How To Make Ricotta Cheese At Home – Rich Ricotta

Recently I spotted this Smitten Kitchen post about making home made super rich Ricotta and being a Smitten fan and a complete cheese making dork (have you noticed?) I leapt across to take a look at what she was up to on the cheese front.

How To Make Ricotta At Home

I scrolled through gorgeous photos, which actually showed a cheese looking much more like cream cheese than Ricotta. Intrigued, I read all about the inspiration for this cheese and then read the recipe to get all the gritty details of how it was made to get all that creaminess.

It explained everything.

This rich Ricotta is somewhat irreverent of the traditional Italian Ricotta in that it’s not a whey cheese product and further more the recipe, originally taking its cues from the Salvatore Ricotta recipe which instead involves full milk, has been further tweaked to include 1 cup of heavy cream!

The result?

Rather than producing the usual light fluffy Ricotta made with whey, this Ricotta is dense, creamy and more spreadable.

It is not the traditional whey Ricotta. You can get that recipe here.

Now while I love following the traditional methods for each cheese type, I also don’t mind having a wee play every now and then and the richness of this Ricotta appeals to me so, I’m going to give it a go this weekend and I thought I would share the recipe so you can too.

This cheese can be made without having to buy cultures, rennet, molds or presses so it might appeal to those of you who have yet to embark on the full cheese making mission. The only special piece of equipment you really need is a thermometer to get the heat point accurate.

So, without further a-do:

Rich Ricotta Cheese Recipe

Ricotta Cheese Ingredients

  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
  • 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

How To Make Ricotta Cheese at Home

  1. Pour the milk, cream and salt into a large pot.
  2. Heat the milk to 190°F regularly stirring to prevent burning
  3. Turn off the heat and add the lemon juice
  4. Stir once or twice, gently and slowly
  5. Let the pot sit undisturbed for 5 minutes.
  6. Pour curds and whey into a colander double lined with cheesecloth.
  7. If you wish, save the whey in a bowl and take a look at these ideas for using it up.
  8. Leave to drain for between 1 to 2 hours.

This recipe makes 1 cup of Ricotta Cheese

How To Store Ricotta Cheese

Stores for 5-7 days in an airtight container in the fridge.

If you are interested in seeing how Salvatore Bklyn, the Brooklyn company who have created a frenzy over their modified Ricotta, make their version of this rich creamy cheese take a look at this video:

The King of Ricotta: Salvatore Bklyn from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Photo credit: © 2010 grongar

Do you have any questions or comments about Rich Ricotta? Join the discussion over at the Curd Nerd Forum. We would love to hear from you!

Curd Nerd Forum

5 thoughts on “How To Make Ricotta Cheese At Home – Rich Ricotta

  • 29/06/2011 at 9:41 pm
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    Interesting, wish I read this two days ago! I was making Ricotta from left over whey. For some reason I have never been able to master this simplest of cheeses. It always ends up a disaster. 2 gallons of whey and I only ended up with about 1 cup of Ricotta. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I only have about 5 recipes for the stuff. Camembert and blue? Bring it on, ricotta, a complete failure every time.

    • 29/06/2011 at 10:18 pm
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      Thanks for your comment Louise.

      I know many people have little luck getting much in the way of Ricotta from whey (which is due to the amount of proteins left in the whey) so this recipe should ensure you get something for your efforts.

      Let us know in the comments how it works out for you!

  • Pingback:QA3 – Why Do I Get Such A Low yield Of Ricotta? | Curd-Nerd

  • 28/04/2012 at 6:23 pm
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    Hi, would this work using an extra cup of full cream milk instead of the cream?

    • 22/05/2012 at 3:16 pm
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      Hi Kezia

      Thanks for your question.

      I’m not sure you would get the richness of this particular Ricotta but you would certainly get Ricotta cheese. This particular recipe is one that is a meant to be much richer and creamier than the Ricotta which is normally made from whey. Many other ‘normal’ Ricotta recipes use full cream milk though so you are absolutely on the right track to getting some delicious Ricotta cheese : )

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