How to make buttermilk from milk?
You will need buttermilk for so many classic recipes, but why is it so necessary? It seems to be more on reputation than anything else. There are so many conflicting opinions on what makes buttermilk important that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. In this blog post, I’m going to share methods with you about how to make buttermilk from milk.
The truth is that the name “buttermilk” is misleading. Just like “imbibed” means soaked in, buttermilk isn’t made by any special process or ingredient. The real secret lies in the texture, which is much different from regular milk, and it only takes a few minutes to make.
Method to make buttermilk from milk
In order to make buttermilk, you firstly need milk and a jar. If the milk has been homogenized, you will have to let it sit out for a while, because it’s difficult for the natural buttermilk culture to penetrate the emulsion. If there is a rising action going on in your kitchen, you can just let it sit out on your counter top. Otherwise, put the milk in the refrigerator overnight so that those rising actions stop.
In the morning, once your culture has established itself nicely in there, take some of your milk and pour it into a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Let it sit there for 24 hours at room temperature.
You’ve just made your own buttermilk! Now, if you want to store it, you can simply pour the buttermilk into a container and refrigerate it. Otherwise, you can use the rest of the milk in any recipe that calls for buttermilk. If you have any surplus, consider straining it through butter muslin or cheese cloth to make dairy buttermilk butter.
Uses of buttermilk
You can use this buttermilk as a shortcut for making yogurt. If you’ve ever had commercial yogurt made with colostrum, it serves as a shortcut to make yogurt. The colostrum has the good bacteria and it turns the milk into yogurt culture. That way, you don’t need to buy and store separate cultures and instead just let your milk sit out at room temperature for 24 hours, or warm up your milk the next day by the window sill if you live in a warm climate.
You can also use buttermilk as an ingredient for fruit salads and crumbles. Just combine it with some other fruit and make a crumble while the milk cultures. Use this recipe as a guideline, because you can always add more fruit, or try different combinations.
You can also use buttermilk in place of sour cream for dips and spreads. It adds a nice tangy flavor to many recipes, and it’s especially good in macaroni salad. The only downside is that there are no protein foods in buttermilk, so you can’t just eat it straight for breakfast the way you do with sour cream.
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Buttermilk serves multipurposes
Buttermilk serves so many purposes in several different dishes. Buttermilk is used in baked goods, dressings, sauces, dips, and more. The most common use is when you are making biscuits or pancakes. You need to make sure that they are made with buttermilk or they will be flat and hard. You can also use it to make cakes without eggs too. To do this you would use your flour sifted with baking powder instead of eggs. Another great example of buttermilk is for cakes which are made without eggs. Try buttermilk as a substitute for your egg in pancakes, waffles, and muffins.
Buttermilk is also used to make chiffon cakes, and it is used to balance the sweet and sour flavors of recipes that call for buttermilk. When you want a sweeter flavor than milk would give, you can use buttermilk as a substitution. A good example of this would be the recipes that contain lemon juice. When making cakes without eggs, use ½ cup of buttermilk instead so they don’t taste dry.
Final lines
In the blog, we covered how you can make buttermilk from milk, and where/how it can be used.