How to Make Cottage Cheese Cottage cheese is the simplest cheese to make and requires no special equipment or ingredients. The only golden rule that you should follow, when making any cheese, is that all your equipment should be squeaky clean and sterilised in boiling water. This is to ensure that unwanted organisms don't enter the cheese and spoil it.

Unlike other cheeses, cottage cheese does not will need any rennet (produced from the lining of a calf's stomach)to start it, so is an excellent cheese for vegetarians. If you are eager to understand the best way to make cottage cheese, first take two pints of fresh milk. This may be either full cream milk or semi-skimmed. The cheese is going to be less profitable with totally skimmed milk. Curdle the milk by adding some sort of starter - sour milk, buttermilk, yoghurt, or even lemon juice. Leave it in a warm place for twenty-four hours. Heat the milk rather gently in a bowl over a pan of water - that is, you fill a pan with hot water, you place the bowl in the top of the pan, and you put the pan on the stove at a low heat.

As the milk heats, it'll separate, turning into curds, the more solid wobbly bits, and whey, the pale liquid.

Have ready a sterilised piece of muslin (you sterilise it by putting it into boiling water for a couple of minutes). Line a colander with this muslin and carefully pour the curds and whey into the colander to ensure that the whey drains out via the muslin. Obviously, you do this over the sink or an additional bowl, unless you would like whey all over the kitchen floor!

Leave the colander to drain for about a quarter of an hour, scraping the curds down the sides of the muslin cloth from time to time until you have a nice mound of cheese at the bottom. Add salt to this, forking it into the cheese. Start with a pinch or two and add a lot more to taste. Turn the cottage cheese out onto a plate. It will maintain well in the fridge for a week.

This is the simplest way of learning the best way to make cottage cheese, but you are able to make the cheese additional interesting by adding other ingredients. Freshly coarse-ground pepper makes it a spicy cheese. Herbs may be chopped fine and added for variety. In particular, parsley and chives go well with this cheese.