Whip Up Some High-Protein Cottage Cheese Bagels With Only 3 Ingredients

Cottage cheese and bagels are often on the breakfast table, each with its own set of toppings. Cottage cheese gets fruit and granola, and bagels can be topped with anything from peanut butter to ricotta, hummus, and more. You could put cottage cheese on top of a bagel, but there's a more popular way to combine these two epic breakfast foods.

Bake your bagels and add cottage cheese to the batter for delicious homemade breakfast bites that are packed with protein and easy to eat. You can make cottage cheese bagels in about 30 minutes, including the time in the oven. Cottage cheese bagels are fluffy and moist, perfect for sandwiches and snacks. They really only require three ingredients to make, and each bagel has about 11 grams of protein, depending on the other ingredients you add to your batter.

Cottage cheese bagels work along the same lines as Greek yogurt bagels – you use yogurt, or in this case cottage cheese, as the source of moisture and fat in the recipe. Plus, the extra protein in cottage cheese helps keep you full longer and contributes to healthy brain function. Word's getting out about cottage cheese, too. The lumpy dairy product got a rebrand as a high-protein diet hack in 2023 and it is still a trendy way to eat more protein and manage weight.

To make cottage cheese bagels, you need full-fat cottage cheese, self-rising flour, and an egg or some other kind of binding agent. Binders hold the rest of the ingredients in your recipe together and there are a variety of them you can choose including psyllium husk, chia seeds, flax seeds, and tapioca. The self-rising flour is already leavened, cutting down on time and steps in the process and the cottage cheese brings fat, flavor, and, of course, all its protein.

You can blend your cottage cheese until it's smooth or add it to your dough mixture straight from the container. Putting cottage cheese through the blender creates a dough that's easy to roll out and distributes flavors evenly when you start kneading. But, chunky cottage cheese has its own charm, creating a more textured bagel. Watch out for incorrect kneading techniques and other mistakes that can break your bagels, and form them into rings before you pop them in the oven for 25 minutes. Once the bagels are out of the oven and cooled, serve them with a spread of classic toppings like protein-packed cream cheese and smoked salmon.