Cottage Cheese

I don't know why or how, but we seem to have a never-ending supply of sour milk around here.  For years I've tried to figure out uses--like lots and lots of pancakes_-or freezing it in pancake sized bags...or waffles...or???  I always thought that cottage cheese from sour milk would be the best use, but I had trouble finding a recipe that worked well with sour milk.  Finally, a couple months ago, I ran across this one, which is amazing in its simplicity...

 Here are my copied from the internets notes:
The amounts are approximate, they seem to work with a little more or a little less.
Start with about 1/2 gallon of sour milk. (tonight we didn't have any sour milk, but we had 2 gallons of not sour...it works with not sour milk, too.  A couple weeks ago we had some sour cream (not sour cream, like you put on potatoes, but cream that was sour) and it worked, too...

Ok, back to the recipe--
put about 1/2 gallon of (sour) milk in a saucepan over medium heat.  Stir almost constantly.  At altitude this took about 15 minutes, give or take.  Heat milk until it is almost boiling (185 degrees by my candy thermometer, stuck through the hole on a wooden spoon, balanced in the pan)

 When the temperature reaches 185 degrees (ish), remove from heat.  Add about 3 Tablespoons of white vinegar and stir (I don't think you really have to stir, but it seems like you should, so I do).  It should start to separate into clumpy, cottage cheese like lumps, and weird watery stuff.  Don't taste it at this point...it will taste like vinegar.














 Put cheesecloth in a strainer, pour cheese blobbies and watery goop through--the cheese blobbies should stay in the cheese cloth--if you pour carefully and have left some cheesecloth hanging over the sides, then you can gather it all up in a ball of cheese in cheesecloth.  Run it under cold water until the water looks pretty clear (and un-vinegary).  Squeeze it as much as your cheesecloth allows--if you have cheesecloth with big holes, it will smooge through.  I sometimes wrap it all up and tie it to the sink faucet for a few minutes to finish any dripping








Open the cheesecloth into a bowl or onto a clean surface--it if is very dry, it will probably fall out in one big clump, but sometimes I gently shake the cheesecloth to get more out (it tends to stick in the holes).

The original recipe says to add salt and unspoiled cream at this point.  I usually wait to add the salt until I'm going to eat it (but I like this cheese room temperature, so sometimes that is at this point).  Add cream or a little milk and chop it up with a spoon or fork (kind of chop and stir).  Add more milk or cream to reach the texture you want (now you can taste, by the way, if you rinsed well, it won't taste bitter).

There you go--I look forward to hearing if anyone else tries this and how it goes!