It felt like a pop quiz that I should ace. “What’s the difference between cottage cheese and ricotta?” a reader asked recently. Anyone can tell them apart in a tasting (right?), but what makes them different is harder to say. The method for cottage cheese is largely, but not entirely, standardized; big producers often take shortcuts. Creameries make ricotta in multiple ways, too. Let’s take a deeper dive into these two fresh cheeses so you know whether they’re interchangeable in recipes and what you can expect when you open that tub.
What, exactly, is cottage cheese?
At its most traditional, cottage cheese is made from cultured milk (whole, lowfat or skim). The culture slowly ferments the milk sugar, eventually generating enough acid to coagulate the milk and produce a curd. The process can take 16 hours or more—an eternity at an industrial plant—but the payoff is flavor. Some creameries shorten the process by adding rennet. Most of the big guys dispense with culturing entirely, using an acid, like citric or phosphoric acid, to coagulate the milk quickly. Ka-ching.
Lunchable: Crostini with cottage cheese
If you want a cottage cheese with tangy sour-cream flavor, look for “cultured” on the label or culture listed as an ingredient. In the old days, this style was known as clabbered cottage cheese.
Once a curd forms, it is cut small by hand or mechanically. Then the cooking begins. Curds and whey are slowly warmed and stirred, a step that makes the curds progressively smaller and firmer. At the appropriate moment, the whey is drained, and the curds are rinsed to harden them and remove fermentable lactose. Finally, they’re mixed with salt and a creamy dressing—typically cream and cultured milk. Cowgirl Creamery’s superb cottage cheese (no longer produced) had crème fraîche in the dressing. If you want to make a similar cottage cheese at home, here’s the method.
Ricotta is different.
At its most traditional, ricotta starts with whey leftover from making another cheese. Most ricotta producers, even purists in Italy, add a little milk to boost their yield. Then the mixture is heated just until fluffy curds float to the surface. The curds are immediately scooped into draining baskets and, within a few hours, the ricotta is ready for sale.
Get the app: whipped ricotta board
So, unlike cottage cheese, ricotta curds aren’t cooked or stirred to firm them; on the contrary, they should be soft and fragile. They aren’t rinsed, salted or dressed. If you drain fresh ricotta in its basket for half a day, you can turn it out and slice it.
Alas, most ricotta is not made from whey today or even from cultured milk. Big creameries, in a hurry, heat milk with vinegar or another acid to produce the curds. Bellwether Farms is the only domestic producer I know that makes ricotta from cultured whole milk. Liam Callahan, the owner, told me that cultured milk yields a more delicate ricotta than acidified milk.
If you’d like to try making your own ricotta, here’s my favorite method, with a video demo.
Are cottage cheese and ricotta interchangeable in recipes?
Not reliably. You can often substitute one for the other in a salad, bruschetta topping or dip, remembering that cottage cheese contains salt and is tangier. But in a cooked dish, it’s iffy. Cottage cheese doesn’t melt or get creamy like ricotta does when you add it to pesto. You can whip ricotta (yum!) for creamy spreads and desserts. In baked goods, like cheesecake, where the formula is precise, I wouldn’t try replacing one with the other. The two can have similar moisture and fat content (depending on the brands), but the differing acidity and curd firmness could spell failure.
Both cottage cheese and ricotta often include stabilizers like carrageenan, cellulose gum, modified food starch or pectin. These additives make the product creamier and keep it from releasing whey. I’m not in favor. If I spot stabilizers on the label, I put the product back.