Ricotta

Ricotta is made by reheating whey, the greenish liquid that stays in the vat after the curd has been lifted out to become cheese. This matters more than it sounds. Cheese is made by coagulating casein with rennet or acid; by the time the whey is left, the casein has gone off with the cheese. What sets in ricotta is the whey proteins (lactalbumin and lactoglobulin), which denature at around 85-90 °C and float to the surface in soft flakes.

So ricotta is legally a latticino, a dairy product, not a cheese, in both Italian and EU classification. Calling it a cheese is not a crime, but it misses the point: ricotta began as a way of rescuing a by-product. It was what shepherds ate while the pecorino went to market.

The name is literal. Ricotta means cooked again: the milk was heated once to make the cheese, and the leftover whey goes back on the fire a second time. A hundred litres of whey yields roughly four to seven kilos, depending on whether the original milk came from cows, sheep or buffalo.

Most dairies now add a little whole milk back to the whey, up to ten or fifteen per cent, to raise the yield and the creaminess. It is permitted and widespread, and it is why some industrial ricotta is denser and richer than the mountain version.

Clean, milky and faintly sweet, with almost no salt and no tang. It is the mildest thing in the Italian dairy repertoire, closer to warm milk than to cheese, and the texture is granular rather than smooth, made of tiny soft flakes that break apart on the tongue.

Sheep's ricotta, the kind used across Sicily and Lazio, is a different experience: richer, whiter, distinctly sweeter, with a lanolin-adjacent depth at the back that cow's milk never has. Buffalo ricotta is creamier still, with a faint iron note. Cow's ricotta, which is what most of the world buys, is the lightest and slightly the most acidic.

Eaten warm, straight from the vat, which is how it is sold in Sicilian dairies before noon, it tastes almost like a dessert without sugar. That version does not survive shipping, and it is the main reason ricotta has a reputation abroad for being bland.

For anything sweet, drain it and sieve it: two steps most recipes assume and almost nobody does. Leave the ricotta in a sieve over a bowl in the fridge for at least six hours, then push it through a fine mesh. That is what turns it into the smooth cream inside a cannolo or a pastiera. Do not use a food processor: the blades warm the fat and the result goes gluey.

For pasta fillings, drain it harder still. Excess water tears the sheet and floods the pan. Bind with egg and grated parmigiano, season at the end, and keep the filling firm enough to hold a spoon shape.

Ricotta gnocchi (drained ricotta, egg, flour, parmigiano, no potato) are the dish that rewards good ricotta most, because there is nothing else in them to hide behind.

The most underrated use is raw. Fresh sheep's ricotta on bread with olive oil, salt and black pepper is a complete thing. In Sicily it is eaten warm, straight from the vat, with a spoon and nothing else.

In baking, ricotta keeps cakes moist without the density of cream cheese. Italian cheesecakes are lighter and grainier than New York ones for exactly this reason. If a recipe wants cream cheese and you use ricotta, expect a looser, less sweet, more open crumb.

Fresh ricotta is a three-to-four-day product once it leaves the dairy, and industrial tubs run to the date printed on the lid, usually a couple of weeks unopened and a few days after that. Keep it on the coldest shelf, around 2 to 4 degrees, in its perforated basket or tub inside a closed container, and pour off the whey it sheds rather than leaving it to sit in the pool. It carries no salt and no rind and a great deal of water, which is why it moves faster than other fresh cheeses.

Day by day it keeps releasing liquid: the grain tightens, the surface goes glossy and slick, and the smell travels from sweet milk towards something sharper. Freezing halts that but rewrites the texture. Thawed ricotta is coarsely grainy and floods water, so it suits cooked fillings and savoury tarts rather than a spoon or a dessert; drain it first and use within two months. Ricotta salata behaves differently: wrapped in waxed paper it holds for months and simply hardens and grows saltier. The date on the tub and the dairy are the reference.

In a supermarket outside Italy most tubs are cow's-milk ricotta from a domestic dairy, and the label separates them. The list should be short: whey, sometimes milk, salt, an acidifier. Cream, milk powder, starch, guar gum or carrageenan point to a version built to survive distribution, which comes out firmer and smoother and tastes less of milk. Date length says the same thing: four or five days is the fresh article, three weeks is a different formulation. Sheep and buffalo ricotta are chalk white, cow's milk ivory to pale straw.

On the spoon it should break into grains rather than spread like a paste, and a film of whey should collect at the bottom of the tub. A tub with nothing loose in it has been thickened or pressed. Cottage cheese is the usual confusion in English-speaking shops, but its curds sit in salted liquid and stay separate; quark and fromage blanc are smoother and sharper. Ricotta salata, sold as a dry white block for grating, is the same word and a different product. Sheep ricotta at an Italian deli runs two to three times the supermarket price.

In the US, supermarket ricotta is almost always cow's milk and often contains gums or stabilisers. Read the label: whey, milk and salt is what you want, and anything with carrageenan, starch, milk powder or 'acidity regulator' has been built to survive distribution rather than to taste of milk. Expect 5 to 9 dollars a pound for a decent cow's version; Italian delis and cheese counters carry fresh sheep's ricotta at 10 to 16 dollars a pound, usually only in small quantities.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and larger supermarkets carry cow's ricotta at around 8 to 14 pounds a kilo. Sheep's ricotta is rare and worth asking a cheesemonger to order.

The single most useful test in the shop is the sell-by date. Real ricotta lasts four or five days. If a tub claims three weeks, it has been stabilised, ultra-filtered or heat-treated, and it will be denser and blander than it should be.

Whey separating in the tub is not a fault: it is the sign of an honest product. Drain it off, do not stir it back in.

Sicily, in the morning, is the answer most worth travelling for. Sheep's ricotta made at dawn is the foundation of Palermo's entire pastry tradition, and Piana degli Albanesi, half an hour from the city, is famous for cannoli filled with ricotta from its own dairies. In inland villages you can still watch the vat and eat it warm with a spoon.

In Lazio, the dairies of the Castelli Romani and the Maremma sell Ricotta Romana DOP while it is still tepid, made from the whey of pecorino romano production. It is startlingly sweet and explains the denomination better than any label.

In Campania, the buffalo dairies between Caserta and the Sele plain sell buffalo ricotta beside the mozzarella, and it is frequently the better item on the counter.

In Salento, look for ricotta forte, fermented for months into a sharp, pungent spread sold in jars in food shops and markets. Try it on bread with olive oil before deciding whether you like it. Most people know within one bite.