Have you ever wanted to make your own cheese at home but never bothered because you thought that it would be too hard, too time consuming and unrealistic? Up until last week this is was where I was at but then I met  the team at Bee Sustainable in Brunswick East. Paul and I were invited by WeTeachMe to attend a cheese-making workshop run by Jacqueline Bender. At the workshop we learned how to make ricotta and mozzarella from scratch. Below is Jaqueline’s really simple (and forgiving!) recipe to make ricotta at home. The beauty of this recipe is that you can use anything from full cream cow’s to skim goat’s to soy milk and the recipe will just work.
Waiting Time: 55 minutes      /      Cooking Time: 30 minutes     /      Makes: Around 350g of ricotta
Ingredients
- 2L milk (any milk will work)
- 1 tsp citric acid
- 60ml water
- 5g salt
Method
- Pour the milk into a pot and add the salt.
- Heat the milk to 95°C, while stirring constantly.
- Remove from the heat and allow the milk to cool to 88° C.
- Dissolve the citric acid in the water.
- Add the dissolved citric acid into the milk and stir gently.
- Once the curds start forming leave the ricotta to cool, uncovered for 20 minutes.
- After the 20 minutes ladle the ricotta into a ricotta basket and drain for 30 minutes.
- Tip the ricotta upside down to remove from the ricotta basket.
- Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to a week.
Notes
If you don’t have a ricotta basket you can use a muslin cloth over a colander. It wont produce a ricotta with the classic shape however it will still drain the whey.
Eat your ricotta fresh on bread with a little honey or try using it in a recipe like our Roasted Beetroot and Ricotta Tagliatelle.