If the Italian word ricotta doesn’t translate to glorious, fluffy cheese clouds in English, I’d like to speak to someone about changing that. Because that’s exactly what ricotta is: light, spongy, creamy, glorious fresh cheese. You might be a ricotta fanatic. Or you might dabble on occasion. But do you really know what ricotta’s deal is? What is ricotta cheese, really?
Well, let’s start with what it’s made from. Ricotta can technically be made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats, or water buffalo, but the ricotta that we consume most frequently—the stuff you can buy at almost every grocery store—is made from the milk of a cow. But historically, that cows milk was used for something else before it was used to make ricotta. Sorry, is that confusing? Allow me to explain.
So, ricotta actually translates to recooked in Italian, and ricotta is what’s called a "whey cheese." When you make cheese, you separate milk into two distinct things. You have the solids, called curds, which will be separated out and pressed to form cheese. And you have the liquid that is left behind, called whey. Most cheeses that we know and love are made from the curds but, traditionally at least, ricotta is made from the tiiiiiny bit of curd left behind in the whey.
Cheesemakers make whatever cheese they want to make with the curds, and then repurpose the leftover whey to create ricotta (among other whey cheeses). To do this, the whey is heated—usually after a small addition of whole milk and some form of vinegar or citrus juice—and the remaining curds start to coagulate. The curds will become larger and more solid and, eventually, the pot will be emptied into a portion of cheesecloth and strained. Once the cheese cloth is emptied of any remaining whey, you’ll be looking at a bunch of fluffy, white ricotta.
This is how ricotta is traditionally made; it's a way to put all that leftover whey to good use. But these days, at least in the States, we tend to make ricotta from whole milk instead of whey. In this case, the process is the same as making any other cheese—you heat the milk, coagulate it in some way, and then strain the curds from the whey to form a soft, fresh, spreadable cheese product.
