HOMEMADE RICOTTA

Making your own ricotta cheese is super-easy and also saves you money. I’ve been making it for years, but recently realised that using lemon juice to form the curds was not a very consistent choice. It just would not work sometimes. Recently, I found a recipe which uses white vinegar and now my ricotta works every time, and I think it even tastes better. Please do use good milk for this because some of the commercial milks just don’t have enough fat in them to make a nice ricotta.

1 litre organic whole milk

(I use Naturalea)

1½ tbsp white vinegar

½ tsp salt

1 Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches about 90 ºC. In the old days, this was called scalding and was used to make sure any germs in the milk were killed. You want to get it just before it boils. Stir the milk to keep it from catching on the bottom and pour in the vinegar. Stir slowly and bring the temperature back up to 90 ºC. You should see curds beginning to form on the surface. Turn off the heat and leave for 10 minutes.

2 Place a sieve over a large bowl and line it with a clean tea towel or some muslin.

Ladle the curds from the pot into the sieve and let drain for a few minutes. If you want it to be a drier ricotta, leave it a bit longer. Spoon your ricotta into an air-tight container and stir in the salt. It is important to add salt as a preservative and you can add more to taste if you like.

3 I usually eat this within a day on my toast (with my homemade rose strawberry jam), but it will keep for four days in the fridge. Reserve the liquid that you strained into the bowl and feed it to your pets. It is full of great protein and my hens absolutely love it.