Home made Ricotta Cheese

Last week I made my own Ricotta Cheese. My family love Ricotta Cheese, and living on the farm/vineyard, I don’t always get to the city to buy the best Ricotta, so I thought I would make it myself.

You need to make sure all your utensils are well cleaned and rinsed in boiling water before commencing.

Recipe 
4 cups of full cream milk.
1 cup of buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Method
Place all the ingredients into a stainless steel saucepan and bring gradually to just boiling point before lowering the temperature to just simmering. You don’t need to stir it, you will see the curds and whey separating and forming solids on top. Let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes until you see this separation, give the saucepan a little jiggle to see how the solids are forming. Take off the heat and let it sit for about 10-20mins.

In the meantime, place muslin or a fine linen tea towel over a fine sieve and hold this over a large bowl. Scoop the solids out of the saucepan and place them on the lined sieve, allowing the whey to drain through. Pour the rest of what’s in the saucepan over the curds and then let sit for about half an hour until fully drained. The ricotta is now ready to eat warm or you can keep it in the fridge for about a week. You can then use it in cooking or just have fresh with tomato, basil and onion on bruschetta. Lots of ways of using this great cheese!

Serve this creamy cheese on bruschetta with our Rose or our Chardonnay Viognier.

Tip – Don’t discard the whey, this can keep for a week and can be used in making bread(use instead of water. It makes the bread lovely and creamy! I also use the whey sometimes to soak my chickpeas, it made the best Hummus I had ever made.