Why You Should Look for a Short Ingredient List
After sampling the cottage cheeses plain and in lasagna, we analyzed our rankings and found that texture was critical: Our highly rated cottage cheeses were drier and less liquid-y, while our least favorite products were watery. However, we noticed that wetter products had more additives such as xanthan gum, guar gum, and locust bean gum—all meant to bind ingredients and make the cottage cheese less watery. Our winner and runner-up had no gums at all and the shortest ingredient lists in the lineup.
Curious as to why the stabilizer-free products were less liquid-y, we turned to Dr. Dana Wolle, senior scientist at Chr. Hansen, a Danish bioscience company that specializes in developing cultures, enzymes, and probiotics. He explained that “the best way to get a thick, rich dairy product with plenty of body is to use a lot of dairy solids,” which are composed of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and minerals. The rest of milk, about 87 percent of it, is made up of water. Stabilizers, which are typically less expensive to add than dairy solids, “can make the product thicker but can’t exactly match the texture of dairy fat and protein,” Wolle told us. “Your favorite undoubtedly has a lot of dairy solids, since it has no stabilizers in it to thicken up the dressing.”
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