25 Days of Nourishing Traditions: Potato Cheese

Not to be confused with cheesy potatoes, Potato Cheese is a fermented food that is probably unlike any potato dish you’ve ever had!

Potato Cheese is found on page 102 of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon.

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Ingredients

4 cups cooked potatoes peeled
2 cups piima milk or kefir (learn how to make kefir)
1 tablespoon sea salt

If you use the super-amazing Plan to Eat meal planning site, just add me as a “friend” and you can take each of my recipes that I’ve already uploaded, and add them to your recipe box! Then you can plug them into your meal calendar, have instant shopping lists created with all your ingredients, and more! Here’s my PTE link for Potato Cheese.

Instructions

The recipe says to “mix ingredients in a food processor,” but I didn’t have one yet, so I just mashed the potatoes by hand, and mixed in my kefir.

Then, cover and let sit at room temp for two days.

Now, it’s time to drain the whey out, so you’re left with potato “cheese.” You know how you can make cream cheese out of yogurt or kefir by tying it up in a little bundle and letting the whey drip out? That’s what you’re doing here. There’s just potatoes inside.

Sally says the best way to do this is to bundle up your potato cheese in a linen towel and tie to a wooden spoon over a bowl. I had neither a linen towel nor a big enough wooden spoon, so I had to make do with paper towels and random kitchen utensils!

Let it drain for several hours, or until whey stops dripping out. Refrigerate in an airtight container.

How’d it go?

The hardest part by far was rigging up the little whey-dripping cheese bundle station. But once I got it to hang there without falling into my pot, it stayed there okay, and the cheese was ready to go in a few hours.

How we liked it

Weeeell… this was… interesting! I thought it smelled good and actually tasted kinda like cheese when I just ate a little fingerful, but when I had it as a side dish with dinner, it was a little… much. Very salty. I think that since it already uses the kefir to lactoferment the potatoes, maybe this recipe doesn’t need quite as much salt. The kefir is already such a strong flavor that it was just all kind of overkill to me. PH agreed that this was just a little too “weird.”

But, I would make this again. Maybe a smaller batch, with much less salt, and preferably kefir made from fresh milk rather than store-bought. I like trying otu some of the “weirder” recipes in NT, and even though this wasn’t my fave, I still enjoyed the process!

Be sure to check out the other installments of 25 Days of Nourishing Traditions:

And don’t forget to enter to win your two copies of Nourishing Traditions in our giveaway – ends this Saturday!

Stealthy Mom says:

December 16, 2011 at 2:53 pm

You think this would make a good ravioli filling? Perhaps if it was tempered somewhat with tomato sauce it would upgrade from “interesting.”
Stealthy Mom recently posted..Slim Mints

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ButterBeliever says:

December 16, 2011 at 7:39 pm

That’s a GREAT idea! Yes! I think that’s what it needs. Just to be turned into some sort of a sauce or stuffing of some sort. Plain and on its own, this recipe was not my fave, but it definitely has potential.

Soli @ I Believe In Butter says:

December 17, 2011 at 3:17 pm

This is one of the recipes I am very curious to sample at some point. You may be the first person I’ve seen say they have made this. Well done!
Soli @ I Believe In Butter recently posted..As seen on the internet and weekend food plans December 16, 2011