Home › Some Kitchen Kinks › Some Kitchen Kinks: Buttermilk
Some Kitchen Kinks: Buttermilk
Buttermilk Cheese.
To make buttermilk cheese, heat buttermilk to about 130° or 140° F.
Allow it to cool and strain it. As the curd will settle to the bottom, most of the whey may be poured off before the draining is begun.
This cheese is, of course, almost wholly without fat and yet, probably because the particles of curd are very finely divided, it has a smooth consistency, which suggests the presence of fat. It may be served seasoned with salt only, or it may be mixed with butter or cream and seasonings.
It is suitable for combining with olives and pimientos, as elsewhere recommended, or for any use to as models. which the ordinary cream cheeses are put.
A one-ingredient fresh cheese that works on the same principle as ricotta or paneer: acid plus gentle heat separates the curd. The whole thing hinges on keeping the heat low and never stirring it hard.
- Do not let it boil130-140F is well below a simmer, hot to the finger but nowhere near scalding. Higher heat toughens the curd into rubbery grains and drives off the smooth texture the recipe is selling; use a thermometer and pull it off the moment it arrives.
- Buy the right buttermilkMuch supermarket cultured buttermilk is thickened with modified starch, carrageenan or guar gum, which can keep the curd suspended and give a slack result. Read the label and choose one whose ingredients are milk and cultures only, or use true churn buttermilk from a creamery.
- StrainingThe original mentions straining and draining but gives no detail. Use a colander lined with several layers of cheesecloth or a clean cotton towel, set over a bowl, and let it drain 2 to 6 hours at refrigerator temperature depending on how firm you want it. Hanging the cloth speeds it up but can dry the edges.
- Don't stirOnce the curd has formed, disturb it as little as possible. Ladle it out or pour it off gently; agitation shatters the fine curd and much of it goes through the cloth with the whey.
- YieldA quart of buttermilk gives roughly 5 to 7 ounces of drained curd, about a cup. Plan on four times the volume of buttermilk to finished cheese.
- Seasoning and keepingSalt after draining, at roughly 1 percent by weight of the curd, or the salt will pull out more moisture during draining. It is a fresh cheese with no rind and no preservative: refrigerate and eat within three or four days.
- The garbled line"or for any use to as models. which the ordinary cream cheeses are put" is a typesetting error in the original. Read it as "or for any use to which the ordinary cream cheeses are put."
Buttermilk cheese belongs to the thrift tradition of the farm dairy, where the liquid left after churning was too valuable to throw away. Because churning has already removed most of the fat, the curd sets on the buttermilk's own lactic acidity with only a little warmth, which is why no rennet appears here. The passage is characteristic of the household-manual literature of the early twentieth century, when domestic science writers were beginning to think in terms of fat content and food chemistry, and were keen to point out that a nearly fat-free food could still be palatable. Similar fresh acid-set cheeses turn up across northern Europe under names such as quark and topfen, and in the American South as clabber cheese; the technique is generally traced to ordinary dairy practice rather than to any particular inventor.