Cottage cheese is fresh curd, barely aged, salted and dressed with a little cream. For most of its history it was a farmhouse by-product; in the last few years it has become the internet’s favorite protein, blended into sauces, pancakes and bowls. A cup of 4% cottage cheese has about 25 grams of protein, which is why we spent a week on it.
Start Here
- Cottage Cheese Pasta Sauce, and the Blender Trick That Replaced Cream — 15 minutes, about 30 g protein
- Cottage Cheese Oat Pancakes — four ingredients, one blender, no protein powder
- Cottage Cheese: From Farmhouse Leftover to Protein Icon — Origins
- Savory Cottage Cheese Bowl With Cucumber, Radish and Chili Crisp — Lower-Carb
- Do You Really Need 30 g of Protein at Every Meal? — The Report
- Kimchi Cottage Cheese Toast — where cottage cheese met kimchi (Nov 7)
Buying and Using It
- 4% milkfat blends smoothest and tastes rounder; 2% works; nonfat turns grainy and can split when heated.
- Blend it for sauces and batters: the curds are set milk protein (mostly casein) and a blender turns them into a smooth paste. A fork does not.
- Salt varies by brand, from about 300 to 450 mg per half cup. Hold the salt in any recipe until you taste.
- Keep it cold and use within a week of opening. Small-curd and large-curd are a texture choice, not a quality one.
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