Making ricotta is a surprisingly simple task. When I first read the recipes I was a little doubtful that it could actually be that simple. Ms. Scratch and I had been thinking about adding cheese making to our random food hobbies and ricotta was a nice baby step into that realm.
Yesterday, in anticipation of the snow, I went out and bought a gallon of whole milk and some distilled vinegar. With that, a thermometer, a stock pot and a fine strainer I was ready to make ricotta.
Bringing the lightly salted milk (1/4 tsp of salt) to 180 degrees on our gas range took a little while because I was being overly cautious of scorching. I didn't really have room for error as we were using the whole gallon and I didn't feel like dealing with bad weather and the driving habits it can illicit in other people. Once we were in the range of 180-182 degrees we added 1/3 of a cup and one teaspoon of distilled vinegar and slowly stirred for one minute. After allowing it to rest, covered with a clean dish cloth, for two hours we were ready to finish up our creation.
Draining the cheese is just a matter of pouring the whole concoction into the strainer. Let it sit until it has reached the consistency that you want. We let ours sits for a while and pressed it a bit as we don't like how wet store bought ricotta can be. Next time we are actually going to leave a little more moisture in the mix but it was delicious regardless.
We made ravioli that we froze and ate the ricotta with some fresh baked bread, strawberry rhubarb preserves and honey. Well worth the small amount of effort it took to make this healthy treat.
Deceptively easy isn't it?
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