Riccotta be kidding me?

On my last post I talked about how to make mozzarella cheese, and when doing so to save the whey left over from making it. Today I want to cover how to use that whey to make ricotta. If you don’t know what ricotta is, it is a soft cheese that is predominantly used in making lasagna especially in commercialized operations.  Since ricotta is a byproduct of making mozzarella it means that it is a cheap efficient way to complete your meal without breaking your budget.

After making your mozzarella you let your whey sit in the same pot you made your cheese, overnight for about 12 to 24 hours so that it can develop its needed acidity. The next day it will probably be bubbling a little bit. It somewhat smells like a sourdough starter or beer bread dough at this point.

 FERMENTED WHEY

Warm your whey over a good fire, while stirring so that it doesn’t stick and burn, until it is near boiling (220 degrees Fahrenheit.) Don’t let it boil over. It will be sticking to your spoon at this point too.

RICOTTA IN THE MAKING

Remove your cooked whey from the heat and allow it to sit undisturbed until it is comfortable to touch. This will take a few hours.  Whatever you do, DO NOT stir up your curds. The curds need to be scooped out with a slotted spoon or strainer and placed into a fine mesh cloth to drain.  A tea towel or any solid cotton material will work fine as long as you boil it prior to using so you don’t get any bacteria or off flavors into your cheese. Let your curds drain for a few hours or you can let it drain in the refrigerator overnight. After it is sufficiently drained you can put your cheese into whatever container you like and use it within a week of making. If you do not plan to use it within a week ricotta does freeze very well.  And the leftover liquid is great to give livestock.

We give it to our pig and she goes nuts. Nothing on the homestead has to go to waste and ricotta is a great lesson to that point. I challenge you to use something you would normally throw out this week. Take those veggie scraps and make stock or throw that parmesan rind into some soup. You could even save bones that you cut out of your steak to make delicious brown gravy or take those bread heals and make bread crumbs.  There are endless possibilities to what you can do in your own kitchen to be more ecologically efficient

Let's shred some light on mozzerella

In preparation for having our own milk producers on our small homestead I decided to try something that would use a substantial amount of milk. Since most milk producing animals will produce anywhere from one quart to seven gallons of milk a day we needed to use a lot.  So I tried my hand at cheese, and I say try apprehensively, since I was scared I would screw it up to say the least.  It took me two times to get acceptable results. The first time was almost a complete flop, I only got about a quarter cup of cheese and it tasted so much like citric acid we couldn’t eat it plain. I added some Italian seasoning to it and decided that even though it was a flop, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be fixed and we could use it in lasagna or some homemade pizza.  After researching I found out that the rennet I had chosen to use was not actually good for making cheese, but was for making yogurt (we use it to make homemade ice cream on occasion) and custards, even though it had recipes on the inside of the box for making mozzarella and cheddar.

The rennet was too weak to form a proper curd, so what did I do. Well I extremely stubborn and it’s a good thing in this case. I took the rennet and multiplied the amount in the recipe, so instead of using half a tablet I used two whole tablets and voila I got the cheese I was looking for. It didn’t taste like citric acid albeit a little dry it was still an acceptable cheese.  So let me give you the rundown on how I did it and maybe you can too.  Go ahead grab the thermometer you know you want to.

First I started off with one gallon of whole raw milk, 1 ¼ teaspoon citric acid dissolved into ½ cup cool water, and 4 (junket) rennet tablets dissolve into ¼ cup cool water. Now if you are using a different brand of rennet this recipe will not give the exact same results as different brands of rennet contain varying amounts of enzymes.

First the milk must be warmed in a stainless steel pot to 88 degrees. Then the citric acid and rennet mixtures are added to the milk. Make sure to stir it really well and then let it sit for 1-2 hours without touching it. Waiting is probably the hardest part about making cheese. When it is done you will get what is called a clean break. This is what happens when the cheese has gelled enough that when you stick your finger into it and pull up the cheese does not stick to your finger. If it still like cottage cheese it’s not done let it sit until it forms a solid mass.

When the curd is ready you can use a sharp knife to cut it into ½ in cubes or try anyways, mine was rather hard to cut so I ended up making chunks rather than cubes.  Warm the curds and whey over a low heat while stirring until it reaches 108 degrees and keep it at this temperature for 35 minutes. I turned my fire off and on while keeping the pot lid on to keep mine at the same temperature for this long.

Now you can drain your whey, don’t just pour it down the drain though save it and you can make ricotta too.

Break you curds up and mix in 1 teaspoon of salt, I used canning salt since I don’t keep cheese salt on hand from what I read it is similar. Just don’t use iodized salt.

If you want you could stop here and it would be cheese but if you want that mozzarella stretchiness then you will have to heat it up some more. You can use a microwave or a double boiler whichever you prefer.  But it needs to be heated and stretched and folded until you get a smooth elastic cheese so that you can shape it into a ball.  It makes for a very interesting one person game of hot potato with a ball of cheese.  When you get it to the consistency that you like then you simply store the cheese in a covered container of salted water.  About 1/3 cup of salt to one quart of water is good. Let it sit in the refrigerator overnight and then you can use it within about a week or shred it for freezing to use later.  It comes out to about a pound of mozzerella cheese to a gallon of milk, plus what you will get if you make ricotta also which I will cover in another post.