Thursday, August 20, 2009
make your own buttermilk
Out of buttermilk and just itching to make some biscuits or lemon cake? Make your own by mixing 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice with 1 cup of milk and letting it sit until it curdles, about 10 minutes.
I read on other websites that it takes 1 tablespoon of lemon juice/vinegar instead of 1 teaspoon. Argh I’m confused!
Yes, it should definitely be one tablespoon for each cup of milk….
Yes, apologies. Fixed now.
I assume this would be made with whole milk? Or does it matter?
It actually doesn’t. But whole milk buttermilk is actually best for baking.
Where I live buttermilk is as expensive as gold, really. So I will try using your little trick next time.Thanks! By the way in Germany this is called ‘Dickmilch’ (thick milk) Buttermilk is only what’s left of the milk after churning butter and I think it’s totally fat-free, but still very yummy.
Can buttermilk be achieved by adding extra butter to heavy cream?
@7: That is not what is meant by buttermilk. #6 describes quite well what buttermilk is. It is not milk with extra butter, it is soured milk.
What you’re making here is called acidified buttermilk, which differs from cultured buttermilk. The cultured kind, in my opinion, has a superior taste and is much more suited for baking.
Here’s a page detailing how to make your own culture buttermilk by using the active cultures present in the store bought stuff:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/buttermilk.htm
You can also buy concentrated starters online, both liquid and dry.
BONUS: you can use the starter to make homemade sour cream (and mexican crema)
This may sound silly, but do you use the milk curdles and all?
Octel’s link is great!
Growing up in a household where my Mum used to churn butter from the cream layer atop fresh milk we bought at a local farmer’s, I always wondered why commercial “buttermilk” did not taste like butermilk at all..
Problem solved now!
Thanks.
Thank you so much! I’m been wanting to-well, actually, I haven’t thought much about it, but yes, merci beaucoup!
… and if you strain it, you have home made ricotta!! Yum!
am I crazy for wondering if can I just substitute plain yogurt for buttermilk? I figure they’re both cultured dairy, and I pretty much always have yogurt in my fridge, and I can never finish a carton of buttermilk without it going bad.
I love your blog. I’ve gone down many a rabbit-hole after reading it. My latest? I bought a share in a herd of cows & get raw milk. I’ve been making fresh dairy, like creme fraiche, sour cream, butter, etc. I made cultured butter last week. OMG, yum. Now I have fresh buttermilk (described in post 6). Can I use this buttermilk in your recipes or do I need to (*gasp*) make my own buttermilk like you suggest here? It would be a shame to waste this stuff that came off the butter, but I’m not sure it’ll work. Does anyone know?
I’m curious, too, Mile High Jen, whether the actual true, buttermilk (of which a cup is sitting in my fridge after making my own butter) will work in this recipe which seems to call for something fattier?
Deb, you mention that ‘whole milk buttermilk’ is better for the cake, but that’s actually an oxymoron! So I have the same question as Jen–do I go to another recipe for using up my fresh buttermilk?
Thanks!
Thankyou! This easy recipie for buttermilk has saved me today (it’s blowing a gale & I’m keen to stay indoors!) I used lemon juice rather than vinegar – recently read that vinegar is not a good friend to our liver…