Making Ricotta

In essence, urban homesteading is about taking oneself out of the cycle of consumption, and turning instead to creation. I make a lot of food from scratch but I still buy lots and lots of pre-packaged food: cheese, bacon, yogurt, bread, those plastic containers of baby salad greens, and so on. I want to start making more items myself, and so I turned to an easy one: ricotta!

RC works at a food co-op, and thus he gets first pick of expired items. This is how he was able to score two half gallon jugs of organic, raw milk from grass-fed cows, usually pretty pricey stuff, for nothing. To make ricotta, you need a half gallon of milk, one and a half cups of cream, a teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 cup lemon juice. You also need some specialty items: cheesecloth and a thermometer. Obviously a dairy thermometer is best, candy thermometer is good too, but I had neither so I used a meat thermometer, which was less than ideal but it did get the job done.

Put the milk, cream, and salt in a big pot and put it on the stove over medium-high heat. Stir it frequently, and when it reaches 195 degrees (which I tested by sticking the meat thermometer in the middle of the milk every so often, but if you have one of the other types of thermometer it should be easier to tell when it happens) pour in the lemon juice, stir a bit, and take off the heat. Then let it sit for five minutes.

After five minutes it will have curdled. It will be chunky and kind of nasty-looking. Now you have to drain off the whey, which is a yellowish liquid that is high in protein and can be drunk OR used to make lacto-fermented pickles, and can be frozen. Anyway, to separate, line a colander with three or four layers of cheesecloth and put the colander in a bowl. Dump the contents of the pot into the colander. Most of the whey will drain into the bowl within twenty minutes, and you can then decant into a jar or other container of choice.

If you want firmer ricotta, you can gather up the edges of the cheesecloth into a hobo bag and tie it over the wooden spoon, then hang it in the pot to let it drain even more. You're supposed to do this for an hour. We left the house at this point to run errands, but our car battery died while out so we ended up coming back after a lot more than one hour, and it was still okay.

After hanging it's all done, and will keep in the fridge for four days. It's that easy! Go forth and make cheese!

(I got this recipe from the June 2013 issue of Martha Stewart Living.)