October 24, 2017

How to make Homemade Ricotta Cheese - simple and fast!

Today I was frantically looking for a kid friendly recipe to use up my left over Rocket salad  (or if you tuned in from the states - you call it arugula) as you know it is a bit spicy. So I came across a recipe for a pasta dish with rocket in it, but it required ricotta cheese, which I didn't have. But I remembered seeing on many pages various recipes for homemade ricotta cheese, stating how simple it is! Well, let me tell you: it is not just super simple but also very fast! If you are not to picky on the consistency you can have it done in under an hour! If you like it more solid it might take 1,5 hours. But as I only needed it for a sauce this was a fast make!


How to make homemade Ricotta cheese - simple and fast



All you need is 1.4 litres of milk, 200ml of full cream, the juice of at least one lemon and half a teaspoon of salt!

Heat milk and cream in a saucepan to 38C/100F. If you have nothing to measure the temperature, try a drop on the back of your hand. If it feels like there is no temperature difference between milk and your skin, you have about the right temperature! Take pot off heat and add your 1/2 teaspoon of salt and stir well.

Now add the juice of one lemon and stir gently so it doesn't stick to the saucepan. Curds will build. If you have the feeling you need more lemon juice because the curds stopped building -  squeeze another lemon! I needed about 1 1/2 lemons. Set aside for 10 mins. The curds will build on top while the whey (which stayed milky in this case and not see-through as in this recipe for homemade quark cheese or this one homemade for cream cheese)

curds building while making ricotta cheese


Line a sieve with your cheese cloth ( or in my case I up-cycled a baby burp cloth) and place it over a jug, that can hold a good litre of whey!
Carefully pour your curdy mixture into your construction made of sieve, cloth and jug. Let drain for roughly 30 mins or longer if you like it more solid. You can help the draining by putting a weight on the top of the closed cheese cloth. The weight will push the whey out of you ricotta much faster. And your homemade ricotta cheese will be ready to use in no time!
homemade ricotta

homemade ricotta

homemade ricotta


I have to say I really like the taste of the homemade ricotta cheese. It has been a while since I had shop bought one, as I don't use ricotta very often, but I think after today we will be using it a lot more in our kitchen.

I hope I could help you out with this very fast way of getting ricotta and you get to enjoy the homemade ricotta cheese.



2 comments:

  1. This is so easy! And you can use this type of cheese in so many recipes. Savoury and sweet.Now that the weather has turned cold, I'll try this out. Thanks Pat. :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Jaqueline for stepping by, and I hope it works out as well for you as it did for me!

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