Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Do you know how easy it is to make ricotta cheese? Super easy! I found this recipe which uses minimal ingredients – just milk, buttermilk, and salt. There are other recipes that use either lemon, heavy cream and what not, but I just wanted to make it easy for me, so I chose this one. Although the recipe called for reduced fat milk, I just used whole milk to make it creamier.

 

I used my big pot to make this – since I had to combine a whole gallon of milk with five cups of buttermilk.

 

The milk mixture was heated in medium high heat. The goal was to heat it until the temperature of the milk mixture reached 190F.

 

I occasionally stirred the milk mixture slowly, and around the tenth minute into this process, I started seeing curdles in the milk mixture.

 

After 20 minutes, the mixture was heated to 170F. At this point, I stopped stirring and but continued monitoring the temperature. I used my digital meat thermometer so I could easily see the temperature. I practically couldn’t read my candy thermometer I clipped into my pot.

 

It took another three minutes for the milk mixture to reach 190F. Then I turned off the stove and moved the pot away from the hot burner.

 

I already prepared a large pan with a wire strainer, lined with cheese cloths. So I started scooping the milk solids onto the strainer.

When I was done, I knotted each of two ends of the cheese clothes and hang it on a wooden spoon, inside a large pot to drain the whey.

 

After the whey stopped dripping – I had fresh ricotta cheese!

 

One batch made about 1 lbs and 10 oz.

 

From one batched, it generated about this much whey. I didn’t know what to do with the whey and had no space to store all these jars, so I had to bid the whey goodbye.

 

I put the cheese into a large bowl, broke them apart, and salted them.

 

So, cheese making, well, at least this cheese making, wasn’t too messy or too busy. I will write more on what I did with these cheese on my next post!

Print recipe here.
Homemade Ricotta Cheese
Recipe adapted from Cooking Light via myrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 gallon whole milk
5 cups buttermilk
½ tsp fine sea salt

Preparation:
Set a lined wire strainer with cheese clothes on a large bowl.
In a large pot, combine milk and buttermilk.
Heat on medium high heat, stirring gently occasionally, until temperature reach 170F.
Stop stirring to prevent the milk solids to break apart. Continue heating until the temperature reach 190F.
Remove from heat.
Spoon milk solids into the prepared wire strainer.
Knot the edges of the cheese cloths, hang on a wooden spoon rested on a large pot to drain.
Drain 15 minutes or until the whey stops dripping.
Transfer ricotta cheese into a large bowl, sprinkle salt and mix gently into ricotta cheese.
Let it rest to room temperature.
Store in refrigerator up to four days.