With the baking season getting started, today I would like to focus on one of my trusted ingredients to deliver tender, perfectly moist baked treats: buttermilk.
In the past, I would buy an entire container of buttermilk, use a little, and then forget about it until it was too late. Indeed, while buttermilk is a staple in cooking and baking, sometimes we don’t have it on hand, or we buy an entire carton, use a little, and let it expire. Has this happened to you, too? 🙂
To eliminate waste of product and money, and last-minute trips to the grocery store, we can do one of the following:
- Make a “quick” buttermilk by combining 1 cup milk and 1 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
- Buy buttermilk powder. This is an excellent option for longer storage, which I recommend if you use buttermilk regularly. I buy organic buttermilk powder from Azure Standard, which I use as per their instructions 1 cup water mixed with 3 tbsp powder.
For further info, I recommend Margaret Eby’s article “Buttermilk Powder Is Not an Option. It Is a Necessity,” published in Food and Wine magazine. As the author states, “To my surprise, biscuits, cakes, pancakes, and other baked goods tasted just as good with the powder. I’m sure if you could get your hands on fresh-from-the-farm true buttermilk it might be better, but powdered buttermilk is great in all the usual things I use it for, including marinades. I even make crème fraîche with it—I just mix a tablespoon of buttermilk powder into a cup of heavy cream and let it sit out for a day. Voila, homemade, cheaper-than-store bought crème fraîche.”
While most of my uses of buttermilk revolve around baked desserts (which can be found here), I also like to use it to make ranch dressing, using this recipe. I have yet to make crème fraîche with buttermilk powder, as per Margaret Eby’s instructions above. I think this is a great idea and use!
Do you have a favorite recipe with buttermilk? Let me know in the comments 🙂
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