It’s easy to make your own dry curd cottage cheese. This recipe makes a cottage cheese with small curd – perfect for nalysnyky (Ukrainian cheese crepes) or Easter cheese babka. My homemade Instant Pot dry curd cottage cheese is destined for perishke (or pyrizhky, basically a bread-based baked perohe or pyrogy)
When I buy dry curd cottage cheese, it has really large curds. For most recipes, I end up mashing it with a fork (annoying) or squeezing it through a potato ricer or a sieve (time-consuming).
Special equipment
- Instant Pot
- Glass lid
- Colander
- Metal whisk
- Cheesecloth
Making my own dry curd cottage cheese in the Instant Pot is a big win. Fill the Instant Pot with your milk. I used 4 liters – but you can easily half the recipe.
I used 3.5 liters of whole (3%) milk and 2 cups of whipping cream. You can also make this with 4 liters of whole milk.
Line a colander with cheesecloth. Cheesecloth is very thin so make sure there are at least two cheesecloth layers.
Heat the milk using the Yogurt setting on the Instant Pot with a glass lid. It’ll start out with a boil phase. After it comes to a low boil – which takes 50 or 60 minutes with 4 liters of liquid – shut off the Instant Pot.
Add 1 cup of white vinegar to the hot milk mixture. The curds will separate from the whey.
Give the mixture a quick whisk. This makes the curds smaller.
Pour the hot mixture into the colander. If you want to keep the whey, drain it over a container. After most of the whey is drained, I sit the colander back over the Instant Pot.
Set the mixture into the fridge and let it drain for a few hours. Now, you’ve made cottage cheese!
Instant Pot Ukrainian Farm Cheese - Dry Curd Cottage Cheese
Equipment
- Instant Pot
- Instant Pot glass lid
- Colander
- Metal whisk
- Cheesecloth
Ingredients
- 15 cups or 3.5 liters whole milk 3%
- 2 cups or 500mL cream
- 1 cup vinegar
Instructions
- Combine the 15 cups of milk and 2 cups of cream in the Instant Pot and top with a glass lid
- Start heating the milk using the the Yogurt setting. The display should show "Boil"
- When the cycle moves into the Yogurt setting, turn off the Instant Pot
- Add 1 cup of vinegar
- Stir quickly with a metal whisk
- Pour the mixture into a cheesecloth-lined colander
- Drain the whey off the cheese in the refrigerator
