Cooking advice: using ricotta in pasta sauce

manveruppd

manveruppd

manveruppd

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Bought this huge half-kilo chunk of soft ricotta cheese, and tried to make some pasta sauce using that and cream on two occasions, but the cheese refused to melt. The first time I tried it, I threw the ricotta (which I had chopped into small chunks) into the saucepan after I had poured in the cream. I left it gently simmering for 30', but the cheese refused to melt! The second time I thought I would try it differently, so I added the ricotta before pouring in the cream, by frying it over medium heat in butter (along with some onions and garlic). I thought that the cheese would melt in the butter and I could then pour in the cream, but, even though I had it over a reasonably low heat, it didn't even start melting. When I tried upping the heat, the little cubes of cheese started turning brown (which looked quite appetising but it wasn't really what I was looking for...), so I gave up and poured the cream in. 15' later I had a thick creamy sauce with unmelted chunks of cheese in it (again)!

Am I on to a loser here? Or am I just doing something wrong? Should I just give up and use the rest of the ricotta in a nice dessert? (Was thinking maybe in a crepe with banana and honey) Any advice from OcUK's resident gourmandes? :)
 
Ricotta doesn't really melt in the way you might expect or intend. It's good for a filling e.g. in tortelloni, ravioli, cannelloni. I think mascarpone probably would have been better, I don't think you did anything wrong.
 
I'd try putting the cheese in a glass bowl, and placing that above a boiling pan of water (in the same way you melt chocolate) and see if that works.
Failing that, adding a little hot water should break it down and allow you to spread it a bit better...
If you're doing it just in a pan, keep the temperature low and constant.
Though I don't think ricotta is really a meltable cheese.
 
Hmm... ok, I suspected as much, thanks for confirming it! I'll use the rest in some nice crepes with banana and honey then, unless anyone has any other easy dessert recipes that use it! I've got a big chunk of the stuff left so I can afford to experiment with a few different things!:p
 
Some cheeses like Ricotta and Feta simply refuse to melt. We use feta chunks in a greek tomatoey, onion and asparagus stew which we roast in the oven and they're still solid after half an hour of cooking.
 
Feta does melt. There's various varieties: mature feta is pretty hard and it'll probably take ages, but soft feta melts just fine, especially if you squish it into a paste with a fork before throwing it into the sauce rather than keeping it in cubes.
Halloumi isn't supposed to melt though, you can get it a little runny in an oven if it's hot enough but it'll never melt completely (unless it's cheap industrialised halloumi rather than proper traditional stuff).
 
When I use it, I basically cook the pasta, add the garlic, onions, rocket, lemon, etc (whatever), and stir in the ricotta just before serving.
 
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