Author Topic: can you make ricotta cheese using culture?  (Read 2104 times)

monashguy

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can you make ricotta cheese using culture?
« on: November 29, 2013, 07:05:26 PM »
Many recipes is by adding vinegar and lemon to the milk, heat it etc etc, what about follow the recipe but instead of heating, lemon and vinegar, i just culture it, but milk and cream using back the exact porpotions in the recipe and then drain the whey out, does that qualify as ricotta?? Reason is because the cream is UHT, I can't find a single non UHT cream from where i am from and milk i can find raw ones from the country i am from. But since the recipe requires milk and cream and infact an article says when culturing, it works better with UHT, but when comes to making cheese from heating up and curdling, non UHT will be better, so does this still qualify as ricotta cheese?

Alpkäserei

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Re: can you make ricotta cheese using culture?
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2013, 11:40:06 PM »
The principle of ricotta is that it is a cheese made from the whey left over after another cheese, such as Parmesan or Romano, is first produced.
So the purpose of the acid and high heat is to draw out the leftover proteins in the whey and make them coagulate so they can be gathered.
When producing a cheese, you can't get the same type of flavor without the use of acid and heat.


UHT should make no difference with ricotta, due to the curds not being cut and stirred and all like the are in other cheeses. Use what you have

monashguy

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Re: can you make ricotta cheese using culture?
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2013, 06:30:44 AM »
Thanks for the reply, but just i check, europeans one are made from whey whereas US counterpart is make using milk and cream, the way you put it, i think you are thinking i am using whey leftover from milk and cream which i am not. Too much whey is needed to make that much amount of ricotta, i am trying to make us style ricotta and the reason i need it because i am making the cheese from scratch for a mascarpone cheesecake recipe i saw on the internet. Btw the mascarpone, they say you can use culture to make mascarpone cheese which is why i am not asking but didn't see any sites that say you can use culture to make ricotta :-)

WovenMeadows

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Re: can you make ricotta cheese using culture?
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2013, 02:20:32 AM »
Ricotta was traditionally made by heating acidified whey (from other cheesemaking), thereby denaturing the whey proteins so they will precipitate out of the whey. Same can be done to acidified milk - which can happen by adding acid (vinegar, lemon juice, etc) or by allowing the milk to culture. But the high-cooking process is still central to ricotta. If you don't cook, but just culture the milk and then drain, you basically have just a lactic-set cheese, like fromage frais or fromage blanc, quark, or American neufchatel.