homemade buttermilk

[sidelock]

YEP, during the BIG WAR.

 

[George]

Sidelock, when milk sours it very soon makes 'clabber'. My memory of Grandmother's buttermilk left from churning butter is of a nice thick, creamy and sour milk, not the thin, blue, bland stuff often described as the milk left after butter is made. The only way that could happen, as I understand it, is if Grandmother's milk had clabbered before she churned it. If I ever knew about that, which I doubt, my 80+ year-old memory is failing me on that point.

Do you know if that is what happened when the old folks let their raw milk sour before making butter from it? Did they churn clabbered milk?

That thin, blue, bland stuff is what you get if you churn fresh milk that has not soured, you get sweet butter and basically whey.

Spence

 

[sidelock]

Yes I am sure they did. We had no refrigeration and they let it sit out for some time. You are right, it was much much better than what is available in stores today. I DO NOT feel underprivelaged to have grown up in that time.

 

[George]

I DO NOT feel underprivelaged to have grown up in that time.

I couldn't agree more. What an experience it was, and what heroes our families were to have provided for us as well as they did in sometimes dire circumstance. My family were like the snake, so poor it didn't have a pit to hiss in, but the memories, the memories, and the life lessons we were taught.

Spence

 

[sidelock]

My Wife remembers her mother letting the milk clabber as well. This was happening into the early 1960's.

 

[George]

Thank you, that's good to know.

Spence

 

[m-g willy]

Never heard of making your own buttermilk before this thread.. So I tried it with the only milk we had in the house whole milk with a mix of 1 part buttermilk with 4 parts whole milk..After 40 hours it was thick and creamy..Chilled it and it is GREAT!..Thanks for the info! :wink:

 

[George]

Update. I'm surprised to see I've been making homemade buttermilk for almost a year, thought I'd pass along my final method in case anyone else is a buttermilk addict. I have averaged a gallon every 7-10 days since last summer, have had not a single problem, let alone a failure.

I make each batch in the jug the skim milk comes in. I start with a fresh gallon of skim milk, remove 2 cups of it, replace them with 1 1/2 cups of my last batch of homemade buttermilk. The difference is so I can have some head space to shake and mix the batch thoroughly, which is very important.

I screw the original cap on the jug and leave it tight throughout the process. When I began this experiment I left the top open, covered it with cheesecloth and a rubber band so no pressure would build up if the fermentation process produced gas. That is not necessary.

I set the jug aside out of sunlight at room temperature, which in my house ranges 55°- 68° winter and summer. It is left undisturbed for 54 hours, 2 days and 6 hours. It will be clabbered/fermented in 24 hours or less, but for really good thick buttermilk, longer is definitely better.

I then empty the jug into a large bowl. It won't come out of the jug easily because of the thick, lumpy clabber/curds. I use a balloon wire whisk to stir it for a few seconds which easily breaks the curd and makes buttermilk. I stir in 1/2 tablespoon salt and return the mili to the jug and chill it. The fermentation process doesn't stop, of course, and the milk will continue to thicken. The sour taste stays nice for at least a week, which is about as long as the milk lasts before the next batch.

I grew up drinking buttermilk, so I know what old-fashioned home-churned buttermilk is. This is as close as could be to what I remember. I recommend it.

Spence

 

[WRustyLane]

I too, love to drink buttermilk. I only buy the Kroger brand since that is the only buttermilk that I will drink. All the other brands taste funny or even fake. I don't reckon I've ever had any home made buttermilk. I may have to give your recipe a try. Thanks for posting. I thought I was the only one that liked buttermilk. My wife makes me drink the low fat but I much prefer the whole buttermilk with the green cap. I drink about a gal./wk.

 

[Treestalker]

As a boy in the Williamson Settlement, I used to help Aunt Sadie 'churn' a batch of butter by shaking a quart jar full of cream, we would pass it back and forth as we visited. Made about a 1 1/2' thick slab of butter the size of the jar. The rest was buttermilk. Aunt Sadie walked alongside a covered wagon from Florida to East Texas when she was about 7 years old, about 1902. She was 80+ when we made butter. Pioneer!

 

[George]

I too, love to drink buttermilk.

It's good to have it around for those buttermilk biscuits, too.

Spence

 

[Nyckname]

I cannot find buttermilk locally, but only need it for a couple'f recipes, which I don't make often, so I do one tablespoon lemon juice plus enough whole milk or light cream to come up to a cup, and let sit for a bit. Works a charm.

 

[Two Elks]

I too grew up with buttermilk from the cream we churned for butter. What a delight to pour off the buttermilk and drink itr fresh from the churn. I haven't thought about buttermilk for years, and I'm going to try your recipe. BTW, we skimmed the cream off of the raw milk we cooled in gallon crocks in the refrigerator, and when we got enough we churned it.

A short story, as a kid it was usually my job to churn the cream, and it was a tiring job. One day I got the bright idea to hook up one of Dad's electric motors to the churn with a V-belt and pulleys on each and with my mother holding the churn and me holding the motor I plugged it in. 30 seconds later the little screen on the churn blew off along with a churn full of cream - all over us, the walls, the ceiling and anything else within 15'. Needless to say, we went without butter for awhile and me washing down the whole kitchen was a whole lot harder than turning the crank on that churn.

Thanks Spence for bringing back some good ole memories.........

 

[herbpagel]

Great story, Two Elks. Many people have had only the cultured buttermilk from the store in paper cartons. Real buttermilk from the churn, chilled in the refrigerator, is a delightful drink with fresh biscuits slathered with freshly churned butter. Store-bought buttermilk doesn't compare.

 

[Kansas Jake]

I turned the crank on a churn a lot as a kid. We had both a small jar churn that held about a gallon of cream and a larger one. I loved the butter, but never developed a taste for buttermilk. Mom used some for cooking, but most of it got fed to the hogs mixed with grain.

 

[45man]

So true, back long ago buttermilk had tiny flakes of butter in it and it was cultured, not soured with acids. But those were long ago when glass bottles of milk were delivered on the porch. Big head of cream under the paper lid that I got first off. We actually had an ice box with blocks delivered. An old guy drove a wagon up the hill with horses to collect paper and rags.
Does that tell you how old I am?
I love bacon and home made the best, 1/2# at a sitting with a bunch of eggs and toast. Lard was used to cook. Bacon fat was hoarded. During the war butter could not be found so they made some white muck in a bag with a yellow dye capsule that you broke to knead the bag to look like butter.
Tell me your stories.

 

[herbpagel]

That was margarine (short for oleomargarine). It was illegal in Minnesota at one time. People would bring it in from Iowa. Finally, the legislature (controlled by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor DFL party) woke up to the fact that farmers grow corn and soybeans, which were used to make oleo. I was pretty young when I saw the plastic bag with the capsule of yellow dye in it. That was back in the day of streetcars and Lone Ranger on the radio.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Sidelock, when milk sours it very soon makes 'clabber'. My memory of Grandmother's buttermilk left from churning butter is of a nice thick, creamy and sour milk, not the thin, blue, bland stuff often described as the milk left after butter is made. The only way that could happen, as I understand it, is if Grandmother's milk had clabbered before she churned it. If I ever knew about that, which I doubt, my 80+ year-old memory is failing me on that point.

Do you know if that is what happened when the old folks let their raw milk sour before making butter from it? Did they churn clabbered milk?

That thin, blue, bland stuff is what you get if you churn fresh milk that has not soured, you get sweet butter and basically whey.

Spence

Hi Spence,

My Grandfather also enjoyed his Clabber, but it was NOT the same as the buttermilk. He was a rancher but also kept a milk-cow and we learned how to milk her at a young age. Thankfully, Grandpa would take over after a minute or two - it was hard work.

Grandma would actually set aside some of this milk in her pantry to sour and form large chunks. Then she would put it in the refrigerator. Grandpa would typically have a goblet of it at lunch or dinner that he liberally covered with pepper. And of course, since Grandpa was a hero of ours, we grandkids would do the same thing. Although I haven't had any in probably 40-years or more, I remember enjoying it. It was a little of an acquired taste, but took very little "acquiring".

Grandma did NOT make buttermilk from this milk. She would spoon the cream off the fresh milk once it separatedand when she had enough, she would churn that into butter. The remaining milk from making the butter would not be buttermilk at this point. She had to add something to it from the fridge. It was usually a little bit of the buttermilk from the last batch.

If she didn't have that, she would add about a tablespoon or so of lemon juice or vinegar to it to make it curdle. The buttermilk from a previous batch had an active culture in it that always seemed to taste better than the vinegar or lemon induced buttermilk. It was 30-miles over windy road to the nearest grocery store though, so if she ran out she'd use the lemon juice or vinegar until they could get to the store again for a small carton to use as a starter. Grocery store trips were made about every two weeks or so.

On a slightly different but related subject, I was milking the cow once in my teenage years and saw a small bucket of curdled milk against the wall in the barn. I mentioned it to Grandpa that it looked pretty nasty, and he dumped it out for the kittens that always seemed to be in the barn. He then told us that old curdled milk had basically turned into cottage cheese. The top layer from it indeed looked like large curd cottage cheese floating on top of a bucket of whey. The kittens busily lapped it up.

These products that we just "buy at the store" now are actually a fine example of the "waste not, want not" and "use it all up so you don't have to throw anything out" mentality that was pervasive when so much more of our population was rural instead of urban and suburban.

I cherish the memories of spending time at "Grandpa's Ranch" and all that I learned there - fishing, hunting, horse riding, working cattle (driving cattle from various spots on his 2,000 acre ranch into the corrals for round up, working the round up, learning how to set and work a trap line, learning how drive his old Willy's jeep, driving the tractor, driving his D4 bulldozer, etc. Had some great times!

Twisted_1in66
Dan

 

[AZbpBurner]

Grasndma had an old-fashioned butter churn. Grandpa had made a replacement round wooden lid with a hole in the middle for the churn handle. Milk went from cow to chill to the churn & it was my job to endlessly pump the churn handle until it thickened into butter. The leftover buttermilk did have little flakes of butter & was bottled & put into the fridge. No fermentation, vinegar or other ingredients & the only thing grandma ever added was a little salt. It was delicious & the phoney baloney stuff you get from the grocery store has never seen a churn.

Of course Grandma had a cheater for making butter for the kitchen. It was a large glass jar she filled with cream. It had a crank on the top & agitated the cream into first whipped cream, then into butter.

You can make REAL buttermilk by filling a jar with heavy cream, then shaking it until a yellow lump of butter forms. You can also use a single paddle mixer & blend on low until the butter forms.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Grasndma had an old-fashioned butter churn. Grandpa had made a replacement round wooden lid with a hole in the middle for the churn handle. Milk went from cow to chill to the churn & it was my job to endlessly pump the churn handle until it thickened into butter. The leftover buttermilk did have little flakes of butter & was bottled & put into the fridge. No fermentation, vinegar or other ingredients & the only thing grandma ever added was a little salt. It was delicious & the phoney baloney stuff you get from the grocery store has never seen a churn.

Of course Grandma had a cheater for making butter for the kitchen. It was a large glass jar she filled with cream. It had a crank on the top & agitated the cream into first whipped cream, then into butter.

You can make REAL buttermilk by filling a jar with heavy cream, then shaking it until a yellow lump of butter forms. You can also use a single paddle mixer & blend on low until the butter forms.

My grandmother went one farther. She had an electric contraption that she could mount on a jar of cream to turn into butter. She pulled it out and said, "Here Danny, use this" as I was huffing and puffing desperately trying to see the cream turn into butter as turned that hand cranked one at all of 8-years old. She then screwed it onto the top of a jar, plugged it in, turned it on, and we watched it turn the cream into butter! Yay Grandma!!

Twisted_1in66
Dan