The Sneaky Dinner Roll Ingredient For A Soft, Fluffy, And Protein-Packed Starch

If you'd rather reach for a soft, plush dinner roll instead of turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy on Thanksgiving, you're in good company. Although dinner rolls are rarely the star of a meal any time of year, your dinner quality drastically improves when it's accompanied by a great batch of them. While there are numerous brands of frozen dinner rolls you can buy, there's something special about making a batch of yeasty rolls yourself.

The next time you try your hand at homemade frozen dinner rolls, try adding cottage cheese to them. Yep, we can see the eye rolls from here. Cottage cheese has been in the spotlight more and more in recent years because of its hearty protein levels, but the difference here is that you really can't taste (or find issue with) the cottage cheese in the recipe. This unexpected way to use cottage cheese as an ingredient will amp up the moisture content of your rolls and also give them a kick of protein, allowing you to churn out fluffy, soft, and delicious rolls without much fuss.

There are numerous ways to add cottage cheese to your favorite dinner roll recipe. The first is to make a two-ingredient roll recipe using cottage cheese and self-rising flour. Since there is no yeast in this recipe, you're not going to get that sublime yeasty flavor; however, what they lack in classic bready flavor, they make up for in ease. You can also follow a more classic preparation of these rolls — meaning you'll mix the cottage cheese with the wet ingredients, like melted butter, water, and milk. Cottage cheese can be, famously, pretty clumpy, so we recommend popping it into a blender or food processor and pureeing it until it's creamy. 

Be sure to use full-fat cottage cheese for your recipe, as the extra fat will help add moisture and enrich your dough, as would other enriching ingredients like milk, butter, and eggs. The result is a roll that's pliable and easy to cut into. Besides serving them with a quality butter, you can also repurpose these rolls for your favorite slider recipe. These rolls are versatile, flavorful, and pillowy — and it's all thanks to cottage cheese.