Talk:Ricotta

Is ricotta a cheese or not?

From cheese: Cheese is a solid food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals. Cheese is made by curdling milk using a combination of rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidification. Bacteria acidify the milk and play a role in defining the texture and flavor of most cheeses. Some cheeses also feature molds, either on the outer rind or throughout.

Since ricotta is NOT made by the milk itself, but by curdling the whey, technically it shouldn't be a true cheese. The Italian wikipedia in fact classifies it correctly as a dairy product. --Cyclopia 11:04, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

In my personal opinion, you're splitting hairs. As any 10 people on the street what ricotta is, I guarantee all 10 will say cheese. --[[User:Kid_Orgo|Kid_Orgo}} 12:17, December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but they could all be wrong. :) As any 10 people on the street you ask what Pluto is, they'll answer "a planet", but it is no more classified as such. We are building an encyclopaedia, that is a repository of hopefully correct information, not of "what people of the street think" information. So, splitting hairs is just our work. Since the word cheese has a given definition, and the status of ricotta does not fit in the given definition, I guess it is not a cheese (unless we change the definition of cheese). Of course I'm all for specifying this is a purely technical question: something like "Ricotta is not technically a cheese, because... but, for all practical matters, it is treated and classified as such". --Cyclopia 13:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Cyclopia. From "The Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst: "Technically, this type of ricotta is not really a cheese because it's made from a cheese by-product." She draws a distinction between Italian ricotta, which is made from whey, and American-made ricotta, which is usually made from a combination of whey and milk. User:24.6.7.233

The technicality here is insignificant IMO. Whey is a milk product. The process is (in very general): milk -> whey -> ricotta. The fact that there is a "whey" step in this process does not make it a non-dairy product! Other types of modern cheese may also undergo elaborate processes to reach the final product, but they are still considered cheeses as they are made of milk. Whey protein comes from milk, it doesn't simply appear in the substance. When analyzing the ingredients of this product, the bottom line is that it is made almost entirely of milk (since whey is milk stripped of casein and most fats). This makes it fully compliant with the definition of cheese -- "'a solid food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals'". --Sagie 10:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would certainly class Ricotta as a cheese. You could equally argue that when making ricotta from Cheddar Cheese Whey, that Cheddar cheese is a by-product of Ricotta making. Regardless ricotta still requires acidification, and cheesemaking processes. Avenger93 (talk) 02:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Ricotta is not cheese, it is a dairy product. Both "The Food Lover's Companion" and Jenkins's primer state that Ricotta isn't a cheese. This, along with the popular (but technically incorrect) notion, should be reflected in the Wikipedia entry. Remember that Wikipedia is not a place to present your original research [1] or point of view [2].

Sslevine (talk) 06:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Milk > Ricotta

Ricotta can be made from milk. Commercially and in Italy it may be made from whey, but it isn't the only method. Njál 09:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Just to back myself up, the first sentence from the second link in the article: "Ricotta is a heat/acid precipitated cheese that can be made from whole or skim milk." Njál 09:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Whey cheese

To the extent that ricotta is made from whey, not milk, it is a "whey cheese", and it is not the only one. Whether "whey cheese" is a kind of cheese or not can be discussed in that article (which I just started)... --Macrakis (talk) 13:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Whey as an environmental hazard

Regarding the "dubious" noted in the Ricotta article.

I am from NZ with a history in Dairy Manufacture. Traditionally whey was discarded, and infact in many places whey is still discarded and used for irrigation. However it was often done in a haphazard manner, by dumping large volumes into waterways. Which would then move down the rivers in a slug. The high protein loading would depleat oxygen from the river, and the water would go black, and smell terrible. The same happened over time to pastures immediatley around dairy factories, high protein loads would lead to low oxygen in the soils, algaes would grow and seal off the soil surfaces. Currently irrigation of whey is carefully controlled, typically trucks are used to spray whey periodically onto pastures. Care is taken not to apply too much in one place, as protein loading, or low pH can "scorch" the grasses.Avenger93 (talk) 02:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

While whey is certainly an environmental hazard when dumped in concentration on either land or water, this cheesemaking byproduct is easily handled by the kind of normal septic systems used by small scale artisan or farmstead cheesemakers in the USA. Most farmstead operations, however, either spray the whey onto their fields or feed it to hogs (or sell it to hog farmers), which grow handsomely on this feed. (Large scale cheese manufacturers turn their whey into either ricotta or dry it to a powder used in protein drinks.) Of course some small scale operations turn the whey into ricotta cheese. The article, however, states that when Romano cheesemakers discovered that dumping whey constituted an environmental hazard they discovered ricotta in order to deal with this situation. This makes no sense. I have no idea who or when ricotta was discovered but it (or at least its whey cheese forefathers) surely goes back to ancient times and was discovered for the very simple reason that simply dumping whey to no feed, fertilizer or ricotta use is the same as dumping money down the drain -- the milk it started from wasn't free and not to maximize the use of every bit of recoverable protein is a waste that represents poor farm and/or creamery management. .96.251.8.230 (talk) 22:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC) M. Logan USA