popcorn cottage cheese. By far, the most widely sold form is small curd.
Since this cheese has a large amount of moisture, the shelf life is not as long as other cheese cousins. That’s handy for consumers who can instantly see the sell-by date stamp on each carton. The product can safely be used up to a week after the sell-by date as long as it is kept refrigerated. If possible, keep it in the coldest part of your refrigerator, which is close to the bottom in the back. If you have a dairy drawer, that is ideal.
Tammy Algood is the author of five cookbooks and can be seen on “Volunteer Gardener” on PBS stations in Tennessee. Follow her at hauteflavor.com.