I love making my own yogurt now. It is so easy and takes me less then 5 minutes to prepare. If you are interested in making your own yogurt, you can view my recipe here: How To Make Your Own Raw Organic Yogurt. When I make my yogurt, I drain off the whey to make a thicker yogurt. I use a full gallon of raw milk to make my yogurt and from that I get 2 quarts of raw yogurt and 2 quarts liquid whey. I use the whey to soak my oats and grains in, but this is a lot of whey to use up. So I set out to find a way to use the whey I get from my raw yogurt. Please note, you also get whey when you make my raw mozzarella cheese, and the whey from that can also be used in this recipe. If you would like to make your own organic raw mozzarella, you can view that post here: How To Make Your Own Raw Organic Mozzarella Cheese. Another recipe you can get liquid whey from is my organic raw cream cheese recipe. You can view that post here: How to Make Organic Raw Cream Cheese. So when you get liquid whey from these recipe don’t throw it out. Simply put the whey in the refrigerator and then when you are ready and have enough whey, you can make your own raw organic ricotta cheese.
So lets get started. This recipe is so simple and takes very little effort! The first thing you want to do is collect all of your liquid whey. Here is what mine looks like from my raw yogurt.
Now place 2 quarts (8 cups) of liquid whey in a sauce pan and heat slowly stirring often.
Heat the liquid whey to 203ºF. Once the whey reaches this temperature, take off the burner and stir in 2 tbsp of white vinegar. Stir for 2 minutes. Allow the whey to sit until it cools a little, about 30-45 minutes. Notice that the ricotta is starting to form. This will form more as it sits.
Drain the liquid whey off by straining it in a tea cloth, jelly strainer (as show in the picture) or cheese cloth. This will take 2-3 hours for the whey to drain out of the ricotta.
Once you strain it you will have the most amazing fresh ricotta that you have ever tasted! Add a pinch of unrefined sea salt and chill.
Chill and spread on toast, or you can use it in one of my many recipes that I use ricotta in pictured below. Enjoy!
Last picture courtesy of Foodbabbles.com.
- 2 quarts (8 cups) liquid whey
- 2 tbsp white vinegar
- unrefined sea salt to taste
- See Instructions In Post
I heard you met my father-in-law and loved the farm experience!
I did Carrie! I bet he thought “look at that city girl taking pictures of my cows, LOL! This Ricotta is made with his milk 🙂
Ha, I have had ricotta on my grocery list for two weeks now. Haven’t gotten it because I didn’t know where to get a good source around here. Now I am making my own!! Thanks. Question for you though, is the ricotta still raw at 203 degrees? And, can I use raw milk whey instead of yogurt to get the same effect?
[email protected]_Food_Freak Hey there, If you are heating raw milk, you don’t want to heat it more then 110-115 F. Essentially it would be great to not heat the whey to 203, but the curd like substance would most likely not form. You could try heating it to only 175 F and see if that works, but I think you will need to increase the temperature just a bit. To answer your second question, raw milk whey is just fine to use. 🙂
I tried this for the first time today (yay!). I had 2 quarts of whey from my mozzarella adventure earlier in the week (also a yay). I am using raw milk for all. I got the richest ricotta, but only like 1/4 cup…did I do something wrong?
Also, now that they whey has been used twice essentially, is it “spent?” Can it be used to soak grains, or is it better to treat my sweet chickens and garden to it?
I got about 1/2 cup from mine, but this can vary. Sounds like it turned out great! I would probably feed the chickens or garden from this point since you heated it to 208 F. Congrats on both your achievements with the mozzarella and ricotta…you are a regular cheese maker now 🙂
I can’t wait to try this. I have started making my own Greek yogurt, which leaves me with a lot of whey. I have also been making my own ricotta directly from milk, which is super easy, but that just leaves me with more whey! This will help solve this problem.
I tried this twice and in both times the curds never formed. Could the Heinz white distilled vinegar be the problem?
Can the WHEY from yogurt that was previously made by heating to 180 and then cooled to 110, processed for 8 hrs. and then refrigerated for a few days be used to make ricotta?
I had the same problem too — followed the recipe and then went to strain the ricotta and the curds were so small they went right through the cloth. then i was left with what looked like milk after it all mixed together (maybe???) any idea what happened? i used whey from raw milk left over from straining yogurt.