It’s so precious, what can I do to prevent it in the future?
Well, Hettie says, sour milk is not really something to prevent. Really, she assures you, souring is just the first stage in milk’s alchemical transformation into one of nature’s perfect foods: cheese. Cheese (as long as it’s made from raw milk) has everything you need to survive – including vitamin C.
Raw milk naturally turns into clabber (sour milk), then yogurt, and finally cheese….
What happens when milk sours is that its own lactic-acid producing bacteria starts consuming the milk sugar (lactose) and reproducing. This happens pretty slowly in the fridge, but it does still occur. How fast tends to depend on how quickly your milk gets cooled after milking. The quicker the cooling, the slower the souring or “turning” as we say. However, ALL raw milk will sour at room temperature and eventually even in the fridge.
Sour milk is NOT rotten.
Hettie wants to make sure you know that sour milk is a safe, healthy, delicious and useful food. It is an important ingredient in a lot of lazy-lady cooking including fermentation of grains and vegetables.
If you let sour milk keep fermenting or culturing it will evetually separate into solid and liquid….
And just like little Miss Muffet, you will have curds and whey. The curds can be used like cream chese and the whey for soaking your morning oats.
oh, what’s that Hettie?
oh yes, of course… Hettie wants me to add that you can also use your whey to prepare your fermented duck egg mayonaise…
mmm……
Send Hettie your questions…. and she’ll happily answer as many as she can!
Best to you,
Hettie Quackers et al.
