Just for fun, I Googled, ‘Is buttermilk making a comeback?’ And I got a torrent of ‘significant’ returns. Not only that, but the number of highly-ranked related search terms other folks had recently em-ployed showed it’s a big comeback…
This past week, the FFC featured a post on the all-but-lost art of buttermilk marination for chicken, veal and pork. I don’t know why it ever fell out of favour, but I can guess it has something to do with the younger generations’ addiction to convenience.
Making a comeback
But the Millennials and later groups have also exhibited a certainty curiosity about ‘natural’, retro, nutrition-dense foods. I wondered if buttermilk – with all its myriad health benefits – was making a comeback as a ‘healthy’ food.
It is. And it’s making an impact on both the food-forward dining and cooking fronts.
What is buttermilk?
“Buttermilk is a fermented dairy drink. Traditionally, it was the liquid left behind after churning butter out of cultured cream. As most modern butter in Western countries is not made with cultured cream but uncultured sweet cream, most modern buttermilk in Western countries is cultured separ-ately. It is common in warm climates where unrefrigerated milk sours quickly,” Wikipedia tells us.
Classic applications for buttermilk are well-known, if no longer widely used: “Buttermilk can be drunk straight, and it can also be used in cooking. In making soda bread, the acid in buttermilk reacts with the raising agent, sodium bicarbonate, to produce carbon dioxide which acts as the leavening agent. Buttermilk is also used in marination, especially of chicken and pork.”
What’s going on?
It’s a grassroots movement of sorts, capitalizing on the easy availability and simple administration of basic buttermilk ‘therapy’. You just get some from the grocery store and drink it. But there are many other intriguing, new and classic applications emerging and resurfacing…
Fermented milk-based beverages
Keffir is a Middle Eastern beverage that has recently come back into ‘view’ on the food horizon – in connection with renewed interest in fermented foods in general. Many Germanic and Nordic cultures have always enjoyed buttermilk as beverage. Once a staple in the Deep South as well, it has fallen out of favour as a beverage, thouigh remaining popular as a cooking ingredient.
The Soda Bread principle
As in soda bread, buttermilk’s acidity helps activate the baking soda and/or baking powder in pan-cake, waffle, muffin, cake and other soda-leavened recipes.
Mac & Cheese
In Mac and Cheese and other creamy, savoury casseroles, buttermilk can help thicken as well as de-liver a perky, tangy flavour note.
Mashed or Scalloped Potatoes
Add that tangy overtone to mashed or scalloped potatoes, too. Folks will wonder what tour ‘secret’ ingredient is!
Tomato Sauces
In any creamy-style tomato-dominant sauce, a splash of buttermilk in place of milk or cream can elevate the result to flavour greatness.
Cream Pies, Whipped Cream and Ice Cream
Buttermilk works just as well in sweet applications as it does in savoury ones. Helps add that bright top note while balancing off what might otherwise be a cloyingly sweet flavour profile
Dressings, Dips and Cooking Sauces
Buttermilk adds silky texture, zing and depth of character to any yogurt, sour cream or other creamy dip.
Smoothies
Buttermilk in your morning or post-exercise smoothie will help perk up your system and your mood!
My take
Buttermilk is a healthier substitute for almost any milk or milk-derived ingredient in any dish – whether sweet, savoury or umami-dominated. And its ‘healthy’ makeup of dairy and fermentation ingredients elevates the dietary virtue of any recipe you use it in.
My questions to you…
Having absorbed the above wisdom, are you moved to try buttermilk – or put it back in your diet?
Does its tangy flavour appeal?
Or are you more interested in taking advantage of buttermilk’s fermentation-derived nutrition benefits?
On the other hand – Are you a buttermilk ‘hater’ who will never use it no matter how healthy it is?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.