Buttermilk

[Tdog]

When I was a kid, my grandmother used to have a glass of buttermilk with lunch almost every day. Of course, I had to try it. Yuk - - why would anyone want to drink anything that sour & bitter was beyond me. I successfully avoided it for the next ~~ 60 years.
Recently my wife was using buttermilk in a recipe she was making & I worked up the nerve to try it again. Dang, it was not bad. Tasted a little like sour cream & cheese - - maybe blue cheese? So, do you think they have improved the taste?? Couldn’t be me, could it?

Jack

 

[1bush2hog]

Crumple up some homemade cornbread in that glass of buttermilk and grab a spoon for a real treat

 

[scott_vt]

Afternoon Tdog,
60 years ago your taste buds were a bit more sensitive, see what happens when you get old !

 

[Bird]

Jack, I know our tastes do change with age and experience, but I'm not sure mine's changed that much. I, too, had one grandmother who liked buttermilk, and one of my two sisters would occasionally drink a little of it, but I figured it was primarily hog feed; never could stand drinking it. But it is good for cooking a few things, such as buttermilk biscuits.

But I don't guess I've even tasted any buttermilk in the last 50 years, so maybe I'd have a different opinion now, too.

 

[KaiB]

I like it with warm gin...

 

[Egon]

If Grandma's buttermilk came from the butterchurn it was very likely much different than today's buttermilk from the grocery store shelf.

 

[Bird]

If Grandma's buttermilk came from the butterchurn it was very likely much different than today's buttermilk from the grocery store shelf.

Egon, there's no doubt there's a huge difference. I can't even remember the last time I noticed non-homogenized milk in the store. When I was a kid, after the fresh milk sat in the refrigerator overnight, we "skimmed" the cream off with a cup and that's what we accumulated and churned to make the butter. And while I don't remember what it cost, for awhile we were buying the buttermilk in 55 gallon barrels from a local creamery to feed our hogs.

 

[BillyP]

All I can say is it's fun to churn when your a kid and bored. Just don't get to wild and start sloshing it out. You might get a sharp peck on the side of your head

I never could stand the taste but my Mother loved it. I will say it makes an excellent dip for battered and fried meats.

 

[Egon]

We used to use a milk separator and made butter from some of the cream. Most of the seperated milk went to the hogs.

Do you ever feel sorry for all the folks who have never had the chance to drink real whole milk from a jersey cow?

I beleive most Buttermilk is now of the cultured variety.

Buttermilk

 

[LMTC]

<----------Loves it now, and loved it as a kid.

 

[lopezian]

Egon, there's no doubt there's a huge difference. I can't even remember the last time I noticed non-homogenized milk in the store.

Bird, you may find that non-homogenized, non-pasteurized milk is available near you now. It is likely called "raw milk" and you'd find it in crunchy, granola stocking, health-food store. It recently became available at a place here in my town but it is very expensive - $8.00/gallon! It's the real deal, with cream on top, and people make butter and buttermilks from the cream.

I'm drinking raw milk now because it does not seem to make me sick the way regular processed milk does. I suppose it is some enzyme that has not been broken down by the heat treatment. I'm also fortunate to have a farm just down the road where I can go milk a cow in exchange for a share of the expenses of upkeep. I haven't done that yet because I don't need that much milk, but it would probably make sense for a family with kids.

 

[Bird]

Egon, we normally only milked one cow; had two for awhile, so we didn't have one of those separators, but I had an uncle who was a real farmer and milked 10-15 cows every day who had a separator so I've used one. It was made to hand crank and of course took a lot of power to get it going, so he had rigged it with an electric motor. You hand cranked it to get it up to speed, then turned on the electric motor and it would maintain that speed. Those things did a more thorough job of removing the butter fat; so thorough, in fact, that we called the milk that was left "blue john" and it wasn't considered fit for human consumption; only good for the hogs and chickens. I think now they sell the stuff in grocery stores; call it 1/2 of 1% or some such, but I sure don't want any of it. I don't even want any of that 2% stuff they sell in the stores.

Do you ever feel sorry for all the folks who have never had the chance to drink real whole milk from a jersey cow?

My mother always got a kick out telling about moving to Baltimore, MD, when I was a baby and the people there who had never seen a farm and only knew city life. She said one day she was talking to a neighbor and mentioned giving me the still warm milk when she milked the cow, and the neighbor responded, "You mean you gave that baby that milk before they put the cream in it?"

 

[czechsonofagun]

<----------Loves it now, and loved it as a kid.

Same here. Drinking sour milk too - thats just milk gone bad and even tried whatever is left after making cottage cheese - that stuff is green and very sharp on taste, but I liked it.

 

[jinman]

My dad used to eat buttermilk and cornbread with a fresh onion. Afterwards, he'd sit around and groan from indigestion for a couple of hours, but he had a smile on his face. Me? I never developed a taste for it or the clabbered milk which my mother loved.

 

[milkman]

My dad used to eat buttermilk and cornbread with a fresh onion. Afterwards, he'd sit around and groan from indigestion for a couple of hours, but he had a smile on his face. Me? I never developed a taste for it or the clabbered milk which my mother loved.

I was waitin' for this to get around to clabber, mom used to take a clean pillow case, turn it inside out, put the clabber in it and hang it on the clothesline to drip dry and we had cottage cheese, only had it once or twice a year and was a real treat.

 

[Bird]

None of my family cared for buttermilk and cornbread, but we've all made many a meal of just cornbread crumbled up in a glass with sweet milk. And milkman, we never made our own cottage cheese although I sure remember hearing my grandmother talk about doing just as you said. Of course, those "pillow cases" were made from flour sacks. I was grown before I found out you could buy flour and sugar in anything smaller than 25 pound sacks. And I was well into my thirties before I decided that cottage cheese was fit for human consumption. I still haven't decided that about buttermilk and clabber.

 

[texbaylea]

Buttermilk, cottage cheese and clabber - love them. We drink buttermilk regularly.

We have a local dairy whose products are more expensive than the grocery store "house" brands but taste so much better that we are willing to pay the higher price.

Vernon

Vernon

 

[Chuck52]

I used to really like buttermilk as a kid. We never had farm fresh milk, and the buttermilk always came in a carton, but I do remember that it used to have tiny flakes of butter in it. Today, the supermarket buttermilk never has butter flakes in it....I guess they got more efficient in separating the butter from the buttermilk. It doesn't usually seem to have the same tang to it that I remember, but I still like it sometimes. We normally only use buttermilk when making thin "fried" cornbread, so a quart will often go bad on us before it all gets used, especially since the DW decided the shortening rich cornbread was bad for me.

Chuck

 

[jimg]

Never heard of clabber...what is it?

 

[jinman]

Never heard of clabber...what is it?

Clabber is fermented milk with the consistency of yogurt...think of milk that has the consistency of jello and tastes sour. I seem to remember my mother setting buttermilk (or was it whole milk?) on the window sill where it would clabber. I could never get past the smell, but I'm sure it's a learned taste and quite popular in the past. I think plain yogurt would be fairly close today.