I love all things homemade, especially if it’s easy! This recipe for healthy homemade cottage cheese looks totally amazing, and I can’t wait to try it myself.
The cool thing about recipes like this is that they are really simple and easy, and most of the time it takes to make them is spent straining the cheese. This cottage cheese is also very nutritious and an excellent source of healthy fat and protein.
Check it out:
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….
Dandelions are so useful! You can use the leaves, flowers, and roots for all kinds of nutritional and medicinal benefits. However, it’s not all leafy greens and home remedies! You can make a deliciously sweet jelly with it, too, that’s great to use in place of jelly, jam, or honey to top toast or sweets.
The first step is to collect your dandelions. You will need 4 cups of just the flowers, so it’s actually easiest to simply pick the flowers off the stems when gathering them, rather than just cutting the whole stem and having to go through the arduous process of removing the stems later.
So, once you’ve gathered up your dandelion flowers, you can proceed with the recipe:
Ingredients
Are you sick of depending on other people for your freedom? With an open mind, I urge you to take a second and listen to this video. Learn how you can manifest and snag the life of your dreams. Everything you’ve been asking the universe for could be yours starting today. <<<Click Here>>>
Equipment
Directions
That’s it! This makes a delicious gift for family and friends, or you can keep it all for yourself. Enjoy!
You’ve probably heard of the growing popularity of bone broth lately, and if you haven’t, you should definitely know about it.
It’s not really anything new, but recent trendy diets have emphasized the regular consumption of hearty, super-nutritious bone broth as a way to get essential vitamins, minerals, and, most importantly, gelatin.
Gelatin is a wonderful addition to any healthy diet, but particularly beneficial for anyone concerned about bone or joint health.
The great thing is it’s very cheap and easy to make, unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to find creative ways to consume it! Especially this time of year, sipping on a warm, frothy cup of broth might not sound so appealing to you.
So we’ve come up with some clever ways to consume broth in your diet that you might not have thought of. Let’s begin:
Using bone broth as the base for hearty soups and stews is, of course, the most obvious way to get this hearty, healthy broth into your diet. You can use as you would chicken broth or even water. But, since the weather is warming up this time of year, if warm tomato soup or hot, spicy chili isn’t sounding too appealing to you, don’t forget there are great cold summer soups like gazpacho and vichyssoise that bone broth can be used for too.
Related Article: How to Cook Bone Broth in Your Slow Cooker
If you are one to enjoy some simple steamed vegetables in a quick weeknight dinner, you’ll be happy to know that you can use bone broth in place of water! Steaming vegetables with bone broth infuse the veggies with the health benefits of the broth and add a rich, deep, flavor as well.
As with steaming vegetables, you can use your bone broth in place of water when cooking rice, pasta, beans, quinoa, lentils, or other legumes or grains. It will add a rich flavor as well as the nutrients and minerals of the broth.
You can always throw a little bone broth in when you are sauteeing vegetables or making a stir-fry. It will help the vegetables cook faster as well as lend it’s rich flavor to your dish.
Related Article: How to Make Bone Broth (Video)
Many sauces require a fatty broth or milk to be reduced, and bone broth can almost always be used for that. It makes a wonderful base for a wide range of sauces and is always ideal for gravy.
Use bone broth in place of water or milk when cooking scrambled eggs, frittatas or quiches.
Hopefully, this has given you an idea of just how many options there are for using bone broth! Try to see if there are other creative ways to incorporate bone broth into your daily life. Happy cooking!
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….
Sour cream is a delicious staple condiment of American cooking, that can greatly enhance the taste of many delicious dishes, from potato pancakes, to baked potatoes, to nachos.
Most people will be familiar with the store-bought version, a thick, gooey cream that comes in a plastic container and often with additives and even artificial flavoring. But did you know you can very easily make your own at home?
Like pickles, homemade sodas, yogurt, and sourdough, sour cream is one of the many delicious, healthy, and easy home fermentation products that anyone can try themselves. And it just so happens to be one of the easiest! You don’t need anything at all but raw milk. However, that the milk you use be raw is essential. Pasteurized milk, that has been heated to very high temperatures to kill the bacteria that naturally occurs in the milk, simply won’t sour the way cream from raw milk will, and it is also homogenized, meaning the cream won’t naturally separate for you to harvest.
When you buy fresh, raw milk, if you let it sit for awhile, cream will naturally separate on the top, and this is what you can use to make sour cream. Here’s what it looks like:
As you can see there is a distinct line between the cream on top, and the milk. That cream is what you use to make sourcream. Also, if you have milk that has naturally soured before you were able to use it up, you can use the cream on top for sour cream. This is a great way to use up soured milk!
Here’s what you do:
Skim the cream off the top of your raw milk, and place in a small jar. I find a metal measuring cup works best for this, but you can use anything you can dip into the cream and extract it, without mixing the milk in with the cream.
If you get a small amount of milk in with the cream you’re skimming, don’t worry, it will naturally separate later.
Once you’ve collected all your cream and put in a separate jar, cover loosely with the lid, and leave on your countertop for 24 hours. After 24 hours, taste and smell it, to see if it has soured. It should have thickened in this time, although it won’t be as thick as store-bought sour cream. Depending on the weather, it might need another 24 hours, just use your own judgment and preference.
When soured, tighten the lid, and put in the refrigerator, will it will thicken even more. Use as you would regular sour cream, and enjoy!
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….
I mentioned whey, recently in my article on healthy homemade probiotic lemonade, so if you’ve read that already you’ll be familiar with it. Whey is what separates from curds when milk curdles, or what comes off of cheese or yogurt during the straining process.
One of the coolest ways you can use up extra whey (and if you’ve ever made cheese, you’ll know how much you get) is to make homemade ricotta cheese. When whey first forms, it is full of protein strands, and you can essentially “harvest” these through a simple process to make delicious ricottta cheese. It’s a great way to make the most of a gallon of milk. I like to make yogurt with my milk, strain it, and then make ricotta cheese with the leftover whey! Much cheaper, not to mention significantly healthier, than buying these products individually.
This video gives an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to make ricotta cheese at home. Enjoy!
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….
Pickles are one of the most classic and widely recognized forms of brine preservation. While the term “pickled” can apply to various forms of preserving various kinds of vegetables, what most of us think of when we think of “pickles” is the classic, brine-preserved cucumber that has become a staple of delis and diners across America. It most famously made its way into the American diet through Jewish delis in New York City, and, like any classic food, it can be made easily at home.
While the formula is simple, however, there can be a bit of trial and error involved, and anyone who’s successfully made pickles can probably attest to this. There have probably been hoards of gray-haired European grandmothers throughout the ages who have perfected the art of delicious, crunchy, perfectly-pickled cucumbers, but for those who didn’t grow up learning at their Bubbie’s knee, it take a bit of practice.
Fortunately, we can still learn from the masters, even if they’re not in our own family. Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods is not only an expert in the field of home fermentation, he also grew up in a Jewish community in Brooklyn, so he knows a good pickle when he, well, makes one.
One of the most common mistakes made by first-time pickle makers is by only using a brine. This will result in mushy, soft pickles. What Katz discovered the hard way is that by adding fresh grape leaves, you can naturally preserve the crunchiness of the cucumber, as it absorbs the brine and takes on the delicious, salty sweetness that can only be acheived through pickling.
To find fresh grape leaves is another story, however, and you might have some trouble, depending on where you live. Of course, if you grow grapes, you won’t even be worrying about this, but if you don’t, you can see if any homestead neighbors do. You can also check or ask at Middle Eastern restaurants or markets, or simply order dried ones online, which are a good substitute. You can also use black tea leaves. While grape leaves are the classic, black tea will perform the same function.
The other crucial component is your equipment. We’ve included Katz’ suggestions, but there’s still room for improvisation. The important thing is to have a cyllindrical container and some way of weighing down the pickles so they remain submerged in the brine. See what you can come up with!
So without further ado, here is Sandor Ellix Katz’ recipe for classic kosher deli pickles!
Ingredients
Yields 1 gallon
Equipment
Directions
Enjoy!
Dandelion is a wonderful plant, that the majority of Americans just think of as a weed. If you’re not already foraging your yard’s dandelion for natural remedies or food, you definitely should be.
Dandelion grows virtually everywhere, and I can almost guarantee it’s growing somewhere near you, either in your backyard, local park, or any field or meadow nearby. It was a staple of Depression-era cooking, and it’s tasty, nutritious leaves can be prepared in a number of ways.
You can easily eat them raw, but if you’d like to enjoy them in a very delicious way, try this amazing and tasty dandelion pesto. You can make a fancy, gourmet pasta dish out of foraged leaves, how cool is that?
To harvest dandelion leaves, be sure to use a knife. The tough, stubborn roots can make it hard to harvest the whole plant, so you’ll want to dig in with a paring knife to uproot it properly.
After harvesting, make sure to wash extremely thoroughly. Dandelion can retain a lot of dirt, so you’ll want to rinse it all under cold water, then soak it all in water with a dash of vinegar.
After about 20 minutes of soaking, vigorously shake the dandelion leaves all around the water, then pour out the water, rinse, and fill your bowl with water again, shake the leaves out one more time, and rinse again. This should do it, but inspect the leaves as you prepare your pesto, just to be safe.
Bon appetit!
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….
Ketchup is an American staple, but did you know you can make it very easily at home? Unfortunately, a lot of store-bought ketchup is made with loads of sugar and sometimes even artificial coloring and flavoring.
If you’re craving some delicious ketchup but want a healthy, whole-food version that doesn’t sacrifice health for taste, I’ve got the perfect recipe! This recipe uses all natural, easy-to-find ingredients, and instead of lots of cane sugar like regular ketchup typically has, it requires just a bit of honey and coconut sugar, which are much healthier and both have a very low GI index compared to other sweeteners.
At the end, I’ve got a suggestion for an easy fermented version, if you’d like to make this ketchup even healthier by adding some natural probiotics.
Give it a try today and you’re sure to be making it regularly.
That’s it! Enjoy your delicious homemade ketchup on french fries and burgers or any other way in which you use ketchup.