Homemade Ricotta Cheese

This is a story about homemade ricotta cheese. Why? Because when I went to buy said cheese, the price has increased from $6 to $8 for a tub of ricotta (we buy organic dairy). Shocked at the price, I decided that I should try to make it myself.  Okay, 1st take 1/4 quart of milk and 1/4 tsp of Citric Acid. I got Citric Acid at Vitamin Cottage. Dissolve the Citric Acid in 2 Tbsp of water and stir it into the milk. Then heat the milk up on medium heat.

Stir occasionally, don't let the milk come to a boil. Here you see the milk start looking clumpy.

And here is when I realized that the WB Auto setting on my camera isn't doing a good job. Because then I manually set it to the tungsten lamp and the picture looks better - no more yellow hue!

Here the milk starts really separating. I think the liquid is called whey, and the white clumps, well that would be our future ricotta cheese.

Next, you pour the milk into the strainer. I got this white cloth from my mom, and don't know what it is. But I think you can use coffee filter or cheesecloth and fine strainer combo.

See how nice those cheese-to-be look like?

I let it strain for 15 minutes, until all the liquid is gone. I think I let it go too long, because the cheese was really firm and dry. Next time I need to save a bit of those whey liquid and store the cheese in it.

Pretty easy right? The whole thing took less than an hour and yield a handful of ricotta cheese. And what's great is that you can do other things in the kitchen while the milk is heating up, since you only have to stir it occasionally. I am not sure how long this homemade version keep but I would suggest using it within a couple of days.