Why is cottage cheese a thing again?
Good question. Cottage cheese is not an ingredient that often finds its way into our cooking and we hate to hate on it but here we go anyway… it’s kind of damp and bland. Then, there’s the issue of the lumps. Plus the association with fad diets… which is kind of why it's a thing again.
First a little history – did you know that in the 1970s, when Americans ate on average 5lbs (2.26kg) of the stuff each every year, there actually was a Cottage Cheese Diet? The theory was if you ate nothing but cottage cheese you’d lose plenty of weight. No doubt, but we suspect if we ate nothing but cottage cheese we’d lose our will to live. To be fair, there was fruit involved in the cottage cheese diet too but even so. Like wife swaps, pet rocks and crimplene smocks, this regimen belongs in the 70s. Poor old cottage cheese. It sure comes with baggage.
So what exactly is it? Wikipedia describes cottage cheese as a “curdled milk product with a mild flavour and a creamy, heterogeneous, soupy texture, made from skimmed milk”, which doesn’t exactly further its cause. Fresh curd cheeses like cottage cheese have been made for centuries but it’s thought modern cottage cheese (made using pasteurised milk) evolved from ‘homesteaders cheese’, a fresh cheese made by farmers in British Columbia in the early 20th century. European farmers though have long made similar fresh cheeses as a way to use excess milk and another theory is that it spread to America via European immigrants. In America, cottage cheese was promoted heavily during the first world war to save the meat for the army, and it became hugely popular during the 1920s and 1930s thanks to various health food crazes. We couldn’t find any interesting historical snippets about cottage cheese manufacture or consumption in New Zealand and if you know any, we are all ears. All we remember is anecdotal stuff like our Mums slathering it on Red Band Biscotte (who remembers those!) and cramming it into celery ‘boats’ in a primitive attempt at cocktail food.
Last year cottage cheese had something of a moment on TikTok, when creators were whipping it into everything from ice cream to vodka sauce for pasta to cookie dough and, yes, pancakes. The trending #cottagecheese hashtag amassed over 250 million views and posts had captions like “It’s sooooo good!”, “Weird arsed cottage cheese toast” and “IF COTTAGE CHEESE HAS ZERO FANS I AM DEAD”, attracting comments of the “cottage cheese is like crack” and “welcome to the cottage cheese club” ilk. With the expected silly giggling and dramatic ‘oh my God’s!’ from creators. Depressingly, there’s now a viral cottage cheese and mustard diet on the platform, where humungous amounts of both get used as dips for sausage and raw vegetables. Eewww. Why this sudden popularity? Apparently a whole new generation have discovered cottage cheese’s merits; namely that it’s high in protein, calcium and nutrients like vitamins B12 and B2, is relatively low in fat and calories, can help you lose weight and yes, we concede, if used properly, can taste and look quite OK. Especially if you whip it using a stick blender to smooth out the blobby bits. We actually love it in our buckwheat pancakes, but the flavour is very much in the background; it just adds a bit of damp, dairy richness to the proceedings. Generally we prefer ricotta, even though it’s higher in fat and calories (or maybe because it’s higher in fat and calories?). Nowhere near as salty as cottage cheese, ricotta is sweeter, creamier and better (we think) in sauces, dips and spreads. You also can’t use cottage cheese in cheesecakes like you can ricotta. But hey, just wait until Gen Z discovers ricotta and do all kinds of weird things to it. We can hardly.
