I ran by a recipe for Beef Stroganoff on the YouTube/Blogsite called Food Wishes, and I was thoughtful about the indication that one should really make some homemade creme fraiche (I forego diacritics from here on), from cream and buttermilk. The creme fraiche recipe calls for just a few tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to make two cups or so of creme fraiche, which is said to last a week or so in the fridge.
Apart from soaking chicken for frying and making pancakes (which, living alone, is not really my go-to for breakfasts) and making egg-nog, what other uses are there for the inevitable excess of buttermilk?
Additionally, I’ll welcome how well store-bought creme fraiche rates. It tends to be pricey here, but it’s also false economy to waste a bunch of buttermilk for that reason.
Buttermilk goes in a recipe for Irish soda bread we bake. Of course buttermilk cake. Def. in fry batter and breakfast items as you mentioned. Creme fraiche I dont buy much but if a recipe calls for it. However, I love the stuff on fresh stone fruit.
Homemades gotta be worth a try. Small batch maybe.
True, you need only a bit but you can use the buttermilk to bake bread, use it for your pancakes etc.
I also love Kenji Lopez 's recipe for the best parmesan chicken breast whereby he used buttermilk as a brine for chicken breast and also to add to his panic breadcrumbs . He pairs this with his best tomato sauce ( takes 6 h ours to cook) but I ten to freeze them and have enough for 3 meals. You will not be disappointed with this recipe. It is a winner!
I use leftover buttermilk to make a creamy herb salad dressing. Sometimes I freeze extra buttermilk but it looses its thickness. I wonder if dried buttermilk would work for the cream fraiche. I use it for baking and it lasts a long time in the refrigerator. Actually they say once opened it is good for 6 months to a year but I have been using mine much longer with no ill effects.
I also love buttermilk over oatmeal with sea salt flakes.
And buttermilk tends to last just fine waaaay past the sell-by date – I have discovered some in the back of the fridge that was about a month past its date and tasted just fine – and I lived to tell the tale.
I’m certain homemade creme fraiche will be better than store bought, but make sure that the cream you buy to make it is not ultra-pasteurized or you may have some problems getting it to culture
You can actually make (probably a better flavored) crème frâiche by using commercial crème fraîche as your culturing agent rather than buttermilk, as long as you get crème fraîche that contains live cultures. Just like using commercial yogurt as your culture for homemade yogurt. Obviously this means you have to buy one of those pricey little containers, but you don’t have to use up buttermilk!
meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
11
That had never occurred to me. I bet it adds a really nice flavor!
I freeze leftover purchased buttermilk. It separates upon thawing, but shake it up and it’s fine for baking. If there’s none on hand, I dilute plain yogurt to the thickness of buttermilk, which is judt as good.in baking. I have used the powdered buttermilk but the directions say to mix it with the dry ingredients, later adding the water, and for some recipes that is contradictory.
The new Netflix series from this gal, http://ciaosamin.com/recipes-resources/
features a buttermilk chicken marinade that looks very appealing. Salted and brined in buttermilk overnight then roasted.
Highly recommend the 4 part series a fellow HO brought to my attention if you get Netflix.
So I happened upon some cultured buttermilk for $0.50 a quart, and figured I could do something with it. I’ve made an Ethiopian dish with a buttermilk curd that I can never get enough of, so I figured I could do something like that. While looking for the recipe I happened upon other versions of “fresh cheese”, and started wondering about sweet versions, and about a savory cheesecake that I read is usually made with ricotta.
From “The Spruce” link below.
“Farmer’s cheese is a fresh or unaged cheese and is also known as dry curd cheese or peasant cheese and is used in countless European recipes. Farmer’s cheese is known as twaróg in Polish, surutka in Croatian and Serbian, tvaroh in Czech and Slovak, túró in Hungarian, varškės in Lithuanian, lapte covăsit in Romanian, tvorog in Russian, skuta in Slovenian, and syr in Ukrainian.”
Most versions include heating the buttermilk, some include whole milk, and a sweet version involved freezing rather than heating the milk!
How does THAT work? How is it different?
Some others…
Farmers Cheese
Here is one with farmers cheese, again from The Spruce.
" A mild cross between ricotta and cream cheese, this fresh farmer’s cheese is everything you always wanted in a soft cheese – mild in flavor, creamy but somewhat loose consistency and thus effortlessly spreadable."
These Food Network Savory Cheesecakes start with 8 ounces cream cheese and a cup of some other cheese.
And more from The Spruce
"They don’t resemble the type of cheesecakes Americans are familiar with, aka cream cheese or New York-style cheesecake (although they do exist), because they’re usually made with dry curd cheese or farmer’s cheese. "
I’ll be saving the whey for various fermenting projects.
My aunt used to make buttermilk pineapple sherbet. Just combine a can of crushed pineapple with buttermilk, freeze in ice cream maker, or like my aunt in ice trays and moosh up with a fork.
Me, I make up a batch of corn bread and enjoy breakfasts of broken up cornbread covered with cold buttermilk. Addictive.
Buttermilk ice cream and sherbets both get a lot of love in old time cookbooks. Also, buttermilk custard pies - maybe a Midwestern thing, but not sure. I haven’t tried any of those, but I do love buttermilk. Yum.
