Homemade Ricotta Cheese
How to make homemade ricotta cheese using just cream, milk, lemon and salt.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
Ricotta Cheese
- 4 C whole milk
- 3/4 C cream
- 1 lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp salt
To Serve
- olive oil
- salt
- lemon zest
- parsley
Instructions
- For the first part, add your milk and cream to a large saucepan and place over medium heat. You want to bring the temp up to 195°F (90.5°C ), slowly. You don’t want this to boil over, so I recommend slowly stirring and setting an alert on your thermometer, if you have that option. Otherwise, just keep an eye on the temp. Here it took me about 20 minutes to get it up to 195°F (90.5°C ), don’t rush it.
- Once you are at temp you need to add in a little salt to season, take it off the heat and then you are ready to curdle, which just consists of adding some lemon juice. Add in the juice, give it one quick stir, and then let it sit for 5-10 minutes.
- After 5-10 minutes you are ready to start straining the cheese. Here I used coffee filters, cause I didn’t have any cheesecloth, and they work just fine. Line a mesh colander with a few filters and let your cheese strain. The longer you let it strain the firmer it’ll be. I waited about an hour and a half to get the consistency I wanted. Also keep in mind that once its fully chilled it’ll be slightly firmer too. And thats it, you now have some super fresh ricotta cheese!
- As a little appetizer I plated some up with a generous drizzle of olive oil, some course salt, fresh ground pepper, parsley and lemon zest. It was gone in about 3 mins. But, I do plan on making some other recipes with my fresh cheese…
Notes
There are three parts to this recipe, heating, curdling and draining. Each are super simple, they just take some time and patience.
Did You Make This Recipe?
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