Matt Preston on the viral cottage cheese trend - Food Files

Oct 17, 2025

From dieter’s friend to internet obsession: Matt Preston on the cottage cheese comeback that no one asked for, but seemingly everyone wants.

It’s a disaster. I’m here in the Adelaide Hills, and no one is happy with me. I wanted to reprise the Dubai chocolate tart I developed with Melbourne pastry chef Alessandro Luppolo for a charity dinner, and there is a shortage of kataifi pastry, thanks to the worldwide obsession with Dubai chocolate. Local chef Shannon Fleming has sent friends and family out scouring the state, and only now, through a generous Greek gentleman, has a large bundle been sourced.

The only other ingredient which might have been harder to secure at the moment, despite it being far more widely distributed, is cottage cheese. You see, this too has become an internet sensation, and chilled cabinets in supermarkets across the country have been stripped bare of the stuff.

High protein chocolate cheesecake

On the face of it, cottage cheese – the dieter’s friend back in the eighties – is an unlikely candidate for obsession. Its lumpy dairy nature makes me think of old milk, and its presence in my fridge has often been pooh-poohed by friends, who are far more enamoured with tubs of whipped goat’s cheese and jars of expensive marinated feta that have been far more on-trend for the last couple of decades. For me, the cooling creaminess of cottage cheese works rather well at counterbalancing anything very spicy, like habanero corn chips or Flamin’ Hot Cheetos; this part of the current online cottage cheese obsession – acting like a calming yoghurt to a fiery curry – I can get behind.

But Gen Z has ‘discovered’ cottage cheese as a low-fat, high-protein ingredient loved by ‘gym bros’ rather than as a dip for junk food. Many of the cottage cheese recipes I’ve seen online are presented by blokes. Brownies made with cocoa, bananas and cottage cheese; various cottage cheesecakes; or a cheat’s ice cream made with whipped cottage cheese, with banana or eggs to stabilise and honey, maple syrup or cocoa to flavour.

Cottage cheese is also there to add bulk to new recipes for breads, is baked with grated broccoli to make a sort of frittata, is popping up in viral recipes for omelettes and flatbreads, and is even being stirred into casseroles. For me (if I can find it), I’d rather mix cottage cheese with chunks of melon and jamon, or slices of ripe peach, or spoon it on baby cucumbers with loads of fresh dill. It also works well alongside feta in a Greek salad, adding extra creaminess and freshness. Heck, I even rather mound it on a Scandinavian crispbread, like a nod back to the days when weight loss was not about expensive injections, but eating cottage cheese for lunch after your TV aerobics class.

I would, however, steer clear of adding pineapple. Unless you crave an eighties flashback scene that would require a shiny leotard, legwarmers and a video of one of the 4,500 episodes of Aerobics Oz Style. And good luck finding any of that. Or any cottage cheese for that matter, as the Australian shortage seems to show little sign of abating. Just like the challenge of finding pistachio paste and kataifi pastry.