Celebrating cottage cheese for June Dairy Month

By Shelly Detweiler

It is dairy month, so let’s give kudos to cottage cheese. Cottage cheese today is not your grandmother’s cottage cheese with canned fruit. It has gone through a rebranding of sorts, like a revival. Once popular in the mid-20th century, it has now become the key ingredient, starring in viral TikTok and Instagram videos. This curdy ingredient provides all that extra protein that everyone thinks they need these days—going from yuck to on fire at record speed!

What’s the backstory about cottage cheese? Tastingtable.com states that this creamy curdy cheese got its name back when small farmers lived in cottages. Health conveniences of pasteurization and refrigeration had not come on the scene yet. Excess milk would begin to sour, and milk proteins would start to curdle. These cottage farmers or the farmer’s wives would strain off the whey, and a soft curdled cheese would be made—basically, small batch, family-made, frugal cheese making in a cottage.… Continue reading