Make Your Own Buttermilk
There are a lot of reasons to learn how to make buttermilk.
Fluffy whole wheat pancakes. Grandma’s flaky biscuits. Ranch dressing.
Need I say more?
This hero of cultured dairy products makes grains more digestible, salads more tempting, and white sauces more tasty.
It’s a shame that it’s darn near impossible to buy.
A trip into the dairy section of just about any local grocery store will leave the real food lover disappointed. Most buttermilk is fake!
Take a look at this store-bought buttermilk label and see if you can’t spot what’s wrong:
What's wrong with this picture?
Or, better yet, answer this — what’s right about it?
If you want good, old-fashioned cultured buttermilk, you’ve either got to go to a health food store or make it yourself.
So, here’s how you can do it.
First, the EASY way.
The Players
- 1 cup of cultured buttermilk
- 3 cups of whole milk
- 1 lidded glass jar
The How-To
Pour the buttermilk into the jar.
Add the milk.
Shake it up, then let it sit on your counter or another relatively warm place for 24 hours. When cultured, the thickened new batch of buttermilk will coat your glass. Now, pop it in the fridge, and it will last for weeks. Easy!
Please Note:
1) Quantities don’t matter as much as proportion. Stick to the 1 to 3 ratio, and your buttermilk will always turn out well (as long as your starting culture is alive) whether you’re making 1 cup, 4 cups, or a gallon.
2) If you use raw or non-homogenized milk, your cream is likely to separate and culture on its own as well. That layer of cultured cream is creme fraiche (European sour cream). Enjoy!
Next, the (slightly) harder way, which involves making your own buttermilk culture from raw milk.
- Allow a cup of filtered fresh raw milk to sit covered at room temperature until it has clabbered (usually several days).
- Place 1/4 cup of the clabbered milk in a pint mason jar, add a cupof fresh milk (does not have to be raw at this point), cover, shake to mix, allow to sit at room temperature until clabbered.
- Repeat this transfer of sub-culturing several more times until the milk dependably clabbers in 24 hours. Taste a small amount to confirm that it is tart, thickened, and has no off flavors. It should taste tart not bitter, for instance.
- To then make a quart of buttermilk with this culture, add 6 ounces of the buttermilk to a quart jar, fill with fresh milk, cover, shake to mix, allow to sit at room temperature until clabbered.
- Refrigerate.
If you’re looking for a good starter culture for Buttermilk (or any other fermented foods like Kombucha, sourdough, yogurt, etc.), check out the listings on my resources page.
Liked what you read? You may find these posts interesting:
It’s crazy the junk they mix in with such a simple food. Real buttermilk is phenomenal for cooking and baking. It lends this very, very soft crumb to whole or sprouted grain baked goods. It’s an integral part of our kitchen. Good post.
Jenny
I was actually inspired by your “Name That Food” series of posts. I mean, seriously, if I had posted the ingredients on that label, would *anyone* have realized it was buttermilk?
Thanks for that! Quick question: will it hurt if I use storebought buttermilk for my initial batch? I can’t get anything else around here, and I figure the amount of crap will diminish as I make more batches.
Hi Semi Crunchy!
Thanks for posting.
If you have to use store-bought, then at least try to find some without Modified Food Starch in it. But, if it is your only option, I say go for it! Making your own will still be more wholesome than buying the crap. And, you’re right, the bad stuff will diminish as you make more batches.
This recipe is awesome! But I have a question, can I use the leftover buttermilk from the butter making process for this easy method recipe? Because I don’t know if my leftover buttermilk is considered cultured.
Ah, HEB. I once wrote to them on their website about the partially-hydrogenated fats in their flour tortillas. Not a word back from them. Too bad they’re practically a monopoly in San Antonio!
HEB isn’t all bad. Ours has a reasonable bulk foods section, and anytime I’ve asked a department head for something special (uncured bacon or sausage, grass-fed beef, rennet, you name it), they’ve generally started stocking it. That said, MOST of the so-called food in that store is just like any other grocery store — fake!
I’ll have to use method #1 because, in Canada, acquiring raw milk is a near impossible endeavour due to the eagerness to prosecute the suppliers (it is illegal to sell raw milk). Geez…the law is easier on marijuana possession.
Just a note – ask around and find out if any of your local organic dairy farmers offer a herd share program. With these, you pay a fee to buy a share in a milking animal (goat or cow) and then you pay a weekly fee to the farmer for caring for and milking your animal. You’re not buying the milk because, as a part-owner of the animal, you’re legally allowed to drink it.
The government is screaming about it, and saying it’s just a way to get around the fresh milk laws (of course it is!), but the Ontario courts have declared that it’s legal, and herd shares are reportedly springing up everywhere.
The difficulty in finding a herd share is that the farmers are not allowed to advertise in any way, so it’s word of mouth. I started making friends with some Mennonite farmers and eventually got a recommendation.
The fresh milk is wonderful stuff at all stages and in all forms, from sweet right through to soured, and it’s well worth looking for a herd share.
This is a great and really informative post. Thank you so much!
HoneyB
Fluffy — That’s a bum deal!
Honey B — Thanks for the kudos.
hmmm…..very useful… i will surely try this .. i found a buttermilk marinated chicken recipe once… now i can do it with my own homemade buttermilk..
lovely!
mizdi
*comes out of lurkom*
Love your blog, but i have a question on this post. I have some….really old raw buttermilk in my fridge from last year’s thanksgiving that I haven’t used. Can I use that to make some fresh buttermilk?
Thanks!
Tamara,
Thanks for your comment! To answer your question, I don’t think it will work as well. If your buttermilk’s that old, the live cultures in it are probably mostly dead. It may still be totally safe to consume and use, but it probably won’t be strong enough to help start a new culture.
If you really want to use it, perhaps you could try using it along the lines of method #2, which concentrates relatively weak cultures until they’re strong enough to clabber the milk within 24 hours.
As always, it’s your call.
Cheers,
KristenM
I’ve been lurking for a while, and now I have a reason to comment!
So I wasn’t even looking for buttermilk today, but I remembered this post when I was at the grocery store. I was in the baking aisle, and came across a product called Saco Cultured Buttermilk Blend for Cooking and Baking. (Say that 3 times fast!) Basically, it’s powdered buttermilk. I was skeptical, but I checked the ingredients:
A cultured blend of sweet cream churned buttermilk, sweet dairy whey, and lactic acid.
I went ahead and picked some up, because the price wasn’t bad, and I love using buttermilk, but it always goes bad on us before we use it all, and to me, this is easier than making your own. It actually requires refrigeration after opening, but says it’s good until October 2012. I don’t know if that date is before or after opening, but I’m guessing it should last a while.
Thoughts?
April — Thanks for your comment!
You may not like what I’m going to say, but I would avoid it for the same reasons I’d avoid powdered milk. First, the drying process pasteurizes and completely kills any of the benefits of the buttermilk culture (enzymes, probiotics, etc.). It’s also likely to create free glutamates (another name for MSG).
You’d be substituting a living, health-promoting food for a dead, harmful food.
In my book, it’s just not worth it.
Hmm…I should look into the milk-drying process and learn more about that. I am fairly new to the world of real food, and trying to make the best choices I can, but there’s a lot to learn!
Here’s some information from their website:
http://www.sacofoods.com/culteredbuttermilkblend2.html
If what they’re saying is correct, which would be the lesser of two evils in your opinion–the Saco powder, or the conventional liquid buttermilk found at most stores? Like I said, I went ahead and picked some up, and I just used it for the first time (I have some muffins getting ready to go into the oven). I’m going to do some more research, and see how it goes. If nothing else, I may be able to use it to start my own buttermilk culture.
Thanks for the input! I’ve really been enjoying your blog!
April — SACO’s website is highlighting the difference between old-fashioned and cultured buttermilk. Old-fashioned buttermilk is what I get when I make butter. It’s thin, tart and acidic and good for soaking grains. Cultured buttermilk is what most recipes call for — particularly recipes that call for buttermilk in bechamel sauces and dressings. It’s also tart and acidic, but thick. SACO is wrong in implying that this cultured buttermilk not a traditional food. It is! Culturing milk in all its forms is as old as milking cows & goats.
Because the SACO buttermilk is dried, it contains no live cultures and will not be a good buttermilk starter culture.
Choose between two evils? I’d say don’t use either, unless you’re addicted to buttermilk baked goods or ranch dressing. Or, I’d say buy some good culture online (a lot of cheese-making suppliers will sell the stuff), then use that to start your own batch of buttermilk.
KristenM
Nice post Kristen,
I’ve been a label reader for over 30 years, but never thought to look at the buttermilk label. This junk will no longer be in my kitchen, and I’ll be making my own very soon.
Thanks!
Rod Newbound, RN
Labels are so scary, really! I love the simple directions, in the beginning of the post. I think that is how our grandparents cooked, you adapt for the ingredients that you have or have not. Culinary experts they were!
Heidi / Savory Tv
Ok – so I looked at the label again and again. True that there is a lot of stuff in there that doesn’t belong there, but I still have to ask: What (apart from that) is wrong with it? It seems to me that this label actually indicates, that the product is simply low-fat milk thickened with starch. Not buttermilk at all. Am I right? (Please comment!)
On another note…
I was born in Germany and buttermilk was (and is) a standard drink at home. If I try to introduce that to people here in the US, they think that I’m totally crazy and should have my taste- buds looked after. I’m not kidding! – Finally I convinced my wife at least to try it: buttermilk and orange juice 1:1. It’s so refreshing and delicious. Now sh loves it!
Thank you for your post!
I love buttermilk also. I found a place in Michigan that sells it, Calder Dairy in Monroe. They ship it around lower Miohigan. It is real buttermilk. My kids think I’m crazy, but it is so smooth, and I don’t think it is sour at all. I am going to try an make my own.
Dante — It’s not just that there’s stuff there that doesn’t belong. It’s the KIND of wrong stuff that is worrisome. Let’s start with the first ingredient: cultured low fat milk. Why low fat? From the get-go, this isn’t a whole food made from real milk. Then the next ingredients: non-fat dry milk and modified food starch. They add this to make it creamer, but both are known harbingers of processed free glutamic acids (AKA: MSG — Did you know MSG can go by more than 40 different names in the US and only one is legally obligated to be called MSG on product labels?). And that’s just the first three ingredients.
To be real buttermilk, the label should just say “cultured milk.” The end.
Now I will have to try buttermilk orange juice! It’d be great to find yet another use for this delicious cultured dairy product.
In the US where can I find raw milk?
Hi Steven –
Check out http://www.realmilk.com and search by your state for local farms selling raw milk. Even if the farm is quite a distance away (say 100 miles), you might find it’s worth calling them to find out about any drive-shares in your area (a group of people from your area that sends a designated driver to the farm once a week or once every couple of weeks to pick up everybody’s order en masse). In many states, raw milk farmers can deliver to your door or to convenient co-op or buying club drop points. In other states, you may be required to pick it up at the farm. Anyhow, that site is full of info!
Good luck!
KristenM
[...] delicious breakfast pancakes are made from fresh whole grains, real cultured buttermilk, and you don’t even need a grain [...]
I have been making my own butter for a few weeks since joining a raw milk share coop, but I didn’t realize there were two kinds of buttermilk. Can I use the buttermilk from my butter to make cultured buttermilk? Can I use it interchangeably in recipes? How about to make creme freiche to make cultured butter? I’ve been putting a Tbs of buttermilk (from the butter) in a pint of cream and leaving it on the counter for 20-24 hours before I whip it up into butter. I didn’t think it was getting thick enough! Help!
Katie
Katie — Yes, you can. And, yes and no. You can sub between them, but just be aware of the type of recipe and how the subbing is likely to affect things. The difference will be in the creaminess/thickness level. Old-fashioned buttermilk (what’s left over after making butter) is very low-fat, so the cultured buttermilk you’d make from it will be far less thick. As to making butter out of creme fraiche or sour cream — go for it! I think it’s far tastier than sweet cream butter. If your creme fraiche isn’t turning out thick, it means your enzyme activity in your buttermilk starter is too low. Try increasing it using the same method you use to build up enzyme activity in the “slightly-harder” recipe above. When it clabbers to the desired consistency in 24 hours, then you’ve done it right!
One day I will try this… I swear.
You mention laking ranch dressing with homemade buttermilk, would you share a recipe for that?
I went to my wild by nature health store and the only buttermilk i could find at all was organic valley cultured lowfat buttermilk. Is it possible to use that to make buttermilk? i also bought a small unhomogenized milk from ronybrook farms, but it doesnt say if its pastaureized, but i suspect it is. I’m in new york on long island and have trouble finding anything raw….
Brandon — I am perfecting my recipe even now. One day soon, I promise I will share it!
Jessica — Organic Valley cultured buttermilk will do fine. It’s a heckuvalot better than the other stuff you can buy at the store! It’s great that you can find unhomogenized milk. Even if it’s not raw, unhomogenized is second best, particularly if it comes from grass-fed cows!
How long can you keep homemade buttermilk until you use what’s left to make more? A week? A month?
It may not be ideal, but my store bought buttermilk ingredient list says “Cultured Reduced Fat Milk and Salt”. It is pasteurized as well. I do have a source for raw milk, but I want my 14 month old son to be able to drink what I am able to purchase. In the interest of saving the raw milk required to concentrate the cultures, I’m thinking of using the store bought buttermilk to start a raw milk culture. Like SemiCrunchyMom, I hope the bad stuff will diminish with each new batch using raw milk. What do you think?
BTW, I recently found your blog, and I love it!
As in Canada, here in Australia the sale of raw and non-homogenised milk is illegal. Supermarkets don’t sell any kind of buttermilk. Will pasteurised milk make proper buttermilk? A lot of people seem to use milk soured with vinegar or lemon juice as buttermilk. Does this have the same nutritional and chemical properties as a cultured buttermilk? Can you use it to make your own buttermilk? Finally, is goat’s milk as good as cow’s milk for making buttermilk?
Elinor Entity — Pastuerized milk WILL make proper buttermilk. Just follow the first recipe rather than the second. As for the buttermilk substitutes, they work for FLAVOR, but not for the nutritional benefit. (They’re not probiotics.) I’ve never had goat’s milk buttermilk, but I don’t see why you couldn’t try it!
Help! I got a buttermilk starter from a friend who makes it with unhomogenized, but pasteurized milk, and I made a batch with raw milk, then a batch with store milk, then raw milk. That batch went bad – I mean smell invading my nose bad – in a week. ?? I thought cultured products were supposed to last longer? Any trouble-shooting for what I might have done wrong? Thank you!!!
Katie @ Kitchen Stewardship
What does he mean by “filtered” raw milk? I have access to whole raw milk. What do I need to do?
Kristen,
We buy raw milk all the time. I want to try the raw recipe, but I have always been careful with it because of what else can be found in the raw milk. We count on the refrigeration keeping the bad bacteria at a minimum. We also know that the milk is tested all the time. Everything I would use buttermilk for, grains, breads etc would be cooked so I’m not worried about using the raw buttermilk for those. My family loves ranch dressing and it is always better make with buttermilk. Is there any way to ensure that we don’t have an explosion of bad bacteria? Can it be pasteurized after culturing just for the ranch dressing? My wife is a real stickler on the milk.
Thanks for your post, it will come in handy as we strive to make the dollar stretch at our house by learning how to make things the way they should be made.
May I recommed reading “The Untold Story of Milk” by Ron Schmidt? Independent research shows that the good bacteria in raw milk are able to kill off any bad bacteria present. Pasteurizing kills all of the good, but not all of the bad, so the bad can proliferate. Raw milk is actually very safe, we just have to get past what we’ve always been taught. The book was very helpful for me.
.-= Kelly Cook´s last blog post …HenPals Nesting Boxes =-.
Drinking pasteurized milk and eating the by products comes under the heading of Garbage in Garbage out. ‘The Powers That Be’ have bad mouthed and propagandized Raw Milk for so long most people accept the slander as truth when all are lies. Fresh from the cow, raw milk has built in anti bacteria and germ destroyers. There are no proven cases of illness from drinking raw milk. All cases of illness when the ‘Powers That Be’ bother to check have been Pasteurized milk. The USDA, FDA, and CDC are quick to blame raw milk and make big news attacking raw milk. Then shut up when pasteurized milk is found to be the culprit. I am country and grew up drinking raw milk. Raw milk is a miss misnomer, for milk from a cow is a complete ‘Health’ food right from the source. In my 80 years drinking ‘healthy’ milk, I have never been sick from it, nor have known anybody who has. As for getting real milk or cream to sour, just set a jar on the counter covered with a cloth and it will sour naturally in 24 to 36 hours. Try that with pasteurized milk and it will just rot and stink. All this and more is on the internet. Check it out
Sean — You could pasteurize the milk BEFORE culturing it, the way you would do so for making yogurt. But I wouldn’t do it afterward, as that would negate all the benefits of it being a cultured, probiotic food.
I haven’t had buttermilk since I left Los Angeles 35 years ago. I still miss it. Some recipes tell me to put a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice into milk. Others say, use raw milk which I cannot buy. Here in Japan, milk is sold in various thicknesses. From skim to low fat to 3.2 to 4.4 % fat. I’m not sure which to choose. Also, can I use yogurt to start off the bacteria in buttermilk? Any help will do. Jack
Jack — You can purchase a buttermilk starter online. Click on my Resources page for listings.
What all do you do with the buttermilk left after making butter? I’m thinking about making cultured buttermilk but it feels so weird to do that when I have the buttermilk left over from the butter in the fridge just sitting there. We use only raw milk in our house if that makes a difference in your answer.
Also, I trying to find a good resource for how to use my raw milk. I want to make things like whipped cream, half and half, etc. If you have a blog or website that has great basics for using raw milk to it’s full potential that would be wonderful!
Thanks for the advise!
.-= Mrs. Not the Jet Set
Hi Mrs. Not The Jet Set — You can use the buttermilk remaining after making butter to make the cultured buttermilk. That’s what people originally did. You’d just add the buttermilk culture to it and follow instructions. It will be a little less thick, but just as useful and tasty in salad dressings & other recipes.
If you want to use raw milk to make whipped cream, half and half, etc., you’ll need to separate the cream from the milk. I’ve got a post that tells you how to do that on this site. Once you’ve got the cream, you can use it the way you would heavy whipping cream from the store: whip it to make whipped cream, whip it even more to make butter, add milk to it to turn it into half and half (but why not just use full fat cream? YUM).
Hope that helps!
~KristenM
(AKA FoodRenegade)
Thanks for the info! that was very helpful.
.-= Mrs. Not the Jet Set
I forgot where I read it but one of the Weston A. Price folks pointed out that nonfat milk solids are full of oxidized cholesterol! The bad kind of cholesterol. Yes, one more reason to make one’s own butter milk! Thanks for this
.-= Lisa Sargese´s last blog ..better to struggle =-.
Hi
I live in Canada and the buttermilk I have in my fridge right now is from a mainstream big industrial company, so it is certainly pasterized. But, I am wondering about the ingriedients. The only ingriedients it lists are: Milk, Salt, Bacteria Culture.
Is this closer to “real” buttermilk, or still not as good because of the assumed processing? Not to mention the unhealthly cows the milk probably comes from.
Can anybody elaborate on the below step to make your own B-Milk culture. I am not sure how to “repeat the process”. Do you add more of the clabbered milk to the pint? Any help would be great.
# Repeat this transfer of sub-culturing several more times until the milk dependably clabbers in 24 hours. Taste a small amount to confirm that it is tart, thickened, and has no off flavors. It should taste tart not bitter, for instance.
Darrell,
I’m pretty sure by saying “repeat the process” she means that each time your milk clabbers, you take 1/4 cup of that clabbered milk, and add a fresh cup of milk (in a new jar). You do this over and over, until it only takes 24 hours to clabber. Then you have buttermilk. Basically you’re building the culture up so that it clabbers in one day, instead of several days.
I’ve been making old-fashioned buttermilk (along with my butter) and I leave it sit out on the counter to “culture”. Sometimes I don’t get to it for days and by then it gets quite thick. Is it okay to leave it out that long? Is there something I should look for in case it goes bad? Once it looked like the butterfat (some falls in when I separate them) was turning a slight shade of orange, not a bad drastic color change, and there was no “off” order. I scooped it off (it was only on the top) just in case, but is this a bad sign?
I’ve done this twice now and we love it! I ran out of raw milk and really needed the rest of my buttermilk, so I used it all up, and hoped I’d have as much luckwith my 2nd try and making buttermilk. and I was! Thanks so much. I’ve passed this on to a number of people and they have loved it as well.
I keep mine in a half gallon glass jar, and when it gets down to one cup, I just fill it back up with raw milk, shake it up and let it sit out for a day until it’s nice and thick. It’s so easy to manage, and makes baking and marinating meat so easy and yummy!
Someday I hope to get us all to drink it straight up-but we’re not ready for that quite yet.
Thanks again!!
Sarah
.-= Sarah´s last blog post …Tuesday Twister in My Kitchen =-.
I’m very happy to have found your website. Please tell me, the second recipe is Cultured Buttermilk? Not regular buttermilk? I really need to make some Cultured Buttermilk and have found myself confused on that matter.
Thanks,
Jenn
.-= Jennifer´s last blog post …A Fresh Start =-.
Yes, Jennifer. The second recipe is for Cultured Buttermilk.
2 Questions….on making your own Buttermilk cultured from raw milk, the first step is to let a cup of raw milk sit for a day. Then you take a 1/4 of that cup(after it has clabbered) and put it in a pint mason jar. My question is..what do you do w/ the left over 3/4 of the clabbered milk? Throw it away?? (I also have no idea what Clabbered milk looks like).
My second question is in reference to step 3….It says Repeat this transfer of sub-culturing several more times until the milk dependably clabbers in 24 hours. What does “dependably clabberes” mean?? Isn’t that what happens in step 1? Why would you need to repeat the process several times? Thanks
DM — Yes, you would throw away the other 3/4 C. of milk, unless you had a use for slightly sour milk (porridge?, waffles?, biscuits?). The initial cup of milk will probably take several days to clabber. You want to concentrate the bacteria culture until the milk clabbers in 24 hours or less, hence the process of repeating the steps. Once it’s strong enough to reliably clabber in less than a day, then it’s ready to use as a starter culture. Clabbered milk looks like buttermilk — very thick, tart, and tangy. Hope this helps!
I have been making butter from raw milk and saving that buttermilk to soak grains. But after one week or so, I’m afraid to use the buttermilk– how long can you keep this type of buttermilk in the fridge before it goes bad and isn’t safe to use?
How long can you store the cultured buttermilk in the fridge before it goes bad and isn’t safe to use?
I would love to see your tutorial broken down into lots of pictures– so we could see what clabbered milk looks like, what each step looks like, etc. So we don’t feel so weird about having a jar full of weird stuff sitting on our counter for days and days!
Thank you for your time!
I think I’m more of a food renegade than I ever thought I’d be, but I’m liking it and your blog. I made my first batch of buttermilk last week using dried cultures and it was wonderful! In reading the directions for continuing this culture it said when using raw milk that it is necesarry to pasteurize it first to start with a blank slate on bacteria, so to speak, otherwise the bacteria in the raw milk will overtake the bacteria in the buttermilk culture. This seems odd to me-do you have experience with this?
Thanks!
.-= Kelly Cook´s last blog post …HenPals Nesting Boxes =-.
Suppose you have some raw milk in your fridge that is just on the edge of sour. Could you put it at room temp and use it as a starter for buttermilk? I mean, start the clabbering process even though it’s nearly soured in the fridge?? I don’t want to waste the milk!
.-= Kate´s last blog post …Do Your Research!: Cloth Diapers =-.
Kate — Sounds like a match made in heaven to me.
I’ve been making butter and buttermilk for awhile now, but I do it differently than as explained above. I basically take whole organic whipping cream and blend it until the butter and buttermilk separates. I recently found out that it I let the cream heat to room temperature I cut my butter/buttermilk making time by half! Woohoo for that!
Danielle — That’s normal buttermilk, the stuff that’s leftover after making butter. Cultured buttermilk (what most recipes mean when they call for buttermilk) can only be made through a mild fermentation process. That’s how it gets its wonderful sour flavor.
Kristen, that makes sense. I wondered why my 3 year old son slurped down the buttermilk I made extremely fast. I’m sure if it was cultured he wouldn’t have, but then again he does like to eat sour cream plain. S who knows!
I bought some dry starter from Cultures for Health and recently attempted to make some cultured buttermilk. Their instructions said that it is likely the culture died if it separated into curds and whey. I read another site that said this is normal for non-homogenized milk. My buttermilk did separate, so I was wondering if there is a way that I can know for sure if the cultures died.
Also, the Cultures for Health instructions said to keep the milk between 70 and 77 degrees F. We tried, but in the middle of the day, our air conditioner just ran constantly and the house still reached 78 degrees. You didn’t mention a certain temperature when leaving the buttermilk on the counter. Do you have any advise on maintaining the temperature? Am I just going to have to wait to do this until it’s not so dang hot?
Thanks!
So here’s a question for you. Once you’ve made the buttermilk from your last clabber of stuff (from method #2) – what do you do with all the stuff you clabbered? Can I bake with it like I would use buttermilk? Can I soak grains in it, etc.? And, how do you make buttermilk from then on out – do you just use method #1 once you’ve done method #2?
Thanks so much!
Shannon
I’d like to read more on the benefits of buttermilk, but everytime I click on the “why use buttermilk” link, an error message pops up. This page seems to be down; have you moved it?
I am allergic to milk, corn and gluten, is there an alternative resource I can use to make buttermilk with say coconut milk Hemp, Almond or Rice milk?
In cooler weather, does method 1 need to sit out longer than in warmer weather?
I made this yesterday. It coateed the jar and all. I had some store bought buttermilk in my frig, so i did a whiff test….the store bought smells sweet and tangy, and homemade smells so sour. Is this how it is supposed to be or did mine go bad?
Heidi — Did you make it from raw milk or with a store bought starter culture? If you made it with a starter culture, it should taste just like the starter culture. If you made it from raw milk, you may have to go through 3 or 4 rounds of culturing before you find the flavor you like.
Hi, I did the ole ‘make butter from heavy whipping cream’ and now have sweet cream buttermilk left over. Is there a way to culture it without buying starter from the store? Can I just let it sit out for a few days? I’m trying to be as independent as possible. Wish they’d let us keep a cow in our apt. lol!! Jk!
Is 6 and 1/2 days too long to leave the 1st cup of milk on the counter? It just doesn’t look like the picture yet. How long is too long? It hasn’t really seperated yet.
How long can buttermilk sit on the counter without going bad? I left home and forgot to put it in the fridge. It has now been sitting on the counter for 28 hours and I am not sure how soon I will be able to get back to the house.
Hi,
Thanks for this post! I’ve been drinking some delicious raw buttermilk from my local dairy for the past month. This past week, I realized they were making it with whole milk. Well, I really love buttermilk and was drinking several glasses a day. This seemed like too much fat for my daily diet.
So, this weekend, I attempted to make my own buttermilk using your recipe. I did not follow the same proportions, but I didn’t think more buttermilk would hurt the equation. There have been some issues. Does anybody have any suggestions?
Here’s what I did: I started with 1/2 gallon fresh raw skim milk and 1/2 gallon fresh raw whole buttermilk, both from my usual dairy. I boiled two 1/2 gallon mason jars and let them dry and cool down. Then I poured half of the skim and half of the buttermilk into each container. I screwed on the lids, gave them a shake, and let them sit on the counter in my air conditioned house for 24 hours. I was cooking and baking other things during the 24 hours, so the room may have warmed up a bit, but I know the counter itself was never hot, and I keep the thermostat at 70 degrees. (It’s 107 here in Texas right now.)
After 24 hours, the liquid was thin and lumpy. I refrigerated it for 8 hours, shook it some more, and still it’s the same. It coats a glass, but not like the perfectly beautiful creamy buttermilk I’ve been drinking. It takes sour and tangy—not bad in flavor, but an unappealing texture. What has happened?! Help please!! Also, do you think it’s safe to drink?
Thanks everyone!
I’ve been making my own buttermilk for years and have yielded excellent results from making it with vinegar, cream of tartar and even lemon juice. I love experimenting with buttermilk. Thanks for sharing.
I live in Eastern Europe and have no problem getting fresh raw milk. I really would like to get started making buttermilk, but am not sure if I should boil the raw milk to clean, as my friends here do, or just use it as is? Help?
Please define “clabbered”. I looked it up and got the same definition as curdled. I waited till my first cup of raw milk did this. Now, I’m at stage three in the repeat instructions but it’s continuing to be heavily clotted (curds and whey). Hence, nothing coats a glass.
What am I doing wrong? Should I strain it?
Have a question about the clabbering. We use fresh goat’s milk, let it set on counter for 24+ hours. It separates and looks clabbered, but should we shake this up before we take out 1/4 cup to add to fresh milk?
That’s such a simple way to make buttermilk – I didn’t know it was so easy.
I knew about making it with a buttermilk starter from say Cultures for Health but who knew it was as simple as a 1:3 mix of milk and buttermilk.
I’m curious though is cultured buttermilk “safe” to drink for someone who is lactose intolerant? I know some cultured milk drinks get close to being lactose free such as kefir.
What happens if I leave raw milk in my refrigerator for months? It’s been in my ref for a month and is starting to sour.