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This cottage cheese alfredo sauce is a lower fat, lower calorie version of the rich and creamy pasta favorite! One of the best cottage cheese recipes, it’s an easy dinner to make and the best part? You’d never even know it’s healthy.
Before You Get Started
- As-written, this alfredo sauce cottage cheese recipe works best with about half a pound of prepared pasta, but you can easily double the recipe if needed. If you like a less-saucy pasta, though, feel free to keep the sauce recipe as it is and use a full pound of pasta.
How to Make This Recipe
See recipe card below for full list of measurements, ingredients, and instructions.
make the Sauce
Add all your ingredients to a blender or a food processor, then blend (or process) everything together until you’ve got a completely smooth mixture. Stop occasionally and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula so you get every single ingredient really well blended.
Heat the sauce
Pour your blended sauce into a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add however much dried basil and dried oregano you’d like, then heat the sauce gently until it’s nice and warm.
Cheryl’s Tip: Stir the sauce pretty often while it’s on the stovetop. You don’t want it to stick or burn or curdle!
Season the sauce
Now that it’s warm, taste it and stir in any spices or herbs you feel like it needs to be 100% perfect. Drop the heat to low and give it 5 more minutes to thicken up.
Cheryl’s Tip: The sauce reduces a bit while it thickens, so don’t leave it on the heat too long or you won’t have enough for your pasta.
Make it a Meal
When you’re happy with the flavor and the consistency of the cottage cheese alfredo, add your already-prepared pasta to the saucepan and coat it in sauce. Add any proteins or veggies, then portion it out and serve warm!
What I Love About This Recipe
- It’s wonderfully rich and creamy, thanks to the cottage cheese, but lower in fat and calories than the traditional versions. Also thanks to the cottage cheese!
- This cottage cheese recipe comes together really, really quickly. Like, you could make it almost entirely during the time your pasta is boiling.
- You can add all sorts of different spices or seasonings to this cottage cheese alfredo. It’s super versatile. In the mood for a lower fat Cajun alfredo? Toss in a little Tony Chachere’s or any other Cajun spice blend you like, then serve it with juicy blackened shrimp or blackened chicken.
Proof It’s Delicious (My Kid Said So)
So, I’ve made this alfredo with cottage cheese for years at this point, long before I became a mom to my 9-going-on-19-year-old son. Early in our marriage this was my husband’s favorite recipe, the one he’d beg me to make over and over and over again. I always knew it’d be a guaranteed hit whenever I put it on the menu for the week.
What really put to bed any question, any doubts, regarding the obscene deliciousness of this alfredo variant, though, was my then-toddler’s reaction when I plopped down a plate of cottage-cheese-alfredo-coated pasta before him at dinnertime.
I share with you this gem of a memory from a post-update-past:
My kid freaked out because somewhere along the line that day he was promised “mac and cheese,” and I kind of thought this would work for that particular request. He wailed a bit but finally tried it. My picky, picky toddler then claimed,
“I love it so much. I want to eat it on Wednesday. I want to eat it on Monday. I want to eat it a lot of times when we come home.“
So… if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about this cottage cheese alfredo, I don’t know what would.
Recipe Variations
- Instead of basil and oregano, sprinkle in a bit of Cajun seasoning and serve with blackened chicken, tomatoes, and green onions for a Creole pasta.
- Use cultured cottage cheese to make this cottage cheese recipe even healthier.
- Try arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch if you have to or want to avoid corn.
Making changes to a recipe can result in recipe failure. Any substitutions or variations listed are simple changes that I believe will work in this recipe, but results are not guaranteed.
Alfredo Sauce with Cottage Cheese
Equipment
- standard blender or food processor
- Silicone spatula
- Small saucepan
Ingredients
For the Cottage Cheese Alfredo Sauce
- 1 cup milk of choice see Notes
- ½ cup cottage cheese see Notes
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon salt more or less to taste
- ⅛ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper more or less to taste
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder plus more to taste
- ½ cup grated fresh parmesan or fresh romano
- dried basil to taste
- dried oregano to taste
Serving Suggestions (All Optional)
- prepared pasta any type, any amount
- prepared meat of choice
- prepared vegetables of choice
- chopped fresh parsley
Instructions
For the Cottage Cheese Alfredo Sauce
- Add 1 cup milk of choice, ½ cup cottage cheese, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, ¼ teaspoon salt, ⅛ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper, ¼ teaspoon garlic powder, and ½ cup grated fresh parmesan to blender. Blend ingredients together until mixture is completely smooth, pausing to scrape down sides of blender as needed.
- When mixture is smooth, transfer mixture to small saucepan. Stir in desired amounts of dried basil and dried oregano, then place saucepan on stovetop over medium-low heat. Simmer mixture, stirring frequently, until sauce is heated through completely.
- Once sauce is heated through, taste sauce and add additional salt, pepper, basil, and/or oregano as desired.
- Reduce heat under saucepan to low. Simmer sauce approximately 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until mixture has thickened slightly.
To Serve
- Add desired amount of prepared pasta to sauce and use tongs to toss pasta, ensuring pasta is coated in sauce. Let pasta simmer in sauce approximately 2 to 3 minutes, then transfer pasta to serving plates or bowls.
- Top pasta with prepared meat of choice or prepared vegetables of choice as desired. Spoon any remaining alfredo sauce from saucepan over pasta, then garnish with chopped fresh parsley and serve immediately.
Video
- Make it Low Fat: Use skim milk, low-fat cottage cheese, and reduced-fat parmesan cheese.
- Prevent Curdling: Blend the cottage cheese until very smooth before adding — any lumps can cause curdling. Keep the heat as low as possible and don’t let the sauce boil. If you notice it starting to separate, remove from heat immediately and stir vigorously.
Approximate Information for One Serving
Nutrition Disclaimers
Number of total servings shown is approximate. Actual number of servings will depend on your preferred portion sizes.
Nutritional values shown are general guidelines and reflect information for 1 serving using the ingredients listed, not including any optional ingredients. Actual macros may vary slightly depending on specific brands and types of ingredients used.
To determine the weight of one serving, prepare the recipe as instructed. Weigh the finished recipe, then divide the weight of the finished recipe (not including the weight of the container the food is in) by the desired number of servings. Result will be the weight of one serving.
Did You Make This Recipe?
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It turned out pretty tasty!
Yay! So glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
Very good Alfredo
Thanks for sharing, Rachel! 😊
Delicious! Made it in our Ninja blender, so luxurious! I added a bit more cheese to take it into even greater decadence. I was thinking that blending in blue cheese woukd msje it into a delectable dip! Thanks for the recipe.
Ninja blenders are so great! And, blending in blue cheese sounds delish- let us know if you try it! 🙂
This was delicious. It did feel a liiiittle grainy but I think I could’ve blended it more or heated it longer to melt everything together. But regardless, it was so yummy and my boyfriend who despises cottage cheese couldn’t believe I made this sauce myself lol. This will be my go-to recipe from now on.
So glad you and your boyfriend loved it! It’s such a great go-to!
I’m dairy free so I used Lactaid cottage cheese and I only had vegan grated parmesan in the shake jar. I wasn’t sure it would work so based on earlier comment, I pre food processed the parm to almost a powder before I put everything into the Vitamix. It was GREAT! Thank you! I added rotisserie chicken and broccoli at the end. Yum!
I’m so glad it all worked out! Rotisserie chicken and broccoli sound like delicious choices for this. Thanks for sharing, Anselette! 😊
Great, but will tweak slightly next time. 1)along with my salted pasta, this sauce was too salty so I will wait til the end to salt the sauce. 2) the food processor still left it quite grainy. I found that my Ninja smoothie blender worked better. 3)used sautéed garlic as per other reviewers.
Was so yummy served with shell pasta, steamed Broccoli, and sautéed peppers and mushrooms!
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing, Kelsey. 😊
Absolutely delicious first time I made it. Next time I discovered I had no parmesan cheese, so used a bit of feta and fresh mozzarella, still delicious (plates licked for the last drop). Now I’m going to use it as a sauce for some veggies, and am looking for it to be just as delicious. Thank you so much for the recipe. It is so fast and easy and DELICIOUS.
Absolutely delicious first time I made it. Next time I discovered I had no parmesan cheese, so used a bit of feta and fresh mozzarella, still delicious (plates for licked for the last drop). Now I’m going to use it as a sauce for some veggies, and am looking for it to be just as delicious. Thank you so much for the recipe. It is so fast and easy and DELICIOUS.
This would be delicious on veggies! So glad you love it, Peggie. Thanks for sharing! 😊
This was amazing! I paired it with cheese ravioli and ground turkey. All 4 of my children had seconds!
Yumm! So glad the whole family loved it! 😊
My results of following the recipe was a sauce that was grainy in texture. I was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have used pre-grated parmesan, which contains cellulose, and maybe should have grated it myself with a microplane. The flavor was on point, but the texture was very off-putting. I blended it in a ninja blender so I know it was definitely well blended. I am interested in anyone’s thoughts, but will definitely try this again!
I’m so sorry that was your result, Marion! But yes, the pre-grated parm is almost guaranteed the culprit. Also, if your dairy ingredients were at all cold, they’re much more likely to curdle which will give the sauce an unpleasant texture. I hope you’ll give this one another try!
Thank you so much for the feedback Megan! I definitely want to give it another go and will definitely incorporate both tips. 🙂
My pleasure, Marion! Please report back after your next try!