Raw Milk

epicuric

epicuric

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Last week I finally got round to calling in at a local farm that has started selling raw milk at the farm gate. They have a vending machine in a room by the roadside - just pull up, put your bottle under the spout and insert coins. Brilliant! Real milk and no packaging waste. Unfortunately, the vending machine was out of order, so I was taken to the dairy, where my milk was dispensed straight from the big cooler - freshly milked a couple of hours earlier. It tasted divine, not as heavily creamy as I remembered, but rich and smooth. I used some to make a loaf of white bread, it came out heavier than the usual almond milk version but was still nice. We've been using in in tea, and there is a subtle, but pleasant difference in taste. Furthermore, it only cost £1 per litre - much less than supermarket organic milk, and benefitting the farmer way more than the pittance they usually get for milk.

I was reared on the stuff, but does anyone else have experience of raw milk?
 
We buy fresh goat milk from a tiny artisan dairy farmer to prepare home made ricotta for a Catalan Dessert called " Mel i Mato " which was first prepared in Cadaquès in the 1920s and means: Honey and Milk .. ( 1 Kilo of Ricotta home made, Brown natural sugar in the raw, honey, wáter and rasberries ) ..

It is quite lovely ..

Cow milk: I have had from tiny dairy farmers however, I do not drink cow milk regularly.

I drink Espresso every morning without sugar or false sweetners.

I rarely use cow milk as an ingredient except to soak fresh cod fish and we get it just milked from a local farmer ..

I am not fond of containers, plastic or tinned or canned foods in general .. So it is a rarity that I buy these ítems ..
 
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epicuric said:
It's the same in the UK.

I really fancy the idea of using it to make butter. Does anyone have any experience of doing this?
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You would only use the cream off the top and if your raw milk is like what I can buy here, only about 1/4 of it is cream. It can be done in the mixer. You would be better off using what we call heavy whipping cream.
 
We made butter using hand-held cranks in a mason (canning) jar when I was a kid in 4-H (a youth group) as part of a demonstration at a county fair, did it several years in a row. You can still buy the hand cranks. I googled "butter churn" and was really surprised at what new and used hand cranks are selling for here in the U.S. Woowza for something that was a novelty when I was a kid. I remember it was hard for the group leaders to keep us kids from eating all the butter and cracker samples. Most of us had never had real butter because margarine was popular back then. Even my grandmother who lived on a working farm and sold fresh milk and cream used margarine.

I'm guessing you know you have to let the milk separate by letting it sit several hours or overnight in a glass or clear/translucent plastic container and you will easily be able to see where the cream has floated to the top. You'll want to dip out that cream and use that for butter making.

You can also make butter using an electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer as when the cream separates into butter and buttermilk you are going to want that splash guard. I've accidentally made butter a time or 2 when I walked away from heavy cream being whipped.

BTW, the butter will just be a very, very pale cream/yellow. The color of the butter in the supermarket is from dye(s).
 
Thanks for the tips @CraigC and @medtran49 ! I guess I would need to buy an awful lot of milk to generate enough cream to justify the effort. It's just that I really fancy making unpasteurised butter. It's really difficult to buy over here - other only times I can get it is either when a French market comes to town or when I go to a cheese festival. I will have a chat with the farmer to see if he can sell me just the cream.
 
epicuric said:
Last week I finally got round to calling in at a local farm that has started selling raw milk at the farm gate. They have a vending machine in a room by the roadside - just pull up, put your bottle under the spout and insert coins. Brilliant! Real milk and no packaging waste. Unfortunately, the vending machine was out of order, so I was taken to the dairy, where my milk was dispensed straight from the big cooler - freshly milked a couple of hours earlier. It tasted divine, not as heavily creamy as I remembered, but rich and smooth. I used some to make a loaf of white bread, it came out heavier than the usual almond milk version but was still nice. We've been using in in tea, and there is a subtle, but pleasant difference in taste. Furthermore, it only cost £1 per litre - much less than supermarket organic milk, and benefitting the farmer way more than the pittance they usually get for milk.

I was reared on the stuff, but does anyone else have experience of raw milk?
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Never - I'd love to try it. I always thought there were laws about selling it raw...
 
morning glory said:
Never - I'd love to try it. I always thought there were laws about selling it raw...
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Unfortunately a store can't just put up a sign saying "Raw Milk, purchase at your own risk." It should be just that simple, but lawyers got involved. It reminds me of all the warning labels on ladders, they help the "Common Sense Challenged" to remain in the gene pool.:ohmy:
 
My mother was never much for eating dishes with cream sauce, never cooked them, and she NEVER got whipped cream on her pies, didn't really eat ice cream sundaes, though would have a cone now and again. When I got old enough to notice, I asked her why. Remember I mentioned my grandmother selling milk and cream? Apparently, when my mother was a kid, cream wasn't a big seller, though milk was. Not really sure why, as she was born several years after WW1 ended and well before WW2 started, but that's what she said. Anyway, since the milk sold well, but not the cream, my grandmother made my mom and her siblings drink the cream for breakfast and lunch, and for a snack if they got hungry at night instead of regular milk. She grew to hate the mouth feel and fatty taste of the cream over time so refused to use it when she grew up. Me, OTOH, I love cream sauces and whipped cream on my pies or ice cream or brownies or hot chocolate or ...
 
medtran49 said:
My mother was never much for eating dishes with cream sauce, never cooked them, and she NEVER got whipped cream on her pies, didn't really eat ice cream sundaes, though would have a cone now and again. When I got old enough to notice, I asked her why. Remember I mentioned my grandmother selling milk and cream? Apparently, when my mother was a kid, cream wasn't a big seller, though milk was. Not really sure why, as she was born several years after WW1 ended and well before WW2 started, but that's what she said. Anyway, since the milk sold well, but not the cream, my grandmother made my mom and her siblings drink the cream for breakfast and lunch, and for a snack if they got hungry at night instead of regular milk. She grew to hate the mouth feel and fatty taste of the cream over time so refused to use it when she grew up. Me, OTOH, I love cream sauces and whipped cream on my pies or ice cream or brownies or hot chocolate or ...
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I don't like cream either and rarely have any, But that is nothing to do with what I ate as a kid. I can't remember having fresh cream as a kid. We had tinned cream but that was only on special occasions! I do like a vanilla ice-vream sometimes though.
 
There's no one round our way that sells raw milk now - the local farm that did is now a housing estate. When I was young I used to drink it whenever we could get hold of it, but then they decided young children, elderly people, and pregnant women should avoid it, finally changing the laws about selling it. Since my daughter has a miscarriage which was traced back to some unpasteurized cheese she'd eaten, we tend to avoid it where possible.
 
Fond memories. My maternal grandparents were share croppers. They grew cotton. They also had dairy cattle, chickens, geese, and guinea hens. MawMaw had a butter churn - an old fashion wood churn. I wanted to help. She would give me a jar of cream to shake until it turned to butter. I was very young and tired before the cream turned to butter. Breakfast at MawMaw's house was oatmeal. Served in a heavy, cream colored, crock bowl with a cranberry colored band. The oatmeal was made with fresh milk. Topped with a pat of fresh butter and a dollop of fresh cream. OMG! I dream of MawMaw's oatmeal. I have never, ever had oatmeal like MawMaw's oatmeal.
 
ElizabethB said:
Fond memories. My maternal grandparents were share croppers. They grew cotton. They also had dairy cattle, chickens, geese, and guinea hens. MawMaw had a butter churn - an old fashion wood churn. I wanted to help. She would give me a jar of cream to shake until it turned to butter. I was very young and tired before the cream turned to butter. Breakfast at MawMaw's house was oatmeal. Served in a heavy, cream colored, crock bowl with a cranberry colored band. The oatmeal was made with fresh milk. Topped with a pat of fresh butter and a dollop of fresh cream. OMG! I dream of MawMaw's oatmeal. I have never, ever had oatmeal like MawMaw's oatmeal.
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Did you ever get left with turning the handle on the churn? Relatives had a four gallon one. We kids were used in place of motors.

The "battens" used for making the blocks of butter are still in their house.
 
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