Natural protein source: Eastern European cottage/curd cheese

Hi everyone,

Two years ago I started an interesting hobby - bodybuilding. As I am I student, I was always looking for cheaper ways to get a natural foods which would be high in protein. I had a balanced diet for muscles growth which worked extremely well.

Nearly a year ago I quit this sport because I got a job with more hours, I had to increase my study time, so I there was not enough time for sports.

Now, when everything is sorted I am coming back to this sport. Originally I come from small and green Baltic States country called Lithuania. In this thread I would like to talk a little bit about one of the most popular high protein foods in bodybuilding. Well, probably more popular in Baltic States.

Today we are looking at the cottage cheese. In Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and maybe some parts of Russian countries, cottage cheese is one of the traditional foods. In countries mentioned above, there are variety of types and brands to choose of. I will not talk about the boring historical bit how they managed to develop a nutritious and high quality cottage cheese, because makes no difference.

The cottage cheese I am talking about is slightly different from the one you might find in the UK's food stores. The UK ones are usually in round pots, has a weird bubbly texture with some liquids in it. It contains additional salt which makes it very limited in terms of preparation methods. Also it is very low in protein and basically there's nothing special about it. I believe not many people use it in their bodybuilding diet.

Let's talk about the alternatives. Easter European cottage cheese is very high in protein, does not contain added salt, does not have a weird bubbly texture, and has loads of preparation methods.

The UK cottage cheese (the bubbly one) is usually up to 11g/100g protein, while the foreign one starts from 15g/100g and can go up to 26g/100g. So, that's quite a big difference in terms of nutrition.

At the moment I buy the polish one which has a transparent package with some kind of green words and a cow. If I'm not wrong it contains 25grams of protein per 100gram cottage cheese. I pay only £1 for 250g package.

You can buy these in any Lithuanian / Latvian / Polish / Russian or any other Easter European food shops in the UK. I live in a fairly small city in East of England and there are around 6 shops where I can find this cottage cheese. Also if you're looking for the polish ones, you can even find it in large food stores such as Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and Morrisons.

Some advice. When you buy it in small shops, look at the labels, sometimes they put the same English labels for different types of cottage cheese. Also, I don't know why, but sometimes they translate it as "Cottage Cheese" and sometimes as "Curd Cheese". Once I bought curd cheese and didn't look at the nutrition table, I made a shake of it and drank it all, suddenly I felt horrible. I looked at the nutrition table and there was around 30 grams of fat, and only 5 grams of protein. I don't know what kind of **** was that but it made me feel sick. However, sometimes they put "curd cheese" label on the good ones.
So, just be careful, make sure that it contains a lot of protein. Use Google Translate sometimes to translate nutrition tables which are not in English.

By the way, you might think - how do I eat that cottage cheese? If you will try to eat it plain, it's gonna be disguising.

I was browsing English recipe websites and I couldn't find anything nice made of it. I noticed that the ways of preparing it are very limited here. But, for the Eastern European ones there are loads of ways how to make it tasty.

Personally I used to make cakes, pancakes, cookies, various desserts. I also used to make protein shakes, for example add cottage cheese + milk + banana + berries, blend it and you have a liquid meal. It tastes amazing. There are absolutely no limits of how to prepare it.

If you would like to try and make something that is already well known in Eastern Europe, you could browse some foreign recipe websites and use Google Translate tool to translate them into English language. For example, type "varskes receptai" in google search, go to any website, browse for good looking recipes and try to translate everything in Google Translate. Trust me, it works really well, sometimes I do that with recipes from different countries.

By the time will try to update this article with some recipes translated in English.

Just for fun, there are some of my favorite foods made of it. Healthy, easy to make and extremely delicious! :smile:

This is how the cottage cheese pancakes look like:

Cottage cheese pie:

Cottage cheese dessert:

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varskeciai-52ca9e691a291.jpg57.9KB

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Assuming you eat this pot in one serving having 62.5g of protein in one go is largely a waste

Reply 3

daryZ

Original post by Schrödingers Cat

Assuming you eat this pot in one serving having 62.5g of protein in one go is largely a waste

What are you talking about? I didn't say anything like that, I just wanted to say how much protein I can get for £1.

Reply 4

Schrödingers Cat

Original post by daryZ

What are you talking about? I didn't say anything like that, I just wanted to say how much protein I can get for £1.

Re read your own post, you say a pack of cottage cheese 250g at 25g/100g.

On the assumption that you eat this one pot in one serving it's a waste

Reply 5

daryZ

Original post by Schrödingers Cat

Re read your own post, you say a pack of cottage cheese 250g at 25g/100g.

On the assumption that you eat this one pot in one serving it's a waste

Show me where I say that I eat one pot in one serving.

Reply 6

Schrödingers Cat

Original post by daryZ

Show me where I say that I eat one pot in one serving.

That's why I said ''assuming''

If you don't that's fine

Reply 7

daryZ

Original post by Schrödingers Cat

That's why I said ''assuming''

If you don't that's fine

That's funny then. It's obvious that you don't need to eat the whole pot in one time. When you buy a whole turkey, do you eat it in one serving?

I don't understand your replies, is it me that dumb or what.

Reply 8

Schrödingers Cat

Original post by daryZ

You're comparing a small pot of cottage cheese to a whole turkey? :confused:

Maybe the cottage cheese you eat is more cheesy or something put 250g is quite a small pot of cottage cheese so most people would have it all

Reply 9

Mackx

Wow, i'm going try and find some of these european cottage cheese's the macros look good!

Reply 10

daryZ

But don't try it plain, otherwise it's disgusting. :biggrin:

By the way I don't know why they call it "cottage cheese", because it's not really a cheese. I personally dislike all kinds of cheese but not that one. In my language it isn't called cheese, we have a specific word for that. Polish people also have their own word "Twarog" which you may find on labels when you will buy polish ones.