by Lidya Sin

Created on: October 22, 2009

We often find buttermilk as one of the ingredients in our recipes. There are buttermilk pancakes, buttermilk cookies, and buttermilk bread. Buttermilk gives rich and fluffy tastes in our food. You can also drink your buttermilk if your buttermilk is thin enough. Using buttermilk in your food is better than using cream or sweetened milk as it contains lower calorie and fat.

There has been a lot of misconception about buttermilk. Traditionally buttermilk is liquid left in the butter-making process. You will find some left over butter in the liquid. Nowadays, buttermilk has no relation to butter making. Cultured buttermilk is made with lactic acid bacteria culture in the milk. Buttermilk tastes thick and tart, a bit like yogurt, because buttermilk is a kind of fermented milk. Buttermilk has long shelf life, up to several weeks. But it is often difficult to find buttermilk at our nearby grocery store and we often have to find substitute for buttermilk. Never fear, buttermilk is very easy to make at home with very simple ingredients, and the long shelf life ensures that our buttermilk will not go to waste. Once you make one batch, it is very easy to duplicate and enlarge the quantity. It is worth the effort to find cultured buttermilk to make your first batch.

First of all, buy a cup of cultured buttermilk. You can buy it at local grocery store or order it. Check the sign of the package: the buttermilk must be less than four weeks old (so that the bacteria is still alive) with "active culture" on the sign.

Place a cup of the cultured buttermilk in a 1-pint mason jar with lid. Add 3 cups of whole milk to the jar and close the lid tightly. Shake it several times to mix the buttermilk with the milk. Place it in warm room temperature for 24 hours. A good idea is to place it near the hearth or fireplace during colder days.

After 24 hours, check if your buttermilk is done. The buttermilk should be thick, coating the sides of the glass, and taste tart, but not smell or taste foul. If they taste foul, it means that the batch is contaminated. Throw it away, or you'll risk food poisoning. To avoid contamination, sterilized the jar before you use it. Do not boil your milk or cultured buttermilk though, as it will kill the bacteria culture. If it is not thick enough, store it again for 12 more hours. After that, if the milk is not turned into buttermilk, the active culture in your starter has been dead.

You can make the buttermilk starter from a scratch if you absolutely cannot find store bought active culture buttermilk, but it is not recommendable. You will need fresh raw milk and several days of culturing, again and again to achieve the desired result. This page is a useful source if you really want to learn how to make buttermilk starter and also instant buttermilk with no culturing process. It also has tutorial video, additional information and tips, and links about buttermilk making.

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