Ricotta

What is Ricotta Cheese?

Ricotta is an Italian whey cheese. It is made from the whey that remains after sheep, cow, goat, or Italian water buffalo milk has been turned into another cheese, though modern ricotta is often made from milk instead. The name means recooked. Production on the Italian peninsula goes back to the Bronze Age, when ceramic milk boilers, apparently unique to the peninsula, were built to boil milk without letting it spill over.

Rennet-coagulated cheese overtook fresh whole-milk cheese during the first millennium BC, which left cheesemakers with a large supply of sweet whey. They began combining that whey with milk, and the result is the ricotta known today. Roman agricultural writers such as Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella never mention it, most likely because its very short shelf life made it unprofitable to send to city markets. Herders ate what they made. Apennine shepherds were still using ceramic boilers in the 19th century, and the method has changed little since.

The process works on heat and acid rather than rennet. Whey is left to acidify, sometimes for 12 to 24 hours at room temperature, then heated to near boiling, well above the temperature used for the original cheese. Low pH plus high heat denatures the albumin and globulin left behind after the casein is gone, and the protein flocculates into a fine curd. Once cooled, the liquid is strained through a fine cloth.

The curds are creamy white and slightly sweet. Fat content depends on which milk was used. The texture resembles other fresh cheeses but runs considerably lighter, and fresh ricotta spoils quickly. Ricotta di bufala campana and ricotta romana both carry protected designation of origin status, the first from mozzarella di bufala campana whey, the second from sheep milk whey. Aged versions last far longer: ricotta salata is pressed, salted, dried, and sold in wheels marked with a basket-weave pattern; ricotta infornata is baked until a brown crust forms; ricotta affumicata is smoked over oak, chestnut, or beech; ricotta forte is aged about a year into a pungent brown paste sold in glass jars.

In Italian kitchens it goes both ways. Beaten smooth with sugar, cinnamon, orange flower water, or chocolate shavings, it fills Sicilian cannoli and layers Palermo's cassata. Mixed with eggs and cooked grains and baked firm, it becomes Neapolitan pastiera. On the savory side it fills pasta, calzone, stromboli, pizza, manicotti, lasagne, and ravioli, and it also stands in for mayonnaise in egg or tuna salad or thickens a sauce.