The Goods Are Odd

As mentioned in my New Year’s post, we’ve started the adventure of making our food more active and getting as much of those slightly more processed foods from our own kitchen. Starting with a half gallon of raw milk on the kitchen table we aimed to make two things- whey (for future counter cultures) and cream cheese (because it is delicious!).

I started the process with some confusion. The recipe in Nourishing Traditions states: ” If you are using raw milk, place the milk in a clean glass container and allow it to stand at room temperature 1-4 days until it separates”. Now, to me there are two things that are unclear about these instructions. The first is whether or not the glass container should be covered if not sealed. I really could not find an acceptable answer searching the web, so I decided to screw a lit on the jar and see what happens. Because there were no explicit directions to keep the process from the air I often opened the lid to see and smell what was going on. The lid would get taught with pressure from the activity in the jar so I would release that, which I think was a good thing to do.

For the risks of playing around with bacteria activity in an non-sterile kitchen the lack of specificity in the instructions for this process is frustrating. But I decided to trust the fact that people have been doing this with milk for thousands of years, since I have such additional advances as hand-washing and flush toilets, I think I should be fine.

Here is the beginning of separation. But it being winter room temp was pretty low and the process was going slower than it seemed like it should. We also decided to move the jar to the top of the fridge where it is warmer. This move helped to move things along and after day four actual changes were happening. But I have to admit I was pretty unsure about the whole thing.
That brings up the second issue with the directions we weren’t sure what degree of separation we were looking for. Did we wait for the first signs or for distinct layers? I don’t know why recipes like this decide to error on the side of less information, it doesn’t seem conducive to the success of one’s instructions.

We decided to wait longer. (Or rather one of us did, and I decided to go along.)

We waited for something to happen that, it turns out,just doesn’t happen. You can see that there are three distinct parts, the cream on top, the liquid (whey) and the now solid-ish milk. But it doesn’t become three different layers one on top of the other like we imagined, in fact it doesn’t even have to get as far along as we let it. In fact I was pretty sure that this was too far. I opened it up to smell.

Up until now the stuff had had a sour aroma, but nothing bad-smelling, kind of a mix of Parmesan and yogurt. But then at this point it smelled stronger and off and I got worried. Plus I saw circles on top which looked suspect to me. So I gave up. On this batch anyway.

I went and bought a new half gallon of raw milk (this is not the part of the blog where I am saving money) and started over with the jar on top of the fridge. I decided to let it go just to the point where separation begins, not letting it get too far along. Four days later I saw some separation, smelled it and called it good. The milk is more solid, there is liquid and cream, but nothing has really changed places.

At this point it smelled a fresh sour (which apparently is not a contradiction) and very pleasing.

I dumped out the jar into my towel (I chose a pretty thin one) lined strainer. Immediately I could see that much more separation had happened than it looked from the outside. All the solid milk collected in the strainer and almost three cups of why poured out the bottom immediately. I put this in the fridge, while the remainder dripped out.

Without squeezing tie up the bag and let it drip.

The picture in Nourishing Traditions shows doing this over a tall wide-mouthed container, like a pitcher. I don’t have anything like this so I arranged this set up to get the necessary height and the width needed. For a while this dripped steadily. It can stay and drip almost all day. In fact it took a while for it to stop dripping entirely. Those last drips hang on and are slow to reform, but they are there and keep coming longer than my patience could handle.

I decided the drips were slow enough and far enough apart to open ‘er up.

The rest of the whey went in jars in the fridge to be used later (stay tuned!). And this beginning of cheese went in a glass container covered with plastic wrap.:

At this point you can do any number of things, though I don’t recommend eating as is. Just a reminder for those inspired to do this yourself. I started with whole raw milk. Not available in most states. You can make whey with yogurt but I don’t know how the cheese part come out. Or, start with pasteurized milk and culture it (this is instead of leaving it out to separate and culture on its own) or get it to curd with buttermilk or something acidic, linke vinegar. There are lots of resources for making cheese at home that is not raw and from milk that is homogenized.

Here is what I did with mine:

In a food processor with a couple squirts of flax oil and salt you can mix just about anything to make a raw, cultured and amazingly healthy cream cheese. If the flavor is a little ripe for you keep it in the fridge and let it mellow, my second batch was much calmer.

This one is smoked salmon and parsley. Spread on a sourdough bagel from the farmer’s market, I felt pretty legit.