Why make buttermilk?
I use it in many recipes that call for soaking grains (more about that below). In these same recipes you could also use Kefir or yogurt, but I found this to be the easiest and the most economical. Also, for those times that I’m not baking as much, it keeps for a longer time in my frig (for months). Nourishing Traditions
WHOLE-MILK / RAW MILK BUTTERMILK
- 1 quart whole milk, raw milk is best…NEVER USE ULTRAPASTEURIZED!
- 1/2 c. starter from a previous batch – or for a new starter visit my resources page.
I put this is the same 1/2 gallon ball jars we keep our raw milk in, cover, shake it up good and set it on the counter 12-24 hours – depends on room temps, etc. You can tell by the sour smell when it’s ready – it’s not an unpleasant sour smell though. NT says it is done when the milk thickens and it curdles slightly. Store it in the refrigerator. THAT’S IT!
Now you’ve got a good “acid medium” to use in recipes that you start by soaking the night before – this breaks down the phytic acid in the grains in your recipe, so they’re much more nutritious and easier to digest. I use this in my pancakes, in my homemade bread, etc.
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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Erin 01.06.09 at 11:18 pm
ok, i REALLY want to get my hot li’l hands on some Buttermilk starter, but in the NT book, the source listed only has a phone number! WHAT??!!! no email? No website. How ridiculously low tech!
How ridiculous that I can’t seem to pick up a phone & call!
Just venting!
Any So Cal Bloggies aware of another way to get some? Care to share?
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Kelly 01.07.09 at 1:10 am
Erin, I’ve got some right here in my frig for you…planning a trip to Michigan anytime soon?
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Martha 01.26.09 at 11:03 am
Can I use store bought buttermilk as the starter?
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Kelly 01.27.09 at 8:51 pm
Martha,
I think you can (if someone knows differently let me know), but it’s just not as good as raw. But then you can use starter from that batch for the next, and the next, and soon it will be mostly raw anyway.
Kelly
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Kelly 01.27.09 at 10:41 pm
Martha, I just saw this post soon after the comment above – you may want to rethink using commercial buttermilk…check out the label in this post.
http://www.foodrenegade.com/2009/01/26/how-to-make-buttermilk/
Kelly
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Martha 01.30.09 at 12:33 pm
Thank you, Kelly. I went and looked at the buttermilk in my fridge after reading that article. Wow! I constantly read lables, but hadn’t read the buttermilk carton for some reason. It isn’t as bad as the posted one, but still has some weird stuff in it. I am really looking forward to getting my raw goat’s milk again, so I can sour it instead of buying buttermilk for soaking my pancake mix overnight. The farmer we were getting our cow milk from sold his small herd, so that is no longer an option.
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Annette 02.18.09 at 2:59 am
Hi Kelly,
Love the blog! I have been making buttermilk from culture I bought from Nick’s Natre Nook I think it was called and they said to sterlize your raw milk as a seed starter and use that to make buttermilk with raw milk. They said if you didn’t do that eventually the raw milk would “overcome” the culture. Just curious if that has happened to you yet becuase it’s an added step to sterilize and maintain a seed starter in addition to making the buttermilk and one more jar to keep separate from my other dairy projects (sour cream, kefir, yogurt). They cross culture if you have them close to each other.
Thanks for the post!
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Kelly 02.18.09 at 11:30 pm
Annette, I’d never heard this stuff. I wonder how I would know if it “overcomes” the culture? Would it just not thicken up much???
I don’t want to sterilize, I love the enzymes in there and all the other goodies in raw milk. I’ll have to look into this more.
Thanks!
Kelly
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Annette 02.19.09 at 12:01 am
They still make the batch with raw milk but they make a sterlized “seed” which they keep separate so that it stays strong. If you’ve been making yours for awhile with no seed then it should be fine. It’s really a pain making a separate seed then waiting for that to set up then making the buttermilk. We are going through so much of it soaking the grains before I make anything that I can’t seem to stay on top of keeping enough in the house!
We are new converts to raw milk as of the first of the year and my Nourishing Traditions book just came in the mail today so it will be helpful to have some recipes to go along with the doctrine. It’s hard trying to figure out how to feed my family! Plus I pledged as of 1/1 to only shop from farmers so our pantry is clearing out fast. Feeling like I’ve had a lot of flops to successes in the kitchen lately…
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Kelly 02.20.09 at 12:29 am
I have a lot of flops too, but yet over the years I think I’m becoming a much better cook because of it.
COOL about your commitment to only shop from farmers!! Just curious, do you have any teenagers? (Mine already complains, I can’t imagine what the “poor boy” would do if we had NOTHING in our pantry!) And where do you live?
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Annette 02.20.09 at 1:14 am
I have young kids who dearly love their breakfast cereal but much easier to control then teenagers. Now we are starting into the school lunchbox comparisons with other kids who get ding dongs and juice boxes. I’m hoping I can indoctrinate them well mwa ha ha.
I am in Seattle where we have year round farmers markets but I just bought the book 4 season harvest so next winter I’m hoping to grow my own greens in covered raised beds. If he can do it in Maine I can do it in Seattle. Of course, the grass has to come out first.
Yes, I’m hoping my blog doesn’t start to read like Shackleton’s diary…Day 74 – ate the last of the cereal and crackers…running out of energy…kids are starting to look tasty…
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Annette 02.20.09 at 1:17 am
Oh yes, back to the buttermilk question. So you just make buttermilk indefinitely from the previous batch made with raw milk and it works each time? I’m afraid to skip the “seed” step and then have to order more culture. I have some freeze dried culture packets inthe freezer from a cheesemaking place but it doesn’t taste as amazing as what I got from Nick’s and it’s too chunky for my liking. And boy are we going through the buttermilk lately. Lots of new babies so I’m cooking for everyone. And of course you can’t make muffins or dumplings or bread or scones without buttermilk.
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Kelly 02.21.09 at 2:28 am
Annette,
I’m thinking what your kids will start to look more like (instead of tasty) is HEALTHY!
(BTW, my husband loves that book, but I haven’t read it yet.)
For the buttermilk, yes, you keep using 1/2 c. buttermilk from a previous batch as a starter in the next batch. You can do that indefinitely with buttermilk, but with kefir it will eventually lose it’s oomph and you have to re-start it.
You keep up 3 blogs? Yikes! That’s a lot of work! The pic of your son on the trike cracked me up.
Kelly
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Katie 03.11.09 at 11:01 pm
Kelly,
I can’t find anyone talking about the difference between “cultured” buttermilk (what you describe) and the buttermilk that actually comes from making butter (which I’m drowning in). I’m not sure how to use the latter — do you know? Can I use them interchangeably?
Thank you!!!
Katie’s last blog post..Mental Mission: Do you plan your meals?
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Annette 03.12.09 at 12:27 am
Hi Katie,
Kelly may have an answer too but the “cultured” buttermilk is just that – cultured with probiotics like whey, kefir, and yogurt are. What you have doesn’t have the same probiotic benefits. You can certainly use it in baking though since heat will destroy the probiotics anyway. It is much runnier then cultured buttermilk and does not contain the butterfat content (since cultured buttermilk from raw milk is whole milk and you took the fat out when you made the butter.) So you will need to compensate by adding more butter/fat and possibly a little more flour to your recipe.
I got a wonderful buttermilk culture from http://stores.ebay.com/Nicks-Natural-Nook_Organic-Milk-Kefir-Grains_W0QQfsubZ18640103QQfrsrcZ1 that I just got cocky about (didn’t reculture it for 2 weeks) and it died so I just had to order another one. It’s worth it – so sweet and yummy tasting, almost as thick as my cultured yogurt! I miss it and it’s only been 1 day.
So, if you buy one be sure and nurture it. If you do it will last indefinitely.
Annette’s last blog post..Trading Convenience for Conscience
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Kelly 03.13.09 at 12:00 am
Katie,
Do you have the Nourishing Traditions cookbook? Annette explained it well, but there’s more info in NT, too.
Kelly
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Katie 03.14.09 at 10:17 pm
Thank you, Annette! Kelly, I need to get NT out from the library again…and put it on my wish list! I’m a relative newbie to all of this, having just read NT in December. But we’re getting raw milk, and I can’t help but make yummy butter with about a cup of cream from each gallon. I made biscuits tonight with the “buttermilk”, and they turned out fine. It did use a lot less liquid than usual and I added a little bit of flour, but they were yummy. Maybe I’ll go over and link to your biscuits post of this week with my experiment…
Katie’s last blog post..Food for Thought: Menu Planning
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Annette 03.16.09 at 1:55 am
Hi Katie,
I’d love to see a post on how you make butter! Or how much butter you get from how much milk. It’s so hard to find local pastured raw butter and crazy how expensive it is to have it flown in!
Annette’s last blog post..Healthy Traditional Orange Marmalade
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Rebecca K 03.17.09 at 3:00 pm
Kelly (and all posting comments),
I was speaking with the woman from the farm where we get our raw milk today. I was hoping to get some buttermilk cultures from her. She suggested that she regularly uses kefir culture and then uses the resulting kefir in anything for soaking etc. She recommended that I use 1 ounce / quart of milk. She also mentioned that she freezes the kefir (and my yogurt) in ice cube trays, resulting in a 1 ounce block which she then continues to use to make her kefir. She thinks that kefir has a better flavor than buttermilk.
Also, I am able to get “skimmed” raw milk free from her after she makes her butter. We are only able to afford to buy 2 gal of raw milk a week, so we use store whole milk for yogurt and cooking and drink the raw milk. I was told by a previous raw milk farmer that skimmed raw milk is the same “fat ratio” as the “whole milk” in the store…my current farmer disagrees….do you know anything about this?
Also, I too was told to “scald” my raw milk and then make yogurt (buttermilk etc) out of it so you kill the bacteria in the milk to introduce your culture.
Help! I get so confused when I hear conflicting stories! Any advice you can offer I would appreciate.
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Katie 03.17.09 at 9:56 pm
Annette,
I’m honored that you’re looking for tips from me! It’s actually so easy I’m embarrassed to say it. I’ll make a post at my site after Friday — I feel like including some photos anyway. You only get about 1/3 cup butter and 2/3 cups buttermilk from a cup of cream. I’m really curious as to whether I can freeze the cream and just make a big batch all at once, so I’ll be testing that soon. You can, of course, freeze the butter and buttermilk. The buttermilk worked fine in place of milk for waffles, too.
Katie’s last blog post..Monday Mission: Meal Planning
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Kelly 03.17.09 at 11:22 pm
Hi Rebecca,
Yes, that is right that you can use kefir in place of yogurt or buttermilk in recipes for soaking. I actually may try that, thanks for the reminder about another good alternative.
Sorry, but I don’t know the answers to your other 2 questions. I’ll try asking a couple knowledgeable people I know and get back to you – it pays to have smart friends!
Kelly
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Annette 03.18.09 at 12:23 am
Hi Rebecca,
I make yogurt with raw milk (and cultured buttermilk and kefir) but before I make a culture I make a “seed” with scalded milk. I take that seed and use it to make yogurt in raw milk. Each week I take my seed and propogate a small amount of scalded milk. So each time I make my “eating” yogurt or buttermilk with raw milk but make the “seed” or “mother” with scalded milk. Does that makes sense? That way I get all the benefits of the raw milk and the benefits of the probiotics in the culture. If you don’t re-seed each week the culture will eventually weaken, which happened to my last batch and I had to buy them new again.
Annette’s last blog post..Tired of Food Recalls?
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Annette 03.18.09 at 12:30 am
Katie,
You’re so sweet – I can’t wait to see the post! We have extra milk this week since my 5 year old is finally getting to see his snowbird granny so maybe we’ll put butter on our list of experiments for next week. We just made fruit leather, ice cream & cajeta today so I’m experimented out! And I plan to make Kelly’s soaked granola with a spin next week – I have an idea up my sleeve that hopefully will turn out…I love playing off everyone’s recipes. It’s like NT opened up a whole new world for me! Kelly, you really should call this “Kelly’s Kitchen” because I feel like we are all just sitting down sipping lattes and visiting at your house.
Annette’s last blog post..Tired of Food Recalls?
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Kelly 03.18.09 at 8:40 am
Annette,
I know, isn’t it so fun?!
I can’t wait to find out if your “spin” on my granola recipe brings it out of the “astroturf” category. Be sure to comment there with your results!
Do you have a post at your site with your exact yogurt recipe? I think some of my readers would like to see it, although I am terrible about keeping up on things myself, so if that’s necessary (to keep it from going bad), then I’ll stick to my raw milk yogurt. I don’t heat it at all, and therefore it’s very runny/clumpy, but I use it in recipes or to make cream cheese.
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Kelly 03.18.09 at 8:48 am
Rebecca,
Not only do I have smart friends, but they’re also fast at replying to email! These 2 friends have a lot of experience with traditional cooking and they also started our local WAP chapter in GR, so they know what they’re talking about – here’s their answers to your questions:
Kelly,
I don’t know anything about the fat ratio in milk. Maybe ask Karen.
About the scalding, Sally actually recommends doing that, too, but Ron Schmid disagrees. I make what I consider perfectly fine cultured milk products w/o scalding, using totally raw milk. I guess it’s a preference, but why heat the milk if you don’t have to?
Hope this helps a bit.
Kathy
Hi Kelly,
It depends. If you mechanically separate the cream from the milk you get virtually all of the cream so the milk is skimmed milk whether it’s raw or pasteurized. If you have cows with a lot of cream in their milk, and you remove only some of that for other purposes (by hand), you could easily still have a whole milk left.
You can make yogurt from unheated or heated milk. The heat kills any competing bacteria, even the good ones, to make room for the bacteria you are choosing. I have found that I never need to heat the milk for buttermilk–it appears to be a very strong culture. If I don’t heat the milk for yogurt it remains quite soupy about half the time–maybe not as prolific a culture. I find that I only need to go to about 140 to make it work consistently, though, not the 180 you usually read about.
Hope this helps!
Karen
Be sure to read the note from Annette above, though, for how she only heats PART of her raw milk when making yogurt. If I was making it weekly in order to eat it plain (or with fruit or whatever), I’d look into doing it this way so that you have a good consistency, but you’re not killing all the beneficial bacteria in the raw milk.
Kelly
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Rebecca K 03.18.09 at 9:11 am
Thank you all so much for all your comments and helpful hints! But of course, that just spurs more questions!
Annette, so for a seed I heat a portion of milk (1 cup? 2? how much?) to perhaps 140 degrees like Karen above recommends, cool it, and add my culture, then mix it into the rest of my milk for incubating? (In my case I make a 1/2 gal at a time)? Is that correct? Then when the yogurt is done incubating I take a little off the top again to keep for seed for next time. I was just advised to store that seed or starter in the freezer in ice cube trays then use 1 ice cube / quart of milk…do you do this or have you heard of this?
I get cultures from Lehman’s which state they need to be renewed every month. Using the methods above do you think a culture can be kept indefinitely? What about for my kefir culture, which for all intents and purposes looked just like yogurt culture to me when I started it last night? Can that be continually used as well?
I will ask some questions about how the cream is skimmed…it seems superior to my husband and I to use skimmed raw farm fresh milk for buttermilk and yogurt than to use store milk…??? Any comments?
Thanks! Rebecca
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Rebecca K 03.18.09 at 9:15 am
OH, and what about keeping these cultures separate from each other? How far separate? Different shelves in the fridge and counters in the kitchen?
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Annette 03.18.09 at 11:20 am
I can post my dairy cultures to my blog hopefully tonight, I’ve been meaning to do that anyway. I think maybe you have a super strong strain of culture that doesn’t require re-seeding each week whereas mine is more delicate. The flavor is very delicate too so I’ll keep nurturing it along.
I’ll be back on late tonight West Coast time since it sounds like a meat eating dinosaur got into my house – I can hear him crashing furniture upstairs as we speak. It might just be my kids but you never can tell…
xo,
Annette
Annette’s last blog post..Tired of Food Recalls?
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Annette 03.18.09 at 11:28 am
The crashing stopped for a second.
Rebecca, I never thought of skimming the milk I use for buttermilk – that would give me some cream to make butter with! Great idea since we generally butter the things I bake with buttermilk anyway so it would all wash out in the bite.
You do need to keep them all separate. I’m having some culture funk right now but I have a small kitchen and a LOT of fermentation. The marmalade, 3 dairy cultures, apple cider vinegar and starting sauerkraut today hopefully. I keep them on separate shelves but it’s hard to remember to pair them (the seeds and the eating stuff). I need to come up with a color coded system or something.
When I do my post I can tell you how much of what I use to seed, etc but that doesn’t mean that the way Leeners does it is wrong – it may be their cultures are stronger so they can go longer. I just know I’m done experimenting with my cultures since I don’t want to chance losing them again. If I was just buying store bought buttermilk and using that culture it would be different.
As for freezing you certainly can do that and it’s a great idea. I do it with cheese culture and don’t know why I never thought of that before. The cheese culture is good in the freezer for 6 months that way and then you should re-seed it. If I had done that the first time I wouldn’t have had to purchase new culture!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Kefir_making/ is a kefir making group and website that will answer any question you have about kefir – and then some. It is filled with folks who share their live grains so you can email the right thread and find someone in your area who will donate you grains.
Now, hopefully I’ll post more tonight once I get the dinos in bed…
Annette’s last blog post..Tired of Food Recalls?
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Annette 03.19.09 at 3:32 am
Ok, I got it posted.
Off to bed.
Annette’s last blog post..Cultured Dairy Products
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Katie 03.21.09 at 12:07 pm
My “making butter” method is posted, just for you guys! Since my site is all about baby steps, butter from raw cream is about a year out for most of my readers, so it’s not a regular post. It’s a page you can link to at http://kitchenstewardship.wordpress.com/recipes/homemade-butter/. Enjoy! The butter is delish!
Katie’s last blog post..A Reduced Produce Primer
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Ruth Cornelson 06.15.09 at 2:50 pm
I have 2 gal. of milk right from the cow. How do I make fresh buttermilk? How do I know when my milk is right too start too work, to make my buttermilk?
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Kelly 06.19.09 at 10:57 am
Ruth, sorry but I don’t know what you’re asking me. To make fresh buttermilk, just follow the instructions in the post above. Sorry I’m not understanding, try asking again and I’ll try again to answer you.
Kelly
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Jeannine 09.19.09 at 7:42 pm
I’m cross posting this from the water kefir thread.
This website has an exhaustive list of people around the world who have kefir grains (milk or water) that they are willing to give away or share-for-the-price-of-postage.
http://www.torontoadvisors.com/Kefir/kefir-list.php
Sorry, I don’t know how to put this in as a hot link.
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Kari 01.29.10 at 10:43 am
Okay, have a question! I got some RAW cream on Tuesday. I went to get it today, and it smells like buttermilk and tastes sour??? Is it because I was shaking it before pouring it out? (sorry-used to conventional ultra-pasteurized) Is it more like buttermilk now? I’m bummed, because I LOVE it in my coffee. I was surprised it would turn so quick, but again, thought maybe its something I’ve done. Thanks for any insight.
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KitchenKop 01.29.10 at 8:41 pm
Kari,
I’ll bet it wasn’t fresh cream on Tuesday…
Shaking it won’t make it turn sour.
It won’t hurt you at all, it’s good for you (did you see the new-ish post all about that?), but not the taste you want in your coffee!
Kelly
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Jeannine 01.29.10 at 8:49 pm
Any baking recipe you have that uses sour milk would be FABULOUS with this sour cream. Irish soda bread, nut bread, etc. And of course, sour cream coffee cake would be divine!
Or strain it through cheesecloth and you’ve got creme fraiche. Ummmmmm.
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