Sunday was such a productive day! Schoolwork, artwork, and lots of fun food-related projects, including – wait for it – cheese!
That’s right. Eli and I made our own goats milk ricotta cheese, which I then used to make lasagna for dinner. I feel so self-sufficient.
Now, I won’t lie to you. It was ridiculously easy to make, even easier than the yogurt we’ve been playing around with making lately (which I ought to write about, but need to perfect first). All you need is some milk, some yogurt, and a little vinegar. And that’s just the recipe we used. Technically, you can make ricotta with just milk and any acid (vinegar or lemon juice). Or you can use the whey left over from norma cheesemaking, like they do traditionally. But it’s not like I have a ton of whey just lying around, do I? (Um… No.)
Ricotta Cheese
adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz
Ingredients & Gear
- 1 quart goats milk
- 1 half cup plain yogurt
- ~1 tsp vinegar
- ~1 tsp salt
- 1 strainer lined with muslin (or a few layers of cheesecloth)
- A deep mixing bowl
Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes until you start to see curds. Ideally, you ought to keep the boil gentle, but if you stop to grab your camera, you might let it boil a little more vigorously than intended. This doesn’t seem to effect the final cheese, at all thank goodness.
Pour curds and liquid into lined strainer, placed over a deep bowl. I lined my strainer with muslin, because that is what I had. David Lebovitz recommends using a few layers of cheesecloth, which makes sense for cheesemaking. But the single layer of muslin served the same purpose, frankly, and saved me a trip to the store.
Let the curds drain for at least 15 minutes, to taste. My bowl wasn’t very deep, so I had to pour the liquid out of the bowl part way through this step. So if you do have a deep bowl, I highly recommend it.
I let my curds drain for maybe 30 minutes and had a nice dry ricotta, just the way I like it. But if you let it drain for just 15 minutes, it’ll end up about like store-bought (That’s how it looked when I checked it at that time).
When it has drained to the consistency you like, put it in a container and you’re all set.
We used our ricotta to make a lasagna just last night. I don’t know if it was the freshness (cooking with it the same day it was made), or the texture of homemade, or the rich flavor of the goats milk, but it was one of the best lasagnas I’ve ever made!
One of the most delicious things I’ve had is plain strained yogurt cheese mixed with just some sugar. Sooo tasty….
Oh, I love yogurt cheese, too. We like to make it about the consistency of cream cheese and then use it in place of cream cheese in cheesecake. It’s one of the cheeses I use in my three cheese spiced honey cheesecake (along with neufchatel and ricotta).
I’ll have to make it for you sometime!
It may be unnecessary, but here’s my favorite yogurt recipe, which was stolen from Alton Brown.
1Q 2% Milk
2Tbls Honey
1/2C Powdered Milk
1 Small Container Plain Yogurt With Active/Live Cultures.
Dissolve the Powdered milk and honey into the Quart of milk, and bring it to 120 degrees on the stove top. At 120, turn off the heat and whisk in about a C of the milk into the yogurt, until the yogurt is smoother and liquidesque (yeah, liquidesque. What?). Mix the yogurt/milk mixture back into the Quart of milk, and place in a vessel with a heating pad lining it. You need to find out for yourself which setting will keep the yogurt at between 110 to 120 degrees, but you only have to do it once.
I’m trying to figure out if we can use the whey from the ricotta to make *more* ricotta – because we can never haveenough. Never, I say!
@George: (Teehee! George, long time no see!) You know, we’ve mostly been playing around with soy yogurt right now, but my next foray into yogurt will definitely be dairy. And I had totally forgotten that Alton added honey to his recipe. Hey, any excuse to add honey to something is good for me! I’ll definitely be yoinking this when the time comes. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about the heating pad though, since we have a handy-dandy dehydrator that works wonders for keeping yogurt warm during incubation (it even has a “yogurt-making” setting. How cool is that?
Thanks for thinking of this. Always good to know another Alton Brown fan.
Your Dad & I would love to taste this lasagna sometime! It looks and sounds wonderful! Great pics!
Mom