Video:How to Make Homemade Ricotta

Transcript:How to Make Homemade Ricotta

Hi there! I am Jodina of Italiano With Jodina. I teach Italian language and cooking classes in the San Diego area. Right now we are going to learn how to make homemade ricotta cheese.

Ingredients for Homemade Ricotta

For this recipe, homemade ricotta, you will need:

• a gallon of milk. The best is to use whole pasteurized milk. You could also substitute goat's milk, which you can find in specialty grocery stores. It has a slightly muskier flavor that some people might not like. It really depends on the recipe that you are going to be making with the resulting ricotta.
• You will also need a third cup of vinegar, white vinegar or you could substitute an equal or greater amount of lemon juice depending on how acidic it is. You will know this in your curdling process.
• You will also need a sieve or a strainer, something like this and cheesecloth for draining your ricotta later on.

Instructions for Making Homemade Ricotta

You are going to put your pot of milk over the flame. Then you are going to change it to a low flame of course, so that you are very, very slowly going to bring the milk to a simmer and you are going to bring the milk to 180 degrees. This might take up to a half an hour to do. Here is our vinegar. Right after you've added your vinegar, immediately you are going to see the curdling process starting in the milk that you simmered. Now that our curdling process is underway, we are going to turn off the heat. We are going to cover the pan and we're going to leave it covered for between two and six hours while the full curdling process takes place. And now that we have got our cheesecloth lined sieve, we can separate it. Then we are going to hang it from the pan and we are going to let it drain off completely and there you have it, scrumptious, healthy, homemade ricotta. Now, we are ready to use this in a delicious Italian recipe.