I’ve never had any interest in making my own dairy products. Butter, Yogurt, sour cream,
mozzarella -- I really don’t see the point. What I get in my local stores makes me perfectly
happy.
But…. I do make an exception for the fresh cheese, like ricotta or farmer’s cheese.
Making it yourself is the only way to get the quality I am looking for. That’s also
the only way to have some control over the recipes that call for these cheeses. If you’ve
ever tried to make the legendary ricotta gnocchi from the Zuni Cafe cookbook by Judy Rodgers,
you know what I am talking about. You won’t believe how many stories I’ve heard about
people pulling their hair out over this dish all because their ricotta was completely different
from what Judy Rodgers used in her restaurant.
So today, we’ll take matters into our own hands and learn to make fresh cheese. You’ll
be amazed how easy it is. You won’t even need cheesecloth.
The basic idea behind ricotta and farmer’s cheese is the same. Get the milk to sour,
heat it up to curdle it, and then strain to separate the curds from the whey. That’s
it.
Just like no two yogurts are alike, no two farmer’s cheeses or ricottas are alike,
but these two categories have a lot of overlap. On average, farmer’s cheese is more tangy
and more grainy than ricotta, but to me that’s irrelevant because I don’t want to produce
something average. I want to produce something wonderful. To me, a wonderful ricotta or farmer’s
cheese should be slightly tangy with very soft and creamy curds that melt as soon as
they hit your mouth. Overall sensation should be of eating something creamy, not something
grainy.
Most of the ricotta sold in the American supermarkets has the texture of toothpaste. For some reason
many brands want to turn it into a homogenized product and prevent the moisture from oozing
out of the curds. To do that, they add gums and stabilizers. The problem with that is
that many recipes require you to remove excess moisture from the ricotta by pressing it between
paper towels. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work on ricotta made with gums. This ricotta
holds onto its moisture so well that you can’t squeeze it out. The only tasty ricotta that
I found in the supermarket is the Calabro brand. It has a nice texture and doesn’t
use stabilizers so you can dry it as much as you want. Unfortunately, it’s not easy
to find in the stores. I also wish it had a bit more tang.
If you think that buying ricotta is hard, wait till you try to buy farmer’s cheese.
It is almost non-existent in the American supermarkets. Even when I find it, it’s
a low-fat version, and you can guess how I feel about low-fat anything. Sure, any Russian
store will have a huge selection of farmer’s cheese, called tvorog in Russian, but some
are too dry, some are too wet, and almost all of them are too grainy.
Hopefully I’ve convinced you now that you should make your own, so here is what you’ll
need: An Instant Pot, a fine mesh strainer, whole
milk, and kefir
There is a lot of disagreement on how to pronounce this Russian fermented drink in English. In
Russian, it’s pronounced Kefir. According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, the proper
English pronunciation is Kah-fear, but I don’t think most English speakers got that memo,
so they are calling it kee-fir and keh-fir. Although kefir is hard to pronounce, it’s
very easy to buy. Pretty much any American supermarket carries it.
Buttermilk is another souring agent commonly used to make fresh cheese, but I preferred
the version made with kefir. It produced a nice light tang and the curds that were thick
enough not to need a cheesecloth. I can pour it right through the fine mesh strainer. This
means less stuff to buy and less stuff to wash. The reason for this is that commercially
produced kefir is thickened with pectin. If you use homemade kefir or buttermilk, you’ll
need to line your sieve with a few layers of cheesecloth not to lose half of your curds.
Don’t worry if the only kefir option you find is low-fat. We only need a little bit
to inoculate our milk with bacteria. The milk will be full-fat, so our final product will
be pleasantly rich.
Getting milk to go sour always makes people nervous. I mean how do you know that it's
the right sort of sour and not spoiled? The easiest way to do it is to control the temperature.
That’s why I use my instant pot for the job. It allows me to keep the temperature
somewhere around 90F which is great for bacterial growth, and my milk will ferment in about
9 hours. If we grow enough good bacteria from kefir quickly, the bad bacteria will not have
a chance to grow. I am sure it’s fine to just leave your milk and kefir mixture at
room temperature, but if your room is chilly, you might need to wait for days for the milk
to sour.
Pour half a gallon of whole milk into the instant pot. Normal supermarket milk is perfectly
fine. Shake your kefir well and measure out 2 cups. Stir it into the milk. Cover the pot.
Set it on the yogurt setting for 9 hours and make sure it’s on the setting that says
“Less”. If you don’t have an instant pot, but have a sous-vide set up, you can
put the milk and kefir into a large jar or pot and set it inside a water bath set to
90F. In about 9 to 12 hours, you should get the same results I am getting in the instant
pot.
If you aren’t around at the 9 hour mark, don’t worry, your milk can wait. I sometimes
don’t get to it until hours after the cycle finishes and it’s perfectly fine. After
this fermentation step, the milk should look like a thin yogurt.
Now we need to heat this mixture to separate the curds from the whey. The key to good consistency
that is not rubbery or grainy is doing it slowly, evenly, and never ever letting the
mixture boil. The best way to do that is in the oven. Preheat your oven to 350F. Cover
the instant pot insert with foil and place in the middle of the oven for 50 to 60 minutes.
When you get between 160 to 180F in the middle of the pot, you are done. If you see the tiniest
simmer bubbles rising to the top, that’s fine, but the mixture shouldn’t be boiling.
You can strain the mixture right away or let it cool to make it easier to handle. Don’t
worry if a tiny bit of solids go through your fine mesh sieve. If you are using store bought
kefir, you’ll lose very little solids. If some solids get stuck to the bottom of your
pot, scrape them out and add to the strainer. It’s normal for the mixture to smell very
sour when it’s hot. After it cools, it will become very mild.
The next step requires some patience. In my strainer, it takes 3 hours to get it to finish
dripping. Of course it’s possible that our strainers have slightly different holes, so
here is how to know if you are done. If you hang the strainer over a bowl and get not
a single drop after 5 minutes, you are done. As you can see this one is still dripping.
When you are done, get your farmer’s cheese into a bowl and keep in the fridge. It will
thicken after refrigeration and you’ll get a nice thick and creamy texture. For eating
straight, this is perfect.
But if a dish requires shaping something out of this cheese, like those tricky Zuni cafe
ricotta gnocchi, you’ll need a drier texture. A sieve or a cheese cloth only gets you so
far. They are great for the early stages of water removal, but in the later stages, pressure
is way more effective than
a sieve.