Making Homemade Ricotta

Yesterday afternoon Jesse and I wanted to attempt to make our own ricotta cheese. All three girls were asleep napping so we decided to go for it. It was a lot easier than I even thought was possible- and really tastes so good.

First we heated up 4 cups of milk in saucier and constantly stirred it over medium heat.


Once the milk hit a slow boil we added 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice. (Thank you for the lemon juice Leann- just one of the reasons I love that you live on the block!)


After a couple of minutes we noticed that the milk started to curdle. So we kept on stirring.


We had a hard time trying to figure out when the milk was done curdling but we kept on stirring and kept it on med-low heat.


As soon as the curds really started to seperate from the liquid we decided to take it off the heat and get ready to pour it into our strainer.

I took an old t-shirt (thanks lana) that I had laying around and used it as my make-shift cheese cloth. I poured my mixture into the t-shirt-on a strainer- on a bowl to catch the extra fluid.



We let it sit for about 3 or 4 minutes until it stopped dripping.


Then I tied the top of the t-shirt to make a little pouch then hung it from my kitchen faucet for about 15 minutes.


Then I dumped the cheese into a bowl and sprinkled with salt and broke it up a bit.


I put it in glass jar and now plan on making baked ziti tonight. Sweet!


It was so easy and tastes so good. You can really taste that it is fresh.
This recipe makes about 8 oz of cheese. We wanted to try it with a small batch, but next time I plan to double the recipe.