So I just spent about 20 minutes heating and stirring milk to make the food lab book ricotta. I doubled the recipe and used the stovetop method. It barely curdled. I tried adding a bit more vinegar, and heated it to 175f. And still nothing. Really annoying as I now have half a gallon of milk down the drain and nothing for dinner. Have anyone else have this issue? I used full fat milk directly from the store that expired in two weeks.
by Marinlik
9 Comments
Was it ultra pasteurized?
You can’t use milk that has been “ultra pasteurized.” It does something to the milk proteins so that it’s no good for making cheese or yogurt
I don’t know the food lab recipe but does it say 175? I take mine to 190. Maybe it wasn’t evenly 175 throughout the pot since it was such a large volume of milk.
You’ll still get yield with ultra pasteurized; I’ll just be really fine. You just don’t get the larger clumps with it, but I’ve made cheese with UHT milk. Collect with cheese cloth, wash to remove vinegar taste, and press if desired. About 8oz pressed per half gallon.
You should have kept dumping vinegar into it, and test your vinegar to see how active it is with baking soda. It’s taken me up to 4 Tbsps distilled vinegar per half gallon of milk sometimes.
Every time I’ve done ricotta I’ve had to add in at least double the vinegar as called for in the recipe to get it to curdle.
Been there. Super fresh milk is the difference with this one.
I can’t say that heating the milk with the vinegar already added is wrong because I’ve never tried that method but it just doesn’t sound right to me.
I heat my milk to 190F, take off heat and then add my acid (I prefer lemon juice) and gently stir. Then let sit for 5-10 minutes before straining.
Is it ultra-pasteurized?
/s
I’ve made ricotta like this a lot of times, usually holding at ~185f and the ratio on serious eats of about 20ml of acid : 1L of milk works. But I have had times where I used a different brand of milk and it doesn’t curdle. I just kept adding vinegar tablespoon at a time and eventually it started to curdle and in the end it tasted fine.
If you’re in this situation again and it’s not doing anything, you might as well just keep adding vinegar to see what happens since you were planning on throwing it out anyways.