What can I make with ricotta cheese?
Ricotta Cheese carries a dish on its own. Recipes using ricotta cheese are below, plus notes on melting it without turning it stringy or greasy.
2 recipes with ricotta cheese
Cooking with ricotta cheese without splitting or clumping
- 1Bring ricotta cheese closer to room temperature before it meets heat; cold dairy in a hot pan is what curdles.
- 2Add it off the heat or on the lowest setting, stirring constantly.
- 3A teaspoon of flour or cornstarch stabilises a sauce and keeps it glossy.
- 4Salt and acid go in at the end - both encourage splitting when added early.
What goes well with ricotta cheese
Ricotta Cheese is at its best with bread, tomato, basil, black pepper, honey and pasta. Any two or three of those, plus ricotta cheese, is already a dinner rather than an ingredient list.
Storing ricotta cheese
Keep ricotta cheese in the main body of the fridge, not the door, where the temperature swings most. Wrap cheese in paper rather than plastic so it can breathe. Hard cheeses freeze acceptably for cooking; fresh dairy does not freeze well.
Substituting ricotta cheese
If you are out of ricotta cheese, look for something that behaves the same way in the pan rather than something that tastes the same. Match the moisture level, the cooking time, and the richness, and adjust the liquid slightly if your substitute releases more water. When in doubt, describe what you actually have in the chat and Mr. Chef will rewrite the recipe around it.
Ricotta Cheese recipes: common questions
- What can I make with ricotta cheese and not much else?
- Plenty. With ricotta cheese plus an onion, garlic, oil, and salt you already have the base of a skillet dinner, a soup, or a simple sauce. Add a starch - rice, pasta, bread, or potatoes - and it becomes a full meal. The recipes above are ordered so the ones needing the fewest extra items come first.
- What is the quickest ricotta cheese recipe?
- Look for the entries above marked 20 minutes or less. As a rule, anything cut small and cooked in a hot pan beats anything roasted whole, and one-pan recipes save more time in cleanup than in cooking.
- Can I substitute ricotta cheese?
- In most recipes yes, as long as the replacement plays a similar role - similar moisture, similar cooking time, similar richness. Swapping across roles (a watery vegetable for a starchy one, for instance) usually needs a change in liquid or cooking time too.
- How do I use up leftover ricotta cheese?
- Fried rice, a frittata, a grain bowl, a soup, or a quesadilla will absorb almost any leftover ricotta cheese without a recipe. If you want something specific, tell Mr. Chef exactly what is in the fridge and it will build a recipe around it.