Cottage Cheese Biscuits

These biscuits flip the standard buttermilk biscuit script by using almost 2 cups of creamed cottage cheese as the wet ingredient instead. The cheese curds break apart during mixing and stay distributed throughout the dough, giving you tender pockets of moisture and a noticeably higher protein content than any wheat-flour biscuit has a right to.

The technique is identical to a classic biscuit: cut cold butter into the dry ingredients until coarse crumbs form, then bind with the wet (eggs and cottage cheese here, instead of buttermilk). The cottage cheese amount varies (anywhere from 1½ to 2¼ cups) depending on the moisture content of your specific brand. Add gradually until the dough just holds together; too much makes it sticky, too little and it crumbles apart.

Five teaspoons of baking powder is what gives these the dramatic vertical lift that makes them stand tall. That’s nearly double a standard biscuit recipe, but the dense protein-rich cottage cheese needs the extra leavening to lift it.

A hot 450°F (230°C) oven is critical. Lower temperatures mean the butter melts before the steam can lift the biscuits properly, and you get dense pucks instead of cloudlike biscuits.

Pro Tips

• Use small-curd, full-fat creamed cottage cheese; small curds distribute more evenly and full-fat keeps the biscuits tender.
• Knead very gently and only a few times as the recipe instructs; biscuit dough toughens fast with overworking.
• Pat dough to 1 inch thick, not thinner; thicker patting gives you taller biscuits with more layered interior.
• Cut straight down with the biscuit cutter without twisting; twisting seals the edges and shortens the rise.

Variations

• Add 1 cup of shredded sharp cheddar to the dough for cheese-on-cheese biscuits.
• Stir in 2 tablespoons of fresh chopped chives or dill for a herby savory version.
• Sub low-fat cottage cheese to cut calories; the texture stays similar though slightly less rich.