Ricotta Cheese Making Recipe
Ingredients
- Whole Milk (Not Ultra-pasteurized) or Whey from Cultured Cheese
- Citric Acid
- Salt
Equipment
- Good Thermometer
- Slotted Ladle
- Ricotta Cheese Mold
- Instructions
- Ricotta Cheese Info
- Reviews
- Q & A
Whey Ricotta
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Heat Whey & Add Salt
When making whey Ricotta, use leftover whey from a batch of cultured cheese. The fresher the whey the better.
Heat the whey, without agitating. Once it reaches 160°F, if desired, you can add 5-12% of fresh milk can be added to improve the richness and yield.
Continue heating to 170°F then add 1/2 tsp of salt for every gallon of whey, mix in quickly.
Continue heating without agitation to 185°F and hold at this temp until the ricotta rises.
Note: Some people heat to jsut below boiling (200F), this is not necessary, but it will not be a problem if the whey heats well into the 190's.
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Add Citric Adic
This step is optional
Mix 1/2 tsp. of citric acid per gallon of liquid. The citric acid should be dissolved in 1/2 cup water. Add quickly the pot and stir briskly for 5-10 seconds.
Watch the curd forming small flakes and gradually larger curd masses. Add a bit more more citric acid solution if necessary.
Note: If too much acid is added, the curds will sink to the bottom and the cheese will not be sweet. The correct amount of acid will produce a clear separation of white curds and bright green whey.
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Gently Move Curd
As the curds rise, use a perforated ladle to gently move them from the sides to the center of the pot. These clumps of curd will begin to consolidate floating on top of the liquid.
Let the curds rest for 10-15 minutes. This is important because it is the point where the final Ricotta quality is assured.
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Drain Ricotta
Ladle the curds gently into draining forms (No cheese cloth should be needed if you were patient in the previous step). Let the curds drain for 15 min up to several hours.
For a fresh light ricotta, drain it for a short while (until the free whey drainage slows) and chill to below 50F. For a rich, dense and buttery texture allow it to drain for an extended period of time (several hours). before chilling overnight
Move to a refrigerator or cold room. Consume within 10 days.
Whole Milk Ricotta
For this recipe use whole milk. the fresher the better.
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Prepare Citric Acid
Add 2 tsp of citric acid per gallon of milk used and dissolve this in 1 cup cool water.
Add 1/2 of the Citric Acid solution to one gallon of milk, save the rest of the citric acid.
Stir the milk briskly for 5-10 seconds.
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Heat Milk
Add 1 tsp of salt to the milk then heat the milk slowly on low to med heat, stirring well to prevent scorching
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Extra Citric Acid, if Needed
At 165-170F watch for small flakes forming in the milk and the separation into small flaky curds.
If after a few minutes you do not see the flakes forming, add more of the Citric acid until they form. Do this in 1 Tbsp increments, to avoid over acid milk.
At this point, when you see the curds, A slower stirring is essential to avoid breaking up the small bits of curd that have formed. Excess stirring will cause smaller and very granular curds to form. I tend to just roll the milk slowly with a bottom to top stirring motion.
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Gently Move Curd
Continue heating to 190-195F then turn the heat off. The thermal mass of the whey will hold at this temp for quite some time. The higher temp is used here because of the additional proteins found in whole milk vs whey.
As the curds rise, use a perforated ladle to gently move them from the sides to the center of the pot. These clumps of curd will begin to consolidate floating on top of the liquid.
Let the curds rest for 10-15 minutes. This is important because it is the point where the final Ricotta quality is assured.
-
Drain Ricotta
Ladle the curds gently into draining forms. No cheese cloth should be needed if you were patient in the previous step. Let the curds drain for 15 min up to several hours.
For a fresh light ricotta, drain it for a short while, until the free whey drainage slows, and chill to below 50F. For a rich, dense and buttery texture allow it to drain for an extended period of time (several hours). before chilling overnight
Move to a refrigerator or cold room. Consume within 10 days
Ricotta Salata
This recipe should begin after the draining step in either of the above recipes.
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Drain Ricotta
Let drain for an extended period of 24-36 hours
After the first 6-8 hours place a weight on top of the cheese, 2-4 lbs should be enough.
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Salt Ricotta
After draining, de-mold the Ricotta onto a plate or bowl that will catch extra whey. Every other day for at least the first week sprinkle about 1/2 tsp of salt over the cheese, rubbing over the outside of the cheese, then cover the top with plastic returning it to the refrigerator.
Pour off any whey that weeps out of the salted cheese.
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Age
As the cheese starts to firm up and lose less whey you can salt less often until it is pretty firm, at least a week and a half if not two or three.
The final cheese can be anywhere from a firm table cheese after 4-6 weeks or a very dry grating cheese after several months.
Keep the mold under control by wiping with a light brine as it appears
Fall in Love with Ricotta
I fell in love with Ricotta after attending a workshop with Giuseppe Licitra, President of the Consorzio Ricerca Filira Lattiero-Casearia (CoRFiLaC) in Ragusa, Sicily. During this workshop we watched as they broke the curd for Ragusano cheese with a big stick (and none to kindly at that).
As it turns out their intent is to drive out as much as 30% of the butterfat into the whey to be made into the richest tasting Ricotta I have ever tasted. The background behind this is that the final cheese (Ragusano) would not produce income for many months or years.
The Ricotta that could be produced could be immediately sold thus producing an income for the farms within a few days.
What is Ricotta Cheese
Ricotta has been a traditional cheese of Italy for many centuries. It was originally a means to strip proteins from the whey following the primary cheese making process. Proteins that would have otherwise been lost in the whey.
This was especially true in some of the longer aged 'Pasta Filata' styles (stretched cheese) such as Caciocavallo or Provolone and even in Parma style cheese where
Ricotta is a heat and acid precipitated cheese that can be made from whole or skim milk. When made from a mixture of milk and whey it is called Ricotone. Raw milk can be used for the production of ricotta cheese since the heat treatment during curd formation more than meets the heat requirements for pasteurization.
In the first step of the process either a live culture or an acid is added to the milk to lower the pH to 5.9-6.0. The mixture is then heated to 176-185F, for 15-30 minutes.
This heat treatment, combined with the effect of the acid causes the precipitation of the curd. Exposure to such a high heat results in denaturation of some of the whey proteins that would normally be lost with the whey. The resulting curd is composed of both casein and whey proteins, unlike a conventional curd which is almost all casein. The ricotta curd also differ from a conventional rennet/acid curd in that the ricotta curd is loosely bound and entraps air. This results in a curd that will float on the top of the cheese vat. Proper control of the pH and the level of agitation are necessary to ensure that the curd floats and does not sink. The collected curds are allowed to drain for 4-6 hours in a cool room and then ready for consumption.
Ricotone and Ricotta cheese are very high in moisture and contain most of the lactose from the milk. Therefore, the keeping quality is not very good. It may last 10 days at best.
Variations in Style
- from whole milk
- from whey (with or without added milk) .. this is usually called Ricottone
- a drier version is made by extending the draining in the forms (One of the richest and most luxuriant versions comes from the Ragusano area of Sicily)
- a very dry version (Ricotta Salata) made from extended draining and pressing under weight and followed by aging of several months or longer .. This can then become a table or grating cheese
- Ricotta tastes and smells like the milk it is made from, so use the best and freshest dairy you can find. You can control the consistency of your cheese by the length of time you drain it
- Richness can be increased by incorporating more cream in the Whole milk or Whey from your cheese making ... to the point that it will be almost like Mascarpone
- Reviews
- Questions
- ricotta
- whey
- cheese
- milk
- recipe
- citric acid
- amount
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- apple cider vinegar
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Very thorough recipe
Very well written and informative recipes and suggestions. Instead of citric acid, I use 1/8c of apple cider vinegar per gallon of whey. Once the curds have drained for about 10 minutes, I bundle up the cheesecloth, knot the ends, and suspend the bundle over a pot for 1-2 hours. End result gets packed into containers, refrigerated overnight, then taken to my sis-in-law. She enjoys using my ricotta in cakes and other desserts. Haven't tried aging it yet, so that's on the agenda today, from farmhouse cheddar.

Ricotta with Apple Cider Vinegar
I make hard cheeses, with the excess waste whey going into either blaand or ricotta, or is simply poured on the fig tree outside. Have found consistent results of bringing 6 quarts/liters of whey to 192F, adding 2 cups of whole milk (room temp), then introducing a 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and stirring gently. Residual curd will float to the surface immediately, typically yielding a 1/2 pound of ricotta. Ladle into a cheesecloth lined colander or sieve, then suspend over a pot (use long tongs to support the knotted cheesecloth bag) for 1-2 hours. Use within 10 days. I gift this to my brother's family, where it used for desserts. A Gouda ricotta went into a lemon bundt cake, while a zesty pepper jack ricotta was used in an orange peel bundt cake.

I have never been able to make this work
I have used all kinds of milk: unhomogenized with low pasteurization, store milk, etc. But my curds are always too small to result in a usable ricotta, even with zero stirring. I have only ever made this work with leftover whey. Moving on to someone else’s recipe.

Fluffiest Ricotta Ever!
I was unaware it could be fluffy! Gentle is the way to go!

For stuffed shells
For the second time I made Ricotta using the Whole milk version. First signs of flocculation was at 86 degrees F. Instead of whole milk, I used low fat milk in order to approximate "part skim" ricotta cheese. The cheese is great & my wife will use whatever I haven't eaten for stuffed shells on Thursday. I've been ordered to eat no more.