How To Make Raw Cottage Cheese Using A Clabber Culture
Learn how to make raw cottage cheese using clabber culture that is rich in probiotics and beneficial bacteria. This old fashioned raw cottage cheese is one of the easiest cheeses you can ever learn to make. It’s a very hands off cheese, that only takes a few minutes of active time to make. This is a good cheese to make if you are new to cheese making and wanting to learn how to make cheese. This cottage cheese recipe will give you a good yield of creamy and delicious cottage cheese that can be eaten plain or used in many different recipes.
Ingredients
- 1 gallon of milk
- 2 Tablespoons of clabber culture
- Salt
Instructions
Without A Clabber Culture
- If you do not have an established clabber culture, you can take raw milk and let it set out at room temperature until it is coagulated into a solid mass. This usually takes 24 to 48 hours or longer. Then proceed with step 3.
With A Clabber Culture
- If you do have a clabber culture, add clabber culture to the milk. Let it set out at room temperature until it is coagulated. This can happen as quickly as 24 hours, depending on the temperature of your milk and your clabber culture. Warm milk will always ferment more quickly than cold milk.
- Put the clabbered milk into a large heavy bottom stockpot over medium-low heat.
- Stir gently with a whisk to break up the curds into smaller curds, making sure that the cheese doesn’t get too hot on the bottom. You will see the curds separating from the whey.
- Slowly heat the curds until they are 110 degrees. This will firm them up so they aren’t so soft.
- Put your cheesecloth in a colander over a bucket to catch the whey (assuming you plan to save it).
- Pour the curds and whey from the pot into the colander.
Hang The Cheese
- Tie the opposite corners of the cheesecloth together and hang on a hook or a cupboard door with the pot underneath to catch the whey that will continue to drip out. Let it hang for 2 hours. You can gently massage the curd mass a couple of times during that couple of hours to make sure it’s releasing most of it’s whey. If you forget about your cheese and leave it hanging longer, it will still be fine, but will just have drier curds. It is okay if there is still a bit of whey left in your cottage cheese curds, they're better if they aren't too dry.
- Untie the cheesecloth and carefully put the cottage cheese into a bowl. Add salt to the finished cheese fFif desired (probably 1 teaspoon per pound of cheese or to taste).
- Refrigerator for up to two weeks.
- Stir in some cream just before serving to make it creamy like regular grocery store cottage cheese. Enjoy!
Notes
Tips For Making The Best Cottage Cheese
- If you don’t have a clabber culture, but still want to make raw cottage cheese, you can set raw milk out on the counter for a couple of days until it turns to clabber, and then make the cottage cheese. It will taste better if you add clabber culture because it will coagulate sooner.
- If your cottage cheese is too dry, just add some cream to it right before you eat it. The reason you don’t want to add the cream sooner is because it won’t have as long of a shelf life as the cultured cottage cheese. You don’t want the cream to sour and ruin the cottage cheese, so it’s best to add it right before eating.
- Use this cottage cheese in any recipe where you would use regular cottage cheese.
- Use the leftover whey in baking, to water plants, feed animals or put it on your compost pile. You can also just dump it down your drain if you have way to much and don’t need it.
- If you don’t skim the heavy cream from the top of the milk before adding the clabber culture, it will turn the cream on top into some delicious raw sour cream. Just skim it off the milk once it’s clabbered, put it into the refrigerator and you have sour cream!
- You can make as big of a batch of cottage cheese all at the same time as you’d like. Feel free to double, triple or even quadruple the recipe.
