Tweet
Making Butter, Buttermilk, and Yogurt
Fellow Survivalists,
By offline request from Lostinoz, and after rummaging around my magazines and books, I include here recipes for butter, buttermilk, and yogurt.
First off, Butter and Buttermilk. Butter is just the fat portion derived from heavy cream and buttermilk is the liquid that is left behind after extracting the butter-fat.
To get butter and buttermilk, you need heavy cream that has sat between 12 to 24 hours and is around 60 Degrees Fahrenheit. Any higher or lower temperature will make the butter take longer to "come" from the cream or won't allow it to "come" at all. Also, you want the cream to be moderately sour, which means not sweet, yet not so sour that it has rainbow-colored mold on top.
While it is possible to derive butter from whole milk, the amount is too miniscule for the effort involved, so stick to heavy cream.
The bare-minimum utinsils you'll need are: a large jar, a manual or electric blender capable of reaching to the bottom of the jar, a collander lined with coffee filters, a bowl larger than the collander, spatulas and spoons to use as butter paddles, paper cupcake holders to use as butter molds and a cupcake tray.
Important: AS WITH CANNING, WASH AND SANITIZE HANDS AND WORK SURFACES AND ALL UTINSILS USED MUST BE CLEANED WITH SCALDING HOT WATER TO PREVENT UNWANTED PATHOGENS!
Fill the large scaled-clean jar about 1/3rd the way with heavy cream that meets the conditions above. 1/3rd full makes for the easiest blending. The butter bulks up and fills the container as it blends, so to put any more than half a jar in will cause overflowing. Insert the manual or electric blender and proceed to churn the heavy cream constantly non-stop. After 20 minutes, the first curds of butter should start to separate from the heavy cream and float to the top, leaving buttermilk on the bottom. Keep churning even after this point to assure that every bit of butter-fat is separated from every drop of buttermilk in the heavy cream. Once butter bits are the size of wheat grains, you can stop churning.
Once you've stopped churning, place your collander with coffee filters into the larger bowl, pour separate butter-fat and buttermilk into the collander to let the buttermilk strain out. After this initial buttermilk has strained out, you may bottle it and saving for baking and drinking.
Then, you run cold water through the butter-fat remaining in the collanderwhile working the butter-fat with fingers, spoons, and spatulas, to get out additional buttermilk contained in the globules of butter-fat. The cold-water/buttermilk mix is not as strong as the initial buttermilk and is best used for the hog trough to let nothing go to waste. Continue to work and knead the buttermilk out of the butter-fat under several runnings of cold water until the cold water runs out of the collander clear.
After working all buttermilk out of the butter-fat, work salt into the butter, both to add flavor and to preserve the butter. (Some people soak butter balls in a brine thick enough to float an egg and some even coat butter in pure salt as a preservative.) Then, when finished with this, flatten and paddle butter into paper cupcake holders held in a cupcake pan, then chill until it is solid. Then cut off a piece, use on bread or in your favorite recipe, and enjoy!
You should be able to get between 2.5 to quarts of buttermilk and one pound of butter for every gallon of heavy cream. Butter can stay at room temperature for a time, but it is not recommended if the room is 80 Degrees or above.
Now, for Yogurt. Get a container of plain, unflavored yogurt with live active yogurt cultures. Take a couple of tablespoonsful of this plain yogurt and place it in a scalded-clean but cooled-off one-quart sized Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos.
Then, take about 1 quart of whole milk, place in a scalded-clean 1 gallon-sized pot over a stove while using a kitchen probe thermometer to measure the temperature. Turn up the heat of the milk until it reaches the boiling point of water (212 Degrees Fahrenheit.)
Watch the milk well to insure that it doesn't boil over the pot and spill into the burners, as burnt milk is an awful smell.
After the milk has reached the boiling point, place the pot of boiling milk into a sink of cold water until the temperature of the milk is exactly 100 Degrees Fahrenheit. At this point, pour the boiled-and-cooled down milk into the Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos with the couple spoonfuls of yogurt with live, active cultures.
Cover the top of the the Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos with its lid, but let the lid be loose enough to allow air to flow through. Set the Thermos aside for 12 hours and Presto! When you look inside the Thermos, you'll see that the quart of milk has been transformed by the live active yogurt cultures into a quart of yogurt!
Yogurt is not only good to eat by itself in its soft form, but also frozen and/or mixed with fruit or cereal. Moreover, you can put yogurt in a collander lined with coffee filters, drain off the liquid to use as a skin conditioner, and what remains is a yogurt cheese similar to cream cheese or the Brummel and Brown Natural Yogurt Spread.
And best yet, as long as you set aside a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt from each batch, you can always make another batch in short order, and as long as you keep making yogurt, the live culture continues forever. Many families of Armenian and other nationalities who make yogurt a regular diet staple have passed down live yogurt cultures for multiple generations, much like some Western U.S. pioneer families have passed down live sourdough bread starter yeast for multiple generations.
So there you have them: Butter, Buttermilk, and Yogurt, three great dairy products that you can make for yourself in the city or in the country to inhance and complete your survival and prepper larder.
My sources:
"How to Make Cheese and Butter" by Dynah Geissal, Backwoods Home Magazine, July/August 1993, pp. 41-44.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery,10th Edition, pp.808-810, Copyright 1994, 2003, 2008.
The Best of Abbie Hoffman by Abbie Hoffman, Copyright 1988(?).
Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Tradtional American Skills by The Staff of Reader's Digest, Copyright 1979.
By offline request from Lostinoz, and after rummaging around my magazines and books, I include here recipes for butter, buttermilk, and yogurt.
First off, Butter and Buttermilk. Butter is just the fat portion derived from heavy cream and buttermilk is the liquid that is left behind after extracting the butter-fat.
To get butter and buttermilk, you need heavy cream that has sat between 12 to 24 hours and is around 60 Degrees Fahrenheit. Any higher or lower temperature will make the butter take longer to "come" from the cream or won't allow it to "come" at all. Also, you want the cream to be moderately sour, which means not sweet, yet not so sour that it has rainbow-colored mold on top.
While it is possible to derive butter from whole milk, the amount is too miniscule for the effort involved, so stick to heavy cream.
The bare-minimum utinsils you'll need are: a large jar, a manual or electric blender capable of reaching to the bottom of the jar, a collander lined with coffee filters, a bowl larger than the collander, spatulas and spoons to use as butter paddles, paper cupcake holders to use as butter molds and a cupcake tray.
Important: AS WITH CANNING, WASH AND SANITIZE HANDS AND WORK SURFACES AND ALL UTINSILS USED MUST BE CLEANED WITH SCALDING HOT WATER TO PREVENT UNWANTED PATHOGENS!
Fill the large scaled-clean jar about 1/3rd the way with heavy cream that meets the conditions above. 1/3rd full makes for the easiest blending. The butter bulks up and fills the container as it blends, so to put any more than half a jar in will cause overflowing. Insert the manual or electric blender and proceed to churn the heavy cream constantly non-stop. After 20 minutes, the first curds of butter should start to separate from the heavy cream and float to the top, leaving buttermilk on the bottom. Keep churning even after this point to assure that every bit of butter-fat is separated from every drop of buttermilk in the heavy cream. Once butter bits are the size of wheat grains, you can stop churning.
Once you've stopped churning, place your collander with coffee filters into the larger bowl, pour separate butter-fat and buttermilk into the collander to let the buttermilk strain out. After this initial buttermilk has strained out, you may bottle it and saving for baking and drinking.
Then, you run cold water through the butter-fat remaining in the collanderwhile working the butter-fat with fingers, spoons, and spatulas, to get out additional buttermilk contained in the globules of butter-fat. The cold-water/buttermilk mix is not as strong as the initial buttermilk and is best used for the hog trough to let nothing go to waste. Continue to work and knead the buttermilk out of the butter-fat under several runnings of cold water until the cold water runs out of the collander clear.
After working all buttermilk out of the butter-fat, work salt into the butter, both to add flavor and to preserve the butter. (Some people soak butter balls in a brine thick enough to float an egg and some even coat butter in pure salt as a preservative.) Then, when finished with this, flatten and paddle butter into paper cupcake holders held in a cupcake pan, then chill until it is solid. Then cut off a piece, use on bread or in your favorite recipe, and enjoy!
You should be able to get between 2.5 to quarts of buttermilk and one pound of butter for every gallon of heavy cream. Butter can stay at room temperature for a time, but it is not recommended if the room is 80 Degrees or above.
Now, for Yogurt. Get a container of plain, unflavored yogurt with live active yogurt cultures. Take a couple of tablespoonsful of this plain yogurt and place it in a scalded-clean but cooled-off one-quart sized Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos.
Then, take about 1 quart of whole milk, place in a scalded-clean 1 gallon-sized pot over a stove while using a kitchen probe thermometer to measure the temperature. Turn up the heat of the milk until it reaches the boiling point of water (212 Degrees Fahrenheit.)
Watch the milk well to insure that it doesn't boil over the pot and spill into the burners, as burnt milk is an awful smell.
After the milk has reached the boiling point, place the pot of boiling milk into a sink of cold water until the temperature of the milk is exactly 100 Degrees Fahrenheit. At this point, pour the boiled-and-cooled down milk into the Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos with the couple spoonfuls of yogurt with live, active cultures.
Cover the top of the the Stanley Stainless Steel Thermos with its lid, but let the lid be loose enough to allow air to flow through. Set the Thermos aside for 12 hours and Presto! When you look inside the Thermos, you'll see that the quart of milk has been transformed by the live active yogurt cultures into a quart of yogurt!
Yogurt is not only good to eat by itself in its soft form, but also frozen and/or mixed with fruit or cereal. Moreover, you can put yogurt in a collander lined with coffee filters, drain off the liquid to use as a skin conditioner, and what remains is a yogurt cheese similar to cream cheese or the Brummel and Brown Natural Yogurt Spread.
And best yet, as long as you set aside a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt from each batch, you can always make another batch in short order, and as long as you keep making yogurt, the live culture continues forever. Many families of Armenian and other nationalities who make yogurt a regular diet staple have passed down live yogurt cultures for multiple generations, much like some Western U.S. pioneer families have passed down live sourdough bread starter yeast for multiple generations.
So there you have them: Butter, Buttermilk, and Yogurt, three great dairy products that you can make for yourself in the city or in the country to inhance and complete your survival and prepper larder.
My sources:
"How to Make Cheese and Butter" by Dynah Geissal, Backwoods Home Magazine, July/August 1993, pp. 41-44.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery,10th Edition, pp.808-810, Copyright 1994, 2003, 2008.
The Best of Abbie Hoffman by Abbie Hoffman, Copyright 1988(?).
Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Tradtional American Skills by The Staff of Reader's Digest, Copyright 1979.
Comment