But Wait, There's More!

The title of this post sounds like an infomercial doesn't it?  In the last post we showed you how we made some fresh mozzarella from LuLu's milk.  Once you are done with that, you are left with a big pot of whey.  Normally with whey, we use it to lacto-ferment cabbage, cucumbers, carrots, and other vegetables.  Sometimes we feed it to the chickens.  They lay more eggs after drinking it.  But today, we'll show what else you can do with your whey.

You can make homemade ricotta cheese.  To your pot of ricotta, add some whole milk.  We added a pint.  You'll heat this up to 200 degrees F.  While stirring, you pour in 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar.  Turn off the heat.

We pour this into a colander that's been lined with muslin cloth:

What you'll notice floating in the whey is some tiny particles of protein.

We tie the muslin cloth in a knot and hang it over a bowl to catch the whey.  Tricia has rigged this apparatus with chopsticks.  Don't laugh, ha ha.  It works.

After several hours open the muslin cloth.  The cloth will contain ricotta cheese!

We put it into a bowl.  It is tasty.  You can add salt and herbs, if you'd like:

What can you do with ricotta?  Well the perfect thing to to after adding your herbs and salt is to make lasagna.  We've also grated the mozzarella into the lasagna as well.

We plate our lasagna beside some fresh picked snap beans that are still producing as the frosts have evaded us thus far.

Delicious!  And it's about a close to farm to table as you can get.  

Making Ricotta Cheese

Yet another cheese making post.  This will be the last one for a while.  I just wanted to talk about one more type of cheese that we make.  From our post about making cheddar cheese yesterday, we had a by-product - Whey.  Whey is the liquid that remains after removing the curds once the rennet separates the two. Normally we'll feed it to the chickens.  They love it.  Today, however, we'll use it for something else - making ricotta cheese.  Now, you'd think when you look at the whey that there's nothing else left in it, but there is ricotta cheese in there.

You've just got to remove it.  Let the whey sit for 12 - 24 hours to build acidity.

A container full of whey after making cheddar cheese

After that time period has passed, pour the whey into a non-reactive pot - either stainless steel or ceramic.

Heat up the whey to 180 degrees F and a white foam will begin to appear.  Be sure to stir to avoid sticking or burning.

Foam beginning to form

Continue heating until right before they whey begins boiling.   Remove from heat and cover and allow to cool a little.  The curds will appear like clouds in the whey.  Set up a cotton cloth in a colander and pour all the whey through the cloth and colander. The cloth will hold back all the ricotta cheese.  It will take a while to drain it.  It took 2 or 3 hours for us.

Straining out the ricotta cheese

The ricotta cheese will remain in the cloth.  

Behold the Ricotta

We scooped it out with a spoon and used it to make delicious lasagna.  Lots of people like cottage cheese in their lasagna.  Cottage cheese makes a good lasagna, but ricotta cheese makes a great lasagna!  We finished up a pan of it just this evening!