Cottage Cheese Curd Texture is Thermo and Acid Dependent

I have said it before, that I have seen cottage cheese cooks make wonderful looking cottage cheese, only to have it NOT look so wonderful in the package. Depending upon how it is creamed (or dressed), stirred, pumped and packaged has a lot to do with the final appearance of the cottage cheese in the carton (or the curd identity). Stir it too much and you might grind down the curd into a paste. Pump it too vigorously with the wrong pump, and the same thing can happen. Dress it with too small of a quantity of cottage cheese dressing and you may have the ground up paste look. Remember, all the lubrication of the dry curd comes from the cottage cheese dressing. You need to get enough on the curd to pump it with less resistance in the fill lines. All of this influences the appearance and eating experience when consuming cottage cheese. It takes time and quite a lot of effort to get cottage cheese curd texture just right in the vat during the make process.?

What else influences the eating experience of cottage cheese? The final texture of the curd in the package of course! I discovered that cottage cheese curd is a thermo dependent ingredient. The texture depends upon how cold the cottage cheese is and how much acid the cottage cheese is subjected to (acid dependent as well). The colder the cottage cheese is held and stored at the firmer the curd will “eat”. I was at a cottage cheese plant and made wonderful textured cottage cheese. It wasn’t too firm nor too soft. I placed a few retail containers in my cooler with ice packs and headed home on an eight-hour drive. Upon arriving home, I tasted the creamed cottage cheese again and was surprised to find out that the colder stored retail containers (probably close to 32F) were “eating firmer” than just 8 hours prior to that at the plant!?

Obviously, warmer curd will “eat” with a softer texture. You can even “melt” cottage cheese to some degree by heating it up. Try some on hot buttered noodles and experience the soft pliable texture even though that texture might have started off firm in the cold state. The curd will be soft and similar to warm ricotta cheese. Thus, the curd texture of cottage cheese is somewhat temperature dependent.?

I have emphasized that during the production of the curd in the vat, that acid in the whey (or too low a pH at 100-105F) equals softer cheese curd that doesn’t want to firm up. AFTER the curd has been dressed with creamed dressing however, the opposite happens. The curd will expel some retained moisture and “firm up” in the package and take on a harder and mealy texture. Why this happens is most likely due to the final pH. A finished pH in the cup of between 5.0-5.10 is ideal for the perfect texture and keeping quality of creamed cottage cheese. If the pH falls below 4.80 you get a “hockey puck look”. The dressing gets coagulated around the curd pieces (it becomes too sour when exposed to too high of an acid level, or too low of a pH in the cup). Eating the cottage cheese at this point becomes a less than desirable eating experience. The curd is firm and chewy and has a tart taste. It may taste “mealy” like there are small corn meal pieces in it when chewed (grainy). Organoleptically, I do not find this appealing.?

Remember pineapple cottage cheese with the pineapple pieces mixed in? You can take the same softer textured cottage cheese curd from that day’s production run which may have a softer pliable texture and expose it to a lower pH environment (the pineapple pieces and fruit prep have a pH in the vicinity of between 2.5 – 3.5). The fruit and sugar in the prep taste good to the consumer, but it changes the texture of the cottage cheese. It doesn’t happen immediately (on day 1) but by the time that cottage cheese reaches the shelves at the retail level, the texture has changed. It becomes firmer, chewy and mealy. Too low of a pH (or exposure to that high acid level in the pineapple) equals the harder and mealy curd that you are experiencing.?

So, you can see that the texture of the cottage cheese curd is influenced at what temperature the finished creamed cottage cheese is stored and consumed at. It is also dependent upon the final pH of the creamed cottage cheese in the cup. Cottage cheese with a pH of less than 4.80 will not have a very good eating experience. And one may wonder why more people don’t like or consume more cottage cheese! The answer is it is a very complicated product to make and get just right. And that’s not just the texture of the curd in the vat! The texture can be influenced or changed later by low pH in the cottage cheese dressing or exposure to other low pH ingredients such as pineapple fruit.

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