Let me start this out by stating that, as a kid, I hated (HATED!!!) buttermilk. It made me gag. No matter how many times I was told it was yummy. No matter how many quarts of the stuff we bought and guzzled down in the car on the way home from the store (with those packets of salt and pepper from the glove box) , no matter how many times I was assured that (just like coffee) SOME day you will love it!!!! No matter how many times… I swore it would never be true.
Now don’t get me wrong… I still can not stand fig newtons. Love figs but those cookies… nope.
Coffee… lol… oh yeah. Came to love that.
I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of buttermilk.
Until this week.
I read online that someone was making their own buttermilk and figuring out how to store it longer term. They touted the wonders of buttermilk. THEY loved the stuff with salt and pepper too. What is with the salt and pepper thing??? Okay… different strokes for different folks… but the cooking with buttermilk and the marinating with buttermilk and the yadda yadda yadda with buttermilk. And they make their own… and you can make YOUR own… and… hmmm
huh… I like ranch dressing.
I wonder…
So… went shopping (we needed bread) and decided to pick up a quart of buttermilk just to see. Turns out it doesn’t make me gag. It’s not coffee by any stretch of the imagination but it doesn’t totally suck either. Ranch dressing… biscuits… pancakes… huh…
So… I used a cup of the quart of buttermilk I bought (it’s 1%… interesting) and 3 cups of milk and put it in a quart jar and set the quart jar in my greenhouse. It has to stay at 70 – 80 degrees for 10 to 12 hours in order to… uh… process.
I wasn’t confident. Frankly I was pretty sure I had managed to mess it up some how. People talked about wrapping it in towels and sitting it on top of the fridge. It’s not like yogurt, you don’t have to heat and cool the milk first. It’s supposed to be fairly fool proof. But they certainly don’t know this fool….
So I sat it in there and left it.
I went back and fetched it about 8 hours later. It was supposed to be thick like buttermilk and it was still pretty much milky texture. I was sure I screwed it up.
So I sat it on my stove with the over the stove light on… that was keeping stuff pretty warm… yeah… maybe…
Went to watch UP…
Came back and…wow… it was thicker. It looked kind of separated at the time (thinner clearer stuff on the bottom… thicker kind of gloppier looking stuff on top. I shook it up real well, stuffed it dejectedly in the fridge (it really didn’t look like I expected) and went to bed.
Got up this morning and did my morning stuff… and decided to check. What the heck. I wasn’t actually OUT much. If I screwed it up, I have enough to try again. If it worked… I could freeze some of it and start another batch. This stuff, apparently, freezes for like 3 months for use in cooking and if you do it right considerably longer (as long as you’re not drinking it… and I’m probably not…).
Poured about an inch in a glass and tried it. It hadn’t separated out again. It was thick-ish and smelled right. Tasted it and, sure enough… buttermilk.
SO… verdict…
If you have/like/cook with buttermilk and you don’t always have access to it (or the price is just a little ‘ouch’ for a quart… here is what I did…
Yes, I had to cough up $1.50 for a quart of buttermilk. I got the store brand because…. well… that’s all they had.
1 cup of buttermilk
3 cups of milk
quart jar
pour the milks right out of the fridge into the jar
put on the lid
sit where it’s going to be reasonably warm. Apparently too warm can curdle it but all you have to do is wisk it well to fix that.
wait about 10 – 12 hours
poof… buttermilk.
Today I’m measuring out a cup of the new stuff and seeing how many ice cubes are a cup… freezing the quart… and bagging up all that I have in the jar in the freezer and starting another batch. And it’s like yogurt… once you have made a batch… making the next batch is just using a bit of this batch to start that batch.
Wish me luck
The saga continues
Granny Fricket
June 4, 2020
Granny Fricket's Thicket 