In the craftalong
Level Up Your Cooking Skills, we try new things and share what we learn! I'm lucky enough to have raw milk available from a local farm, purchased in glass jars that I return for reuse. It's a great no-waste system. I find the raw milk easier for me to digest when I drink it straight, and I've experimented using it many other ways.
The most frequent for me is yogurt - with a half gallon of milk in my instantpot, I produce one quart + one pint of yogurt and one pint of whey that I strain off with a nut milk bag. It results in a thicker yogurt.
I didn't want to waste the whey, so I found other things to make! Like these delicious honey biscuits, which use a half cup of whey in the dough.
A fun thing about raw milk is that the cream rises to the top when you let it sit. Usually I shake the jar to incorporate the cream, but just for fun I tried skimming it off to make butter! I used my food processor to "churn" it, and it did take a while. The skimmed milk still made a tasty yogurt. Here's what this half gallon produced: almost a pint of buttermilk, a half pint of butter, a quart + a half pint of yogurt, and pint of whey.
The buttermilk, a side product of making butter, was a nice bonus used to make buttermilk pancakes!
Besides baking, you can use yogurt whey added to smoothies, for soaking beans, and using as a cooking liquid for rice, quinoa, or other grains. Try substituting it for some of the broth in a creamy soup, like this tahini chickpea & spinach soup!
Of course milk experiments wouldn't be complete without another item... CHEESE. A simple soft farm cheese is satisfying, but I went a step further in the spirit of learning new skills. Paneer! It's still a simple cheese, but pressed so it's hard enough to cut.
Just the thing for homemade palak paneer.
Mmm looking back on this makes me want to try it again... even though my next cheese experiment was a fail. If you're using rennet, get a good thermometer and pay attention to the timing! The mozzarella was supposed to stretch, not bounce.
And if you're feeling adventurous, come join us in the craftalong and gain some levels in cooking.
