How To Make Ricotta Cheese In Minutes

I wanted to make a cheese strudel, I had nearly everything set up, when I realized that I had run out of ricotta cheese. I don't know why I had not checked my fridge first. It would have been more logical to make sure that I had all the ingredients, before starting my recipe. Sadly, as usual, I get this sudden inspiration to cook something, and just go for it, Anyway, the lack of fresh cheese was not going to deter me from my quest for cheese strudel. I needed a quick ricotta cheese.

There are a few ways to make fresh cheese, I decided to use this recipe, because it was the quickest way to make the cheese, that I want for my strudel.
I realized that there could be occasions, where this simple homemade ricotta cheese recipe would come in handy. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who forgets to stock up their fridge, It will save you from having to get ready and drive to your local store to get some.

This homemade ricotta cheese can be used for all kinds of desserts, other then strudel, for example, if you were to make pancakes, you could take 400g ricotta cheese , 3 tbsp double cream, 1 egg, sugar, lemon juice and half a cup sultanas, mix it all up, spread the mixture onto your homemade pancakes, roll the pancakes up on a baking tray and bake for about 10 minutes. Just delicious. I use this same mix for my strudel. I layer my puff pastry with a little butter, add the home made ricotta cheese mix, roll it up and put it in the oven.

Another easy recipe is, ricotta blueberry cups. This is a great dessert, you need to crush some digestive biscuits, mix in ricotta cheese, honey, whip cream and blueberries. Portion it into nice dessert cups and put them in the fridge for an hour, top with whip cream and blueberries before serving. This dessert can be made with any berries.

Ricotta with fruit bread - toast some raisin bread, spread ricotta cheese on it and top with thinly sliced apples and brown sugar, bake for 10 minutes or until apples are caramelized.

Tomato and ricotta pizza - make basic pizza dough, mix some olive oil, salt and finely chopped garlic in a bowl stir well. Slice up some fresh tomatoes. Spread garlic mix on the pizza dough, top with tomatoes, little chunks of ricotta cheese and some fresh basil leaves, sprinkle some olive oil, bake for about 25 minutes or until pizza dough is a done.

Ricotta bacon sandwich - toast whole meal bread, top with crispy bacon and ricotta cheese, bake for 10 minutes, serve with halved cherry tomatoes sprinkled with a vinaigrette dressing.

Ricotta omelet - beat eggs add salt, ricotta cheese and fresh baby spinach, pan fry for a healthy and tasty breakfast. A great way to start your day.

Ingredients

1 liter full cream milk
3 tbsp of white vinegar

Heat milk until just below boiling point ( 80' Celsius ).
Take off the stove.
Pour in the vinegar, leave for 2 minutes, you will see the milk separating from the vinegar and forming curds, if you don't see curds forming, just add a little more vinegar. With this recipe you pretty much get instant results.

Spoon curds gently onto a muslin cloth or cotton type cheesecloth, leave to drain for 5 minutes.
Cool and refrigerate.

Makes one cup of ricotta cheese.

You can put it in a jar, or place in a mold, to shape the cheese.

My great grandmother grew up in a village. In those days it was the norm to make your own cheeses, Jams and to preserve your own fruits and veg . Everything in those days was made from scratch. She in turn, taught my mother, who taught me. I am very grateful to my mother and great grandmother for passing these great recipes down to me, I know that a lot of families have lost some really great traditional recipes over the years, Happily enough in my family, care was taken to write down and keep track of all the recipes that are in our family.