Make Ricotta Cheese from Whey

[Music] good morning and welcome to Rose Red Homestead where we are continuing today another video on uh working with powdered milk and making cheese only today we're going to be working with h the result of some of our other efforts in using powdered milk to make cheese and the big question is is there more cheese in this whe I have collected the whe from everything that we have done so far and I have about a gallon of whe and we are going to see whether or not we can get more cheese out of that H H is very high in protein and maybe we can turn some of that protein into additional cheese the specific cheese we're going after today is ricotta now we already have ricotta over here under the curds and as I have been reading about making ricotta from H which is the usual way that it is made a couple of things have me a little bit concerned today so we're going to keep our fingers crossed that this is going to work first of all one of the things that was in some of the literature was that the whe should be from cultured cheese cultured if you remember is when we introduce live bacteria into a a milk mixture and then the live bacteria are what produces the thickness and the Tang The Taste over here on the kurd side is where we introduce acid such as lemon juice or vinegar into the milk solution and that is what produces the kurd or ultimately the cheese and so far we have made both cream cheese and ricotta using the curd method we have made cream cheese yogurt and Greek yogurt with a cultured method method over here the whe is a mixture of both and the other thing that it says is that um the the H should be fresh well I haven't leftt it out on the countertop but it has been about 2 weeks worth of my collecting way and it's been in the refrigerator so whether or not it's too old whether or not the fact that most of it comes from the kurd side rather than the cultured side remains to be seen what we are going to do is put this almost a gallon of whe into my jam pan and heat it to between 180 and 190 just the heat alone should produce some curds but then we are also going to add a little bit of vinegar in some cases what they say is that you can add some whole milk to increase the probability of getting it but because we are practicing for a time when we might not have the availability of whole milk we're just just going to stick exactly with what we have to see what we can get from what we already have so here we go in goes the way and I just turned the flame on get it up to about 180 190 at that point unless there's some action that occurs between now and then we'll be back we have about between 178 and 181 I'm getting nervous some of the other videos that I watched the uh H was already forming curds just because of the Heat and this one has not so we're going to go ahead and add I have a four of a cup of vinegar here this is just white vinegar and I'm going to add it just a little at a time okay that's the last of it so I'm going to turn it off and we're just going to let it sit here for about 20 minutes to see if we're going to get some curd formation well we have had a fail take a look at this it's been sitting actually for more than 20 minutes and there's nothing here nothing at all now if I stir this up you might be able to see that there are some little flexs in there but they have not congealed into any kind of curds at all and so let's talk about this for just a second when I realized it was going to be a failure I tried some other things to try to rescue it I added a little bit more acid this time I added some lemon juice about another quar cup nothing and I even added probably a four of a cup of milk to see if that would do anything and nothing so this is a fail and it may be because I waited too long it wasn't fresh enough even though I put it right in the refrigerator or it may be because the majority of the whe was from this side which means it was already acidified to some degree it was not the cultured side here is what the plan is I don't give up easily and so the very next time I make some cheese even though the instructions say it's best if you use one to two gallons of whe to do this I don't know that I will ever have that much whe because I am making just small batches uh because I'm still in my learning curve and because everything doesn't always work out the way as planned I don't want to waste a lot of our powdered milk on things that are going to fail so I am going to try a small batch of ricotta next time from both this side and then I fully plan to make make some cream cheese full fat cream cheese I've seen a wonderful demonstration from a woman in Canada who makes it all the time and I bought um the ingredients that she uses to culture her cream cheese and that should give us quite a bit of whe on the culture side that we can also try I'm going to keep trying we'll get it nailed down and we will add to this video when I have some successes to show you until then stand by and we'll be back soon good morning and we are going to do trial number two today and I have done a lot more research and so I think I have found the solution I finally found a website that did a much better job of explaining things that the other resources that I had found neglected to say and the reason I think this may work today is because it explains why my previous attempts have failed and so come to find out there are two kinds of of whe well duh there are there is the whe that is produced when making real cheese like cheddar and um havari and other ones like that where they use a cooler temperature and that way that comes from cool temperatures is called sweet whe on the other side is the whe that is produced when we make yogurt to Greek yogurt and when we drain the whe from the yogurt to make the Greek yogurt that's what this is this is very fresh it just drained out of the my Greek yogurt this morning I made a double batch and I wanted plenty of whe this is called acidic qu because it comes from the process of yogurt now acidic Quay hardly has any protein left in it well that explains a whole lot that explains why we weren't getting any curds the uh sweet whe does have a lot of protein left in it and with that one you can just cook that whe again bring it up to temperature add a little bit of acid and you can make your ricotta cheese with acidic Quay you have to add more milk but no acid no cultures you just add the whe to the milk I am using today a half gallon of whole milk and um you can use 2% or whole milk now this kind of goes um flies in the face of what we're trying to accomplish here because if we have to do things that are off- grid and no availability of things to purchase in stores then we're not going to have the availability to buy a half gallon of milk but I don't have full fat powdered milk if you have full fat powdered milk this will work as well as this fresh whole milk now to this milk all I have to do is add two cups of this acidic Quay that came from draining my yogurt this morning so there's our two cups right there and we pour it in and stir it around and then we're going to turn it on now we're going to heat this mixture to 180° and that should force the curds to separate from the whe just by the addition of this acidic whe so we will see we will come back when it's just about up to temperature and then we'll see what happens so keep your fingers crossed while we are waiting I just thought you might like to see what's going on in our backyard we are actually videoing this on the day after Thanksgiving and this is our first snowfall of the year so I love it when it snows it's so beautiful this is getting close to 180 it's about 170 oh there it said 180 right there but that was only in one little spot okay I think it's there yeah okay so we're going to move it over to here and now we're just going to let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes and it is supposed to curdle so I'm seeing on my thermometer stem some little tiny curds so that is a good sign so we're just going to let it sit and we will be back I think we have success take a look so I haven't touched it and so it has been sitting for about 12 minutes and so the directions say to scoop out the curds carefully with a slotted spoon and put them into a oh look at this put them in into a fabric lined strainer which we've got these curds are very tiny we still have a lot of it's not all the way way yet so I kind of got that from the bottom the directions explicitly say Do not pour the whole solution into a cheesecloth so we're not going to do that but we've still got a lot of milk in there which means there's a lot more protein I think I got most of it so I'm going to try an experiment it looked to me that this was going to be the case so I'm going to add another half cup of um qu and just see if we can get more clobbering and we may not I have no idea so let's look look at this for a minute oh this is beautiful and it says to let it drain until the uh desired amount of dryness is achieved so we've got ourselves some lovely ricotta this is much softer than the ricotta that we got over here all right I see more separation with the curds in the way let's see if we're actually getting any curds oh yes look at that I'm so glad we did that woohoo my gosh we're getting lots more almost the same amount more and the liquid is now The Telltale yellowish sign of whe which means we've got a lot of the protein most of the protein it's more than the first time around yeah it is more oh I'm so glad we did that but I didn't want to mess up anything so I wanted to follow the recipe exactly at least this person gave me information on the different types of whe which is something that I had not known this is wonderful look at this Ricotta and we'll salt this just a little bit I think probably we've gotten about all we're going to get I don't need to add any more of the [Music] H so this spoon is this slotted spoon is fabulous for these cheese making efforts that we're having having so I want to taste this just a tiny Taste of this ricotta oh my gosh oh it's wonderful honey I think we'll have lasagna tonight sounds okay to me oh this is fantastic look how much we got woo I'm going to let this drain for a little while and then we'll come back and show you the finished product I'm so excited and I'm going to add yogurt H rotta to our list here oh that's and it's so much better than this one this one was quite dry before I used it I would add some probably some cream maybe some Sal s cream to it but this I won't have to at all because we'll just let it sit there until it gets to the consistency we want and then it I'll add a little bit of salt and it will be ready to go I'm very excited about this so we'll be back when this is drained look at all the whe that we've got draining there out to focus there in Focus now all right we'll be back all right here it is I squeezed a lot of the whe out of it I want it very soft and I've sprinkled some salt on and mashed it in oh my word this is we have at least two cups here maybe a little bit more it could almost pass his cot is cheese as well okay I'm going to taste our finished product oh my goodness this is phenomenal it absolutely is phenomenal this is far better than the last ricotta I bought at the store I'm thrilled to be able to know how to do this now and um if I can ever find some whole fat powdered milk I will try it with powdered milk whole fat as well but for right now all I had was just the regular grocery store you don't use ultra pasteurized uh just regular milk and either 2% or full fat and I always buy full fat so this is a resounding success I'm thrilled with it so thank you for joining us on our cheese making Adventure using um powdered milk as the foundation and we have more to come so see you soon with another [Music] video

Channel: RoseRed Homestead

Views: 15,978

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Id: hFuuyS78aPg

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023