Ricotta ice cream
Ricotta by the bucketful: milky, mild and with that fresh-curd note that makes it unmistakable. Barely sweet and very fine.
Ricotta is not a cheese, it is a re-cooked product: it is made by heating the whey left over from another cheese. Its protein has therefore already been through heat once and holds up better than that of a fresh cheese.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The ricotta goes in on the way down, as it passes 40 °C. It is not pasteurised with it inside.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Dense and buttery, with the ricotta's grain broken down but still perceptible. It carries barely any milk powder because the cheese already brings the protein, and the pinch of salt lifts a flavour that would otherwise fall flat.
Everything about this ricotta ice cream
The ricotta makes up half the recipe, and brings fat, protein and water with it. So the base is deliberately lean: very little cream and the rest milk. The ice cream lands inside the band but at the low end, for both fat and solids, and that is what gives it its lightness.
Among the sugars, dextrose leads, with sucrose and 38 DE glucose behind. It is a split that lowers the freezing point without cloying: the sweetness and the serving temperature stay where they belong. Just enough that an ice cream this high in protein doesn't come out hard as a rock.
Timing is what sets this recipe apart from the fresh-cheese one. There the cheese goes in with the mix already at 4 °C; here the ricotta is added on the way down, at around 40 °C, with the stick blender. At that temperature it breaks down far better and there is still no risk of it splitting.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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