You can enjoy it for dessert with a drizzle of honey over the top. Or as antipasti with roasted tomatoes. Use at as filling for pasta. You can do so much with it, and it will be better than store bought. Everyone will be impressed by your cheesemaking skills at your next dinner party. I love how it presents so well simply placed on a plate.
Ingredients
1/2 gallon of fresh whole milk from a cool local farmer
1/2 tsp citric acid dissolved in 2 oz of water. (you can double this and add more if your curds aren’t setting up right)
1/2 tsp of salt
Recipe
Add milk and salt to a pot and heat to 190 - 195ºF, make sure to stir regularly to prevent milk from scorching on the bottom
remove from heat and add 2 oz of citric acid solution and gently stir for 10 seconds. You will start to see curds form
wait 15 minutes, don’t disturb the curds
with a large slotted spoon begin scooping the curds into a ricotta basket. Towards the end I will strain the whey through a fine mesh strainer to get the last bits of curd. (save the whey, and use it for cooking, I’ll have a recipe for you soon.)
gently press the curds into the basket, depending on the size of your basket you may need more than one.
place the basket on a rack on a small sheet pan and let drain in refrigerator for one hour up to eight hours depending on how wet or dry you want your ricotta to be.
you can continue aging it but then you’re getting into ricotta salata territory.
