Homemade Ricotta cheese

Two weeks ago, I made cheese! It was the lab assignment from the free science of cooking online course by Harvard. So now, I will share with you how simple it is to make Ricotta cheese!

Ingredients:

1 litre milk

2 tbsp vinegar

Salt

Materials required:

Cooking thermometer

2 pots (1 for heating milk in and 1 for draining)

1 whisk (just a spoon works as well)

1 big pot of ice and water that can fit the pot used to heat milk

1 sieve

1 cheesecloth (optional) folded twice and put in sieve (so that there are four layers of cheese cloth)

I think that's about it! The most uncommon thing to find in most domestic kitchen is the thermometer. Go get one! It's a great investment if you like cooking as it helps you achieve better quality cooked food!

Method:

Heat milk and 1tsp salt in a pot, while stirring gently, up to 92°C then remove from heat. 

Add in vinegar and mix quickly and gently for no longer than 3 seconds. Any longer you may prevent the milk proteins from cursing. 

Put the whole pot in the big pot of ice to cool the mixture down. Once it reaches 36°C, pour everything through the sieve with a pot below it to collect the whey. (Apparently you can make more cheese out of the whey but I haven't tried that yet!) it's fine if you don't have cheese cloth. As you can see, I don't have it either. Shake the sieve a little to help all the whey to drain. If you have a cheese cloth, bundle the sides up and tighten it such that it squeezes the cheese and pushes whey out. 

Then put everything (sieve and pot below) in the fridge for at least 20mins to cool it down further. 

It's ready to be served after cooling in the fridge! You can add more salt to it to taste and add chives, onions etc to make it tastier as Ricotta is quite blend! Enjoy your homemade cheese.