Just the day before we went to the village, where they gave us three whole liters of real whole fat cow's milk. I decided to ferment 1.5 liters at home, the rest went to the kids’ porridge.
The benefits of fermented milk products
It's no secret that fermented milk products play an important role in maintaining and preserving our health and well-being.
Dairy products have a rich history and have been known to man since ancient times. This is how the ancient Greek historian Herodotus spoke about kumiss - a refreshing and healthy drink.
Fermented milk products were especially popular in the countries of the East, because there were many nomads there, for whom it was valuable that sour milk was stored longer and was superior to fresh milk in terms of usefulness.
Such products are easily digestible; it is not for nothing that doctors recommend drinking a glass of kefir or other fermented milk product in the evening.
In addition, fermented milk products saturate our intestinal microflora with beneficial bacteria.
Scientists have proven that by regularly consuming fermented milk products, a person is better protected from various types of infections and improves immunity.
We've talked a little about the benefits of sour milk, now it's time to move on to its fermentation.
How to ferment milk at home
I usually ferment whole country milk. If you do not have the opportunity to buy real whole milk, then buy milk with the highest percentage of fat content in the store.
For the starter we need:
Whole milk - 1.5 liters (this is how much I have, you can take more or less)
Sour cream - at least 20% fat content, and preferably 25%.
For 1.5 liters of milk I take 330 g. sour cream. But suddenly you ferment less or more milk than 1.5 liters, then we determine the amount of sour cream like this. For 0.5 liters of milk, take 3 tablespoons of sour cream.
There was a time that I fermented milk in a slightly different way, using half sour cream and thick fermented baked milk. But after I tried this recipe, now this is the only way I ferment milk. And to you, dear readers, I offer this particular recipe.
Of the ingredients for making sour milk, except sour cream and milk itself, we don’t need anything else.
Please note one important point: be sure to remove the sour cream that you bought for milk fermentation from the refrigerator and let it stand at room temperature for at least 1 hour.
Pour the milk into an aluminum or enamel pan. I don't have aluminum cookware, so I use an enamel pan.
We put it on the fire and let the milk boil, I advise you not to leave the stove at this time, so as not to catch the escaped milk all over the stove). As soon as the cap on the milk begins to rise, immediately reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes over low heat.
Remove from heat and leave the milk to cool. The main thing here is not to miss the moment; the milk is ready for fermentation when its temperature is approximately 40 C. If you dip your little finger in the milk, it should easily tolerate this temperature.
Now take a deep bowl and put sour cream into it, which has already warmed up to room temperature. Then pour a glass of milk from the pan and add it to the sour cream.
Mix the milk and sour cream thoroughly to obtain a homogeneous, liquid mass without lumps. Pour this homogeneous mixture in a thin stream into boiled milk that has cooled to 40 C.
Mix thoroughly, cover with a lid and wrap with a terry towel or something warm. Leave for several hours until the lactic acid bacteria multiply and the milk ferments.
For me, the milk fermentation process takes about 5 hours. In general, I try to ferment milk in the evening so that I can leave it overnight. And in the morning, eat healthy sour milk for breakfast.
When the milk is fermented, you should get a thick mass, like jellied meat, with separated whey. In no case do we drain the whey; we simply mix the milk and whey with a wooden spoon until smooth.
That's all the sour milk is ready. You can eat. It is very good to eat fermented milk with pancakes or. And in our family, everyone really loves yogurt and sour milk.
It's very easy to make. Add a few spoons of your favorite jam to a plate of fermented milk. I love it with raspberry, strawberry or cherry.
Our children don’t eat fermented milk in its pure form, but they gobble up this homemade yogurt on both cheeks))). Now you know how to ferment milk at home and will enjoy the taste of a healthy fermented milk product. I made a short video especially for you to show the consistency of the resulting fermented milk.
Especially for you, I made a few seconds of video about the consistency of sour milk.
God bless you!
With respect and love, Elena Kurbatova.
Sour milk is an indispensable ingredient in cooking. Tasty and healthy food means prepared from high-quality and natural products. The sour cow product is often used in various dishes. Baked goods with the addition of this ingredient turn out fluffy and tender, salads become piquant, sauces become dietary.
In addition to the taste benefits, curdled milk and kefir made from sour milk are very beneficial for the body.
Peculiarities
It is not difficult to prepare sour milk at home, it is only necessary to observe the temperature regime and some rules of sourdough.
- Pasteurized milk can be made sour by adding kefir, sour cream, unsweetened yogurt, for example.
- You don't have to boil milk to make it sour. They do this process when they doubt the purity of the product and want to eliminate the presence of bacteria.
- When choosing a milk bag, pay attention to the expiration date. If it exceeds 2 weeks, then the product for sourdough is not entirely suitable. This liquid substance contains various preservatives.
- If you take a package with pasteurized contents, then the priority is a product with a high percentage of fat content.
- The starter culture and natural yogurt should not contain sugar, starch, dyes or flavor enhancers.
- The best thing would be to purchase an evening treat. Next, you need to keep it in a warm place, without putting it in the refrigerator. The whole product will quickly turn sour when exposed to heat due to the activity of bacteria.
Cooking methods
There are the simplest ways to quickly ferment cow's milk at home.
- Dip the stale piece of bread into a bowl with the prepared liquid. It should be at room temperature. Cover with a plastic lid. Under such conditions, the bread will provoke active fermentation, and after some time the contents will sour.
- At the pharmacy you can buy starter or dry bacteria for mixing with a dairy product. It is important to heat the liquid on the stove for some time to provoke the active growth of bacteria. The kefir product will be ready for use after 5 hours.
- The initial product is heated to 40 degrees, then any acidic additive is added, such as unsweetened yogurt, full-fat sour cream, kefir or sourdough. Keeps it warm, you can even put it in a thermos. The useful substance will begin to sour. This is the operating principle of a regular yogurt maker designed for preparing various fermented milk products. After 8-10 hours the mixture is ready for use.
- Lemon juice squeezed from natural lemon or vinegar is added to the contents for the starter. It is also necessary to keep it warm.
- You can simply leave the dairy product in a hot room. To make cottage cheese, it is recommended to keep the container of milk in the oven over low heat.
The secret of bifidobacteria
It’s not at all difficult to get homemade sour milk, as long as it’s whole and natural, and not store-bought with preservatives with a long shelf life. It is not difficult to understand that the chemical powder called a milk product will never become sour, but rather will deteriorate and turn into a product unsuitable for anything, even dangerous for consumption.
Fresh cow's milk sours faster due to the bifidobacteria and Bulgarian bacillus contained in it. It is heat that provokes the active proliferation of these beneficial bacteria, which is why it is so easy to make kefir or fermented baked milk at home.
It will be useful for lovers of homemade products to know that ripening produces vital enzymes and amino acids that are rarely found in other products.
Signs of sour milk
In order to understand that milk has turned sour, you need to know the difference between a fermented product and a regular one.
This is determined by:
- specific sour odor;
- the fact that when boiled, the sour substance will certainly curdle;
- the fact that characteristic whey begins to separate on the surface of the sour product, and fat globules settle to the bottom of the dish (this is especially noticeable if the dish is transparent).
To learn how to make sour milk at home, watch the video below.
Fermented milk is very beneficial for digestion. Here are simple recipes for its preparation.
Recipe for sour milk with milk
Heat the milk to a boil and then cool to 40-50°. After this, add a special starter (2-3 teaspoons per liter of milk), close the lid and place in a warm place. After 10-12 hours, the milk coagulates into curdled milk. It is cooled in cold water and kept at a temperature no higher than 8° for 8-10 hours.
In the future, you can use 2-3 tablespoons of ready-made yogurt for fermentation. They are taken by first removing the top layer of curdled milk.
Recipe for curdled milk with sour cream
Boil the milk, cool it to a temperature of - 30° C, add sour cream at the rate of 0.5 cups per 1 liter of milk, mix well, cover the dish with a lid and place in warm water for 6-8 hours, while the water temperature should be constant. Cool the finished yogurt to 10°C.
Pasteurized, sterilized or boiled milk should be fermented with sour cream (1 teaspoon per glass of milk), kefir or special starter cultures. The abundance of lactic acid bacteria added to milk will prevent the development of other microbes.
How to ferment milk
At room temperature, milk sours within 10-12 hours. To quickly get sour milk, you can put a bread crust in fresh milk or pour a little vinegar or lemon juice and heat it up.
Ryazhenka is prepared in the same way as yogurt, but from baked milk. Ferment warm baked milk (35-37°C) with sour cream at the rate of 1 glass per 1 liter of baked milk and keep in a water bath for 3-5 hours. Cool the finished fermented baked milk.
How to make kefir
To prepare kefir, you need to boil the milk, let it cool and add the starter (1-2 tablespoons of kefir per glass of milk).
How to make sour cream at home
Sour cream can be prepared at home. To do this, you need to add a special starter or good quality sour cream to the cream and let it sit at room temperature. When the cream sours, it must be refrigerated and kept at a temperature of 5-8°C for 24-28 hours, after which the sour cream is ready.
You can make sour cream at home without “ripening”. To do this, add citric acid and agar or gelatin solution to the chilled cream. The cream will thicken, taste sour, and after cooling will look and taste like sour cream.
Sour milk is widely used in cooking (for example, in baking, it is quite common to use sour milk as the main ingredient). The dough from sour milk turns out tender and fluffy, and the sauces get their original taste.
It would seem that fermenting milk is quite simple, but milk produced in modern dairies contains additives that prevent it from fermenting (it simply goes rotten).
If you need to ferment milk, this problem can be solved in several ways (depending on the milk itself).
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Milk starter
To ferment milk at home, you just need to buy natural milk and the problem will be solved very simply - you just need to leave a jar of milk at room temperature and after a while you will get wonderful sour milk.
- Pieces of rye bread are also used as leaven (add no more than a teaspoon of leaven).
- Heat the milk before fermenting.
- To quickly ferment milk into a whole product, add pieces of cottage cheese or sour cream.
- Milk should be kept at room temperature. As soon as you notice that the milk has begun to sour, put it in the refrigerator (otherwise the milk will quickly curdle).
Using starter cultures
Today you can buy various milk starters. Using starter cultures, you can make yogurt or kefir at home, but these starter cultures contain a special type of bacteria: from them you will get a completely different type of fermented milk product.
In order to ferment milk and get curdled milk (that’s what sour milk is called), they cannot be used. But, if you want to make homemade yogurt, then you can’t do without a special starter (that’s why you can’t use kefir as a starter).
If you want to ferment industrial milk, then you must be sure that the product is made from whole milk, not from powder, and that no stabilizers have been added to the milk. Otherwise, you will get a nasty, slippery slurry rather than natural, sour milk.
Due to their unique composition, fermented milk products are very popular not only in cooking, but also in cosmetology. The high protein content allows the natural product to be present both in the regular diet and in dietary and therapeutic nutrition. However, not everyone knows how to quickly ferment milk to get kefir or yogurt.
The benefits of fermented milk products
For the human body, milk is a source of vitamins, microelements and nutrients that help ensure proper metabolism. Kefir is produced by fermenting natural milk with special bacteria. During the digestion process, they create beneficial microflora in the intestines and help eliminate toxins and waste products.
Low-fat dairy products are indispensable for weight loss. Protein, which is part of cottage cheese, sour cream, kefir, and yogurt, is easily absorbed by the body. In addition, it has the property of quickly satiating and reduces the need for sweets, which is important for dietary nutrition.
Kefir or yogurt?
In the process of milk fermentation, different types of natural products can be obtained. Natural souring produces curdled milk, a dietary product that retains all its beneficial properties. A certain type of milk starter will help you get yogurt or kefir. There are many disputes and contradictions about the beneficial qualities of fermented milk derivatives. To understand this issue, you should understand the difference between kefir and yogurt.
In terms of nutritional value, the products do not differ much from each other. To obtain kefir, a special culture is used, which is added to pasteurized milk. As a result, kefir grains absorb lactose, while making the drink accessible to people with allergies to milk sugar. Both products can be prepared at home, but before you make kefir from milk, you should choose the right raw materials.
How to choose milk
To ferment a healthy product yourself, it is better to purchase high-quality milk. It is undesirable to use products with a long shelf life. During processing, preservatives are added to it, reducing the usefulness and quality of the raw materials.
When choosing milk, you should pay attention to its fat content; the higher it is, the longer the souring process will take place. In stores you can often find a dairy product made using dry powder. Such raw materials are unsuitable for producing natural kefir or yogurt.
Kefir at home
To make kefir from milk, as a rule, a special fungal starter is required. You can use regular store-bought kefir. You will need boiled milk, cooled to a temperature of 20-22 degrees, in which it is diluted and left warm until a clot forms.
The fermented milk is placed in a cool, dark place and left for 48 hours to mature. The resulting drink at home can be consumed after full ripening. Part of it is left for later preparation.
Milk starter in the kitchen
The development of advanced technologies makes it possible to obtain in your own kitchen not only kefir or yogurt, but also hard cheese, yogurt, sour cream and other fermented milk products. They are obtained by adding special starter cultures.
Before quickly fermenting milk, you should decide on the choice of the active ingredient. Typically, dry cultures are packaged in portioned bags and have a fairly long shelf life. In order to obtain a high-quality and healthy product at the end, it is not advisable to divide the starter into several times. Failure to seal the packaging often leads to damage to an important component.
In order to quickly ferment milk into yogurt, as mentioned above, you can use a special starter. However, there is another way. Pre-pasteurized milk (boiled) is cooled to a temperature of 35-40 degrees. To begin the process of natural fermentation, sour cream and purchased yogurt are added to it. The container with milk is wrapped and kept in a warm place for at least one day.
DIY cheeses
Homemade cheese has excellent taste and quality. Not everyone knows how to ferment milk for cheese correctly to get the expected result. You can obtain a product for further use by natural fermentation of milk or with the addition of fermented milk derivatives. To significantly speed up the process, you can add a piece of bread to the milk.
Unleavened cheese is made by boiling curdled milk and then straining it. The saggy curd, freed from excess whey, is placed under a press; the density of the cheese will directly depend on the severity of the load and the period of pressing. There are several ways to prepare this type of cheese.
Fermented milk products obtained at home can be given to children without fear, because every housewife knows what components they consist of.