Category Archives: Dairy products

Ver post de Breakfast and Brunchs

Homemade butter

Beginner
Difficulty Level
10m
Preparation Time

You only need 10 minutes to make your own home-made butter!

home-made butter
Sandwich de verduras ecológicas asadas en pan casero, guacamole con yogurt de cabra y un toque de mantequilla.

To make butter at home, you need the help of your KitchenAid. You can afterwards, add salt to it, fresh herbs, garlic, whatever you want!! And with the remaining Buttermilk, delicious breads and muffins, yogurts or fresh cheese. So it’s definitely worth it. You only need a good quality cream with at least 35% fat content (if it has less it won’t work), salt and any other herb that you’d like to add!

Beat the cream at high speed until the liquid part separates from the solid fat.The liquid will spill out of the beater, so be sure to cover well to avoid getting a mess of your kitchen!

What happens here with the mixing is that the fat globules are damaged and their fat leaks out and comes together into masses that are large enough to gather.

Collect, with help of a sieve, the Buttermilk. Buttermilk is a fermented milk with a population of Lactobacilus bacteria, and it is used for cheese, yogurt making, breads and muffins, providing great flavour and tenderness to the cakes.

Wash well the butter removing all the butter milk. The more buttermilk it has, the less it will last.

home-made lemonthyme butter

With help of a wooden spoon start kneading the butter, and removing any excess of buttermilk. Add the salt or herbs here, and collect all the butter into a mold or the recipient you’d like to use. I made a salty one, and another one with lemon thyme (smelled delicious). For the thyme butter, I wrapped it in film and shaped it with my hands and afterwards placed it in the freezer for about one hour. After that I cut it into slices and it looked really nice and elegant.

And that’s it!!! Home-made butter. And with a good bread, you are the closest to heaven.

Posted in Breakfast and Brunchs, Dairy products | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments
Ver post de Dairy products

Home-made soy milk

Newbie
Difficulty Level
13h
Preparation Time
25m
Cooking Time

The other day I found soybeans in an ecological market, bought them and decided to prepare home-made soy milk. I had seen already that it was not complicated, and in fact it isn’t. The steps to follow are basically 6: soak the soy beans, squeeze them a bit and take away some of the skins, warm-up, blend, boil and strain.

homemade soy milkThe soybean paste left from the process is called Okara or Biji and it is used a lot in vegetarian cooking as a meat suplemment since it has a lot of protein and fibre.

homemade soy milk

Okara - pasta de soja

The next step is making my own Tofu. I have to go and buy the nigiri (coagulant) and maybe see if I can get a mould and in the next days I’m going ot make! But for now, home-made soy milk recipe.

Posted in Dairy products, Vegetarian | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments
Ver post de Dairy products

Home-made ricotta

Beginner
Difficulty Level
1h
Preparation Time
15m
Cooking Time

I’ve been wishing to show you how to make home-made ricotta cheese for a while now. You must try to do it, it’s so easy and exciting once it’s done and ready to eat!

Just to feed a few minds and become a little more wise in the culinary world I want to tell you a few curiosities about milk and cheese making. Milk is composed mainly of two proteins that determine its behaviour in cooking: the curd (caseins) and the whey. Another interesting property of milk is that we can heat it up at very high temperatures but it won’t coagulate (like egg proteins that do, for example) unless the environment becomes acidic. That’s why during ricotta cheese preparation lemon or vinegar is added to the milk. This generates the acid environment that causes all the curd proteins to clump together to form a solid mass, while the whey proteins remain suspended in the liquid. This is the base for making cheese. Isn’t it great to learn and understand more about what happens when we cook? I love it! Anyway, let’s get to ingredients and preparation :) Enjoy!

Ingredients. Makes about 1 1/2 cups of cheese aproximately.

  • 2 liters of whole pasteurized milk
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • The juice of 2-3 lemons (about 3 tablespoons)
  • Large strainer and a cheese cloth

Preparation.


  1. Start to heat the milk at medium heat.
  2. Add the salt.
  3. Once the temperature reaches about 90ºC (just before boiling point) turn off the heat and add the lemon juice.
  4. You will see how the curd starts to separate from the whey.
  5. Let rest for 15 minutes.
  6. Have ready the strainer with the cheese cloth on top.
Posted in Dairy products | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments