The Best Butter Milk Around (Plus a DIY Recipe Too!)

Gourmet

by Kemp Minifie, Gourmet

Eureka! I've found the magic elixir for impossibly tender cakes. It's real honest-to-goodness buttermilk, and the only place I've found it is in New England, made by the same family in Old Orchard, Maine, who make Kate's Butter.

I can just hear all you bakers out there yawning and saying, that's nothing new, we've known about buttermilk for years. The truth is, the commercial buttermilk you've been buying in the supermarket isn't buttermilk. It's cultured milk-usually skim milk-and often thickeners are added to give it extra body.

See more:19 Sweet and Savory Ways to Eat Ice Cream
Real buttermilk is what's left after cream has been churned into butter. According to Dr. Robert Bradley, Emeritus Professor of Food Science at the University of Wisconsin, "When you churn cream, the flat globules in the cream collide and the membranes surrounding the globules get stripped off. Those membranes go into the buttermilk, and they contain phospholipids that provide the emulsion stability that you need to make a good cake."

Real buttermilk made a spectacular birthday cake for Gourmet Live when I was developing the recipe in New Hampshire. But what about all of you, who can't buy true buttermilk? What should you use? Back in New York City, I retested the recipe with other cultured dairy products. Whole-milk yogurt--not cultured skim milk--came the closest to replicating the results I got with real buttermilk. Of course, you could take inspiration from your ancestors and make your own butter and buttermilk, enough for the cake with some leftover for pancakes, muffins, or scones. I can't wait to try that myself. Let me know how yours turns out!

See more:10 Favorite August Recipes

BUTTER MILK RECIPE
by Daniel Patterson,Epicurious

YIELD: Makes about 2 cups butter and 4 cups (32 ounces) buttermilk

Chef Daniel Patterson of San Francisco's Coi shared this surprisingly easy recipe for making fresh butter and its delicious by-product--buttermilk--with Epicurious. The buttermilk can be used to make Patterson's Yuba "Pappardelle" with English Peas, Fava Leaves, and Basil .

Test-Kitchen tip: Making butter can be an extremely messy process--as the buttermilk begins to separate, it will splash out of the bowl with each turn of the beaters. Even if your mixer has a splash guard, be sure to wrap sheets of plastic wrap from the rim of the bowl right over the top of the mixer (splash guard and all) to seal off any open spaces.

INGREDIENTS
- 6 cups heavy cream, preferably organic
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
- 5-quart stand mixer (or larger)

PREPARATION
- Transfer cream to bowl of 5-quart electric stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Tightly cover top of bowl and mixer with plastic wrap. Beat cream at moderately high speed until it holds soft peaks, 10 to 12 minutes. Increase speed to high and beat until mixture separates into thick, pale-yellow butter and thin, liquid buttermilk, about 5 minutes more.
- Strain mixture through colander into large bowl. Using hands, vigorously knead butter in colander, squeezing out remaining buttermilk, until dense and creamy, about 5 minutes.
- Transfer butter to large bowl, reserving buttermilk. Using hands, knead salt into butter. Roll into logs and wrap in plastic wrap or transfer to airtight container and refrigerate. (Butter will keep up to 1 week refrigerated or 1 month frozen.)
- Strain buttermilk through fine-mesh sieve, then cover and refrigerate up to 1 week.

More from Gourmet:
Top 10 Timeless Recipes
Gourmet's 12 Best Burgers of All Time
15 Perfect Pasta Dishes
Gourmet's Classic Comfort Foods