My best guess as to why many recipes arbitrarily pick 180☏? It's the point at which milk starts simmering: an easy temperature to gauge even without a thermometer. So that whole 180☏ for custards rule must also be a myth. These days, milk is pretty much always pasteurized (heated before packaging) so this step is unnecessary.īut wait a minute! Pasteurized milk is only raised to 161☏ and works perfectly well in custards. Back then, milk had to be heated to 180☏ in order to deactivate certain enzymes that can prevent a custard from setting. So where does this particular piece of culinary you-wishdom come from? My first instinct is that it's a carry-over and misapplication from the days when custards were made with un-pasteurized milk. Guess what? Between 165☏ and 185☏ or so, there was no real noticeable differences in the amount of curd produced, nor the texture of the curd. I tried heating pots of milk to various temperatures (every five degrees between 150☏ and 190☏) before adding vinegar as a coagulant and observing the results. But is it really necessary to heat it that high? Most ricotta recipes call for heating the milk to 180☏, the temperature at which it starts to simmer. Here is a good explanation from Serious Eats about the temperatures. But turns out that you don't even need this much temperature (leave alone boiling the milk). Update: I was under the assumption that the specific heat was due to the addition of Heavy cream. Until the surface becomes foamy and steamy and an instant-read thermometer inserted in the milk registers 185F°. Also note that the leftover whey that you get from making Paneer cannot be used to make Ricotta, since it also uses Vinegar/lime juice. You can make Paneer the same way as this (in which case,the salt is not required, but can be added along with spices for interesting variations). Given that for being a vegetarian, making traditional ricotta is out of bounds since 99% of other traditional cheeses are made with animal rennet, I opt for making Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese In which case it becomes virtually similar to the Indian Cheese - Paneer. :) Note: Traditional Ricotta Cheese is made using leftover whey from making other cheeses, that use a coagulant like microbial, vegetable or animal rennet (example: Cottage Cheese, Mozzarella etc). But then - Simplicity is quite hard to achieve, as my parents often tell me. I say dream cos the cheese that you taste at the end of it, just doesn't deserve this kind of ease and simplicity. Its very simple to make, doesn't need my attention most of the time and is such a dream to make. But I definitely have the time to make waffles, pancakes, an occasional bread and at times something from scratch that's so simple that it doesn't even seem labor intensive.

No, I still don't have the time to make something as complex as an Austrian Apple Strudel or the energy to try something continuously for 8 times before hitting success.

How do i make cheese