Making Your Own Cultured Buttermilk

Making your own cultured buttermilk is easy and takes only a couple of minutes. You just need to get a buttermilk culture and some milk.

Ingredients

  • Buttermilk Culture: Store bought Buttermilk, or a Culture. (amazon link)
  • Milk: Either 2% or whole milk for more creamy Buttermilk.

Directions

If using store bought buttermilk to culture, just mix about 1 cup of buttermilk to 3 cups milk shake/mix and let set at room temp (72-82F) for 12-16 hours till buttermilk is as think as you like. Then refrigerate and it will say good for 1-3 weeks. If you re-culture (take 1 cup of the buttermilk and follow the same process as above) it will last another 1-3 weeks in the fridge.

If using a buttermilk culture, bring 1 qt milk up to room temp (72-82F) then sprinkle culture onto milk and let rehydrate for 1-2 minutes. Then shake and let set at room temp for 12-16 hours as above.

Notes:

I used 1 quart of store bought cultured buttermilk and used all but 1 cup of the buttermilk, then poured milk into the quart milk container, mixed by shaking and then let set at room temp for 12 hours.

You can make a substitute for cultured buttermilk by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar to 1 cup of milk, mixing and it will create milk that is similar to cultured buttermilk which is made with a culture similar to yogurt.

You can use your homemade buttermilk to make fresh easy to make cheese.

Fresh Garlic Chive Buttermilk Cheese Recipe

I have made a few cheeses already. Those have been more difficult cheeses such as cheddar, blue cheese, and mozzarella. This cheese is much easier and less time consuming than the ones mentioned above, doesn’t require any special equipment and tastes incredible. It is a soft spreadable cheese and requires no aging. Pictured are the Garlic Chive flavor and the Black Pepper flavor.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of cultured buttermilk
  • 2 quarts of Whole milk
  • 1 bunch of garlic chives (Can use regular chives & garlic powder)
  • 1 teaspoon of onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon of garlic powder if using regular chives
  • 4 teaspoons kosher salt

Directions

Pour buttermilk (you can culture your own buttermilk easily) and milk into pot and heat to about 90 degrees F. Let set for an hour, I did this to culture the regular milk into buttermilk to a small degree. After the hour culturing, Add in onion powder (and garlic powder if using regular chives) and chives. Heat over medium heat while stirring slowly until it gets close to 180 degrees. When it does reach 180 degrees F, you will see it curdle. At this point remove from heat and per set for about 30 mins to fully curdle. Then scoop into a colander lined within a doubled over cheese cloth till all the contents of the pot have been spooned into the cheese cloth. Now gather the corners of the cheese cloth and lift by the corners and twist to squeeze out the whey (liquid) until it is mostly out. Spoon the cheese that is in the cheese cloth to a container and enjoy. Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container for up to 2 weeks, if it lasts that long.