How to Make Ricotta Cheese in 5 Minutes

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Learn how to make ricotta cheese at home in just 5 minutes and with just three simple ingredients you probably already have on hand. You’ll never buy store-bought again!

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

How to Make Ricotta Cheese

Ricotta Cheese is one of those things you should never need to buy from the store. Why? Because it’s just so easy and so cheap to make at home!

Yes, I realize this recipe isn’t for “traditional” Ricotta Cheese (made from whey), but it’s a perfect homemade ricotta cheese recipe when you need a frugal and quick substitute in a recipe.

Once you learn how to make Ricotta Cheese, you will see that it takes just 5 minutes of prep time and uses ingredients you probably already have on hand, so there’s no need to make a trip to the store and no need to spend more money. Quick, easy, frugal…What’s not to love?

Homemade Ricotta Cheese Recipe

In this quick recipe for homemade ricotta cheese, you start by heating some whole milk and a pinch of salt over the stove and then add a little vinegar to make the milk curdle, which, in turn, creates the curds that form the basis of your cheese. Then all you need to do is strain it through some cheesecloth and you’re done!

I love the simple things in life:)

What You Need:

  • 2 cups Whole Milk
  • 2 Tablespoons Vinegar (lemon juice will work)
  • pinch of salt
  • cheesecloth

–Try next: Homemade Yogurt Cheese

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How to Make Ricotta Cheese

Start by prepping your draining bowl. All you need to do is stretch some cheesecloth over the edge of a bowl and secure it with a rubber band. You can buy unbleached cheesecloth in bulk on Amazon. You can occasionally find cheesecloth at the dollar store as well.

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Place your milk and the pinch of salt in a saucepan on the stove top. Turn the heat to medium-low and place a candy thermometer in the pan. (I have this one!) Stir occasionally until the temp reaches 165 degrees.

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Once the milk reaches 165 degrees, turn off the heat and add the vinegar. Give it a little stir, just enough to move around the vinegar and let the whole mixture sit for a minute or two. You’ll see the milk begin to curdle, much the same way it does when you add vinegar to milk to make homemade buttermilk.

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Strain the mixture through the cheesecloth into your bowl slowly and gently.

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Let the cheese set on the counter for about 20 to 30 minutes to drain.

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Once the cheese has drained you can place it in the fridge in an airtight container until ready to use or you can use it right away!

This recipe makes about 1/2 cup of homemade ricotta cheese per 2 cups of milk used and will store for a few days in the fridge, but make sure to use it up within a week. Extra ricotta cheese can be frozen for later use.

–Make more cheese! 30 Minute Homemade Mozzarella

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Of course, don’t just toss out the leftover whey! Feed it to your animals, use it in place of milk in bread recipes, or make some of my yummy Whey Cornbread.

Use your ricotta cheese in all sorts of yummy recipes. Here are some ideas to start with:

Now that you know how to make ricotta cheese at home, do you think you’ll ever go back to buying it from the store? I don’t think I could.

Need to print out the recipe with step-by-step instructions on how to make ricotta cheese? Grab it below!

Easy Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Learn how to make ricotta cheese at home in just 5 minutes and never buy it from the store again!

Prep Time 5 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Creator Merissa

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Whole Milk
  • 2 Tablespoons Vinegar lemon juice will work
  • pinch of salt

Instructions

  1. Start by prepping your draining bowl. Stretch some unbleached cheesecloth over the edge of a bowl and secure it with a rubber band.

  2. Place your milk and the pinch of salt in a saucepan on the stove top. Turn the burner on a low-medium heat and place a candy thermometer in the pan. Stir occasionally until the temp reaches 165ºF.

  3. Once the milk reaches 165ºF, turn off the heat and add the vinegar. Give it one little stir, just enough to move around the vinegar and let the whole mixture sit for a minute or two.

  4. Pour the mixture into your prepared bowl slowly and gently.
  5. Let the cheese set on the counter for about 20 to 30 minutes to drain.
  6. Once the homemade Ricotta Cheese has drained you can place it in the fridge in an airtight container until ready to use or you can use it right away! 

Recipe Notes

This recipe makes about 1/2 cup of homemade ricotta cheese per 2 cups of milk used and will store for a few days in the fridge, but make sure to use it up within a week. Extra homemade Ricotta Cheese can be frozen for later use.

Do you know how to make Ricotta Cheese or have you ever tried making it before?

merissabio

This blog post on How to Make Ricotta Cheese was originally published on Little House Living in December 2017. It has been updated as of February 2019.

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54 Comments

  1. Do you know if you can use homogenized milk to make the ricotta cheese? This sounds like a very easy and simple way to make your own ricotta cheese, and I am eager to try it, but don’t have a source for raw milk where we live.

          1. Reconstituted powdered milk will work for this recipe; I make ricotta cheese from powdered milk all the time. 🙂

            Just make 2 cups worth of milk, according to the package directions. Heat as instructed above. Add vinegar & stir. LET COOL (this is where the powdered milk process differs from the fresh milk process). Then proceed with the recipe as written.

      1. I’ve made home made ricotta cheese from every kind of dairy milk–whole, skim, lactose free, powdered, instant non-fat, and even goat milk. It all turns out a little differently, but works in recipes such as lasagna. I’ve done this for years–over 30–because I don’t like paying the high price for ricotta cheese.

        1. Has anyone tried making it with just-turning-sour whole milk? Sure would like to use up what I have now.

          1. I don’t know how souring milk (my mom called it blinky) would work in making this ricotta cheese but I would like to have recipes or advice on how to be more frugal with sour milk.

          2. I used to let my milk from the farm go sour. Strain it into a cheesecloth bag. Hang it till dry then add salt, herbs or other flavours. Delicious

    1. Thank you so much for all your lovely newsletters and recipes Merissa I don’t answer you and you must get so many emails but i want you to know i really appreciate you sending me your updates and i always look forward to your emails.

      Thank you ❤

  2. Thanks for this recipe! I’m excited to try it. I had wanted to make lasagne the other night but didn’t have any ricotta and our budget is really tight right now but I have all of these ingredients!

  3. Hello Merissa, I saw you recipe for homemade kettle korn a few weeks back and now I am unable to find. Can you help me. Laura

    1. Why not? I lost power during storm for three dats. Combined all my warmed and sour milk and made ricotta. Used it in lasagna. Perfect!

  4. This is a great tip and an easy and inexpensive way to add ricotta to recipes instead of cottage cheese. I never feel that cottage cheese is a good replacement for ricotta in italian dishes. Once you try your favorite italian dishes with ricotta instead you will taste the difference.

  5. Reconstituted powdered milk will work for this recipe; I make ricotta cheese from powdered milk all the time. 🙂

    Just make 2 cups worth of milk, according to the package directions. Heat as instructed above. Add vinegar & stir. LET COOL (this is where the powdered milk process differs from the fresh milk process). Then proceed with the recipe as written.

  6. I have made ricotta before but the recipe I have calls for cream with it. I will definitely try yours because the cream makes it much more expensive and YES I just use whole milk from the grocery store.

  7. Is there a detectable difference in flavor from the store bought ricotta? I have an Italian family and I am wondering if I could if I could pull this off!

  8. It is funny that we get so used to going to the store and buying certain things that we forget the way that our ancestors used to get their things (they made them).

    I would never buy micro popcorn, or buy premade cakes, but I do buy ricotta. Well I used to, not anymore. 🙂

    1. Oh that “stuff” in the cartons they call ricotta at the large chain grocery stores is the most disgusting thing to me, an “old” Italian from the old neighborhood “Taylor Street” area in Chicago.
      I will try this next time I need a smaller amount of ricotta. I’ve been fortunate to find two cheese makers near my home that make some of the best ricotta I’ve tasted since Nonna was doing the cooking! I get a 5 pound container and it’s gone in about a week from having to “test” it and make sure it’s still good! 🙂

  9. Your cheese is so beautiful! I can’t wait to try making ricotta with cow milk – but it’s going to be a while before our heifer breeds and freshens.
    This is very similar to the way we make panir cheese with goat milk. It’s heated to a higher temperature though, so it’s dryer, and we shape it into logs, roll in herbs, and slice it for cheese and crackers. Yum!

  10. I am going to try this one I am really interested in saving any way I can this is really one good tip Thanks

  11. I make this all the time. The neighbor makes delicious homemade cottage cheese that is very dry curd and makes a delicious lasagna, so I usually make some of this ricotta cheese to mix in with the cottage cheese for a big batch of lasagna. Delicious!!! If you want more rubbery big curds, you can leave it on low heat after it has curded for a few more minutes. You get larger curds that can be salted and eaten. Play with it a little bit. Kind of fun. (Found that one accidentally when I left it on to fix the cheesecloth.)

  12. This looks very interesting. And i want to start living a more simple life and be less of a consumer. My only concern here is this, does the vinegar or lemon juice affect the favor at all? Does it sour the final product? If not, then i would enjoy giving it a try.

    1. If you are concerned about a little residual flavor from the vinegar you can rinse the ricotta when you are done, although you will have a slightly drier final product.

  13. My grand mother used to make a delicious pie mixing it with almond eggs and sugar ( probably other things). It just tastes like the ” galette des rois” we have after Christmas in France

  14. Could the whey that is a by-product of this recipe by used to make ricotta by the more traditional method?

  15. Since you apparently know that this isn’t ricotta – which is made from whey- I’m wondering why you don’t just call it cottage cheese, which is what it is…

    1. Although made similar to cottage cheese this recipe is not cottage cheese. It tastes and acts just as ricotta cheese in a recipe because of the texture therefore even though it’s not made in the same process as “traditional ricotta cheese” it’s much closer to ricotta cheese than cottage cheese as far as using it in a recipe goes.

  16. Wow, just wow, made this a few days ago. I have been thinking about making ricotta for months, after making this recipe and seeing how easy it is, I’m going to be making so much more ricotta. Great job!

  17. This may be a stupid question, but is it 165F? Mine had little orange-ish brown pieces…. Is this from scalding? I like the texture but it had very little flavor. Can I add herbs and maybe some garlic powder for flavor? At what step would you suggest should I add flavorings? Thanks so much!

    1. Yes, it should get to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. The brown pieces could possibly be from scalding, perhaps from not stirring enough or turning up the heat too high? Ricotta isn’t a very flavorful type of cheese, you could add in flavorings after you’ve separated the whey if you plan on eating it plain.

  18. I really want to try this. Wonderful instructions, lovely pictures. I know it is just what I’ve been looking for. But… I don’t have a laptop, I have a desktop, so no access to the recipe while in my kitchen, and I can’t print it nor copy it to print it in Word. Can you help me out here? I really really do want to do this.

    1. We are in the process of updating old posts to see that they are easy to print, for now, just click the green “Print Friendly” button at the bottom of the article and select only the text you want to print.

  19. This recipe was a total flop for me! But that is definitely through my own fault because I only had plant based milk on hand when I decided to make this recipe. Will definitely have to try again when I get some cow’s milk!

    1. Ah yes, this recipe will only work with regular cows milk or another dairy milk (like goat). Sorry it was a flop! I hope you try again. 🙂

  20. Super easy, used this recipe many times but I use lemon juice instead of vinegar, I think it tastes better. I have used full cream milk and lite or low fat milk to make this and both work fine.

  21. I wanted to make some Tirimisu but I eat USDA Certified Organic/nonGMO. I haven’t found ricotta but now I can make my own with the raw milk from my local farmer. I’m making it now. Super excited! Thanks!

  22. Thanks for the recipe, I will be making my own Ricotta Cheese. It is true, you can teach an old dog new tricks. I’m 80 ! Live-Love-Laugh, Junebug