After months of waiting, I have finally gained access to fresh, raw milk from one clean, happy cow who lives about 5 miles from my home. She had a calf several months ago and we had to wait for the calf to be weened before we could get the milk again. I got my first gallon yesterday. It's so cool to see "bottled 02/07/2011" on the jug.
I decided to make butter and buttermilk with the cream. With that I'm going to make buttermilk biscuits. With 1 quart of the milk, I am going to make yogurt. The yogurt should yield about 3 cups of whey, which I will make fermented pancakes with 2 cups and ferment some pickles and salsa with the rest. The other 2 quarts of milk we will just drink or use in other recipes.
To make the butter and buttermilk, allow the cream to separate from the milk over night in the refrigerator.
Use a turkey baster to move the cream to a clean glass jar. I love the Smuckers Peanut Butter jars. Close the lid very tight so that it won't spill.
Now you can start shaking the jar. Who needs a shake weight? :) Just about the time where you begin to think, "This lady is crazy! I'm being punked! It's not going to do anything in this jar!"...suddenly it will separate. It takes about 30 minutes of shaking. You could use a whisk or mixer but you should probably burn off the fat before eating by shaking for 30 minutes. :)
About 15 minutes into shaking, it will become whipped cream. At this point you can add sugar and put it on some strawberries or home made pumpkin pie. Or, keep shaking for butter and buttermilk.
When you see that it has changed, strain the contents and separate them into clean glass jars. Keep refrigerated. You can salt the butter if you would like.
My mom has a great blog on making yogurt and cream cheese. You can follow her
recipe using some of the remaining milk in the jug. I have a yogurt maker so I use that, but she has a great step by step on how to get the milk ready for the yogurt maker if you don't have yogurt cultures. Here's my raw milk in a yogurt maker.
After making the yogurt, you can strain off the whey by using a clean linen over a strainer and clean glass bowl and let it sit for about 1-2 hours. You can do it longer, but I'd put it in the fridge for longer periods. The salsa and pickle recipes are from Nourishing Traditions. I'll post them later this week. Next week we will probably make ice cream!
so the buttermilk really is yogurt?
ReplyDeleteMegan, raw milk separates into cream and milk if left alone. The cream can be churned to separate into butter and buttermilk. When you separate the cream from milk, you are left with about 3 quarts of basically skim milk because you took the cream off. That milk can be used to make the yogurt. It will be low fat yogurt since the cream was removed. Thanks for reading my blog and commenting. God bless!
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