dairy

I love milk and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

While some health-minded folk may beg to differ, I still believe that milk, and I mean Milk with a capital “m”: full-fat, unpasteurized (raw, alive), and brimming with all its inherent beneficial bacteria and enzymes, is a super-food. (For full milky manifesto, see here).

As raw milk is not only hard to find, but downright criminalized in most of the U.S., you can imagine my excitement when life swept me across the Atlantic to Switzerland – land of the pasture-grazing, mountain-side-roaming, behorned and, sometimes, beflowered cow. And you can imagine my disappointment when I found that, unless you’re living in a dairying village, the most widely accessible dairy foods—including butter and yogurt–have been pasteurized.

And while raw milk isn’t anywhere near illegal here, procuring it does require a bit of inventiveness.

The kind of inventiveness that found Lu & me, three buses and one long walk later, in the possession of a 10-liter plastic bucket filled to its brim with lait cru. You’re probably wondering what would possess two people to purchase such a large quantity of such a perishable foodstuff all at once. Well, quite simply, it was the smallest amount available. So what’s a couple to do when they want the benefits of raw milk in their lives but only have access to an impossible amount? Make raw-milk yogurt, of course!

Without pasteurization, the shelf life of a glass of milk is short—3-4 days, tops. This explains why, traditionally, dairy consumption revolved, not around fresh glass with cookies, but ferments: cultured butters, moldy cheeses, effervescent kefir, creamy yogurt, to name a few.

My first experience with homemade yogurt was, incidentally, in Greece. The process is simple: heat milk, add bacterial culture (or spoonful of bacteria-rich yogurt or starter) and let ferment in an incubator (or wrapped in sweaters or towels as pictured) for four-eight hours. Our notion of yogurt is much thicker, much firmer than, for example, than the dahi of India because we heat our milk past the point of pasteurization in the process. While this produces a denser, creamier product, it also destroys all the raw-some qualities of the milk.

It’s possible to make yogurt with milk that is still, technically, raw. Raw-milk yogurt’s consistency is somewhere between drinkable and eatable. We’ve been spreading ours on pancakes, making bircher muesli (overnight oats), and pouring it in mugs over a spoonful of turmeric and honey. It will keep in your fridge for weeks if well-sealed.

Raw-Milk Yogurt

#1. Heat milk to 110-115F. If you don’t have a kitchen thermometer, this is roughly halfway to boiling. (The milk should be warm, not at all hot).

Make sure to constantly stir, as any scorching at the bottom will affect the consistency of your yogurt.

#2. While milk is heating, sterilize glass jars by pouring boiling water into them.

Let water sit in the jars until milk is ready for transfer, as you want them to be warm for best fermentation results.

#3. Pour milk into warmed jars, leaving a bit of room at the top. Add spoonful of yogurt from either a yogurt starter or a commercially produced yogurt with live-bacteria cultures and stir.

If you’re using bacteria from a commercially produced yogurt, you will have to continue to do so every time you make yogurt (meaning, you can’t just use a spoonful from your last batch). If you’re able to find a starter, you’ll be able to use last batch spoons every time.

#4. Seal and wrap in sweaters or towels or use an incubator, if you have one (fancy!). Place near a heater.

#5. Ferment from 4-8 hours. Experiment with the time! Some recipes call for ferments as long as 24-hours. I usually let it ferment overnight.

#6. You just made yogurt! Enjoy! Or:

If you’d like your yogurt to be a bit thicker, and if you’d like some whey (for, perhaps, some lacto-fermented veggies) you can strain your yogurt.
Line a bowl with some cheesecloth and pour your yogurt into the cloth. Fasten cloth and let hang over an empty bowl for two or so hours. Voila: thicker yogurt!
The contents in your bowl are whey—you can store this in your fridge for up to a week and in the freezer for three months.

Idioms of old illustrate esteem and success through the symbolic use of the fat content of milk: the cream of the crop, the cream always rises to the top, and the ever-shrewd cat who got the cream. If we were to rewrite these idioms according to our current dietary logic their primary symbol would be, and pardon my pun, skimmed if not completely removed. The cat who got the 1% milk or non-dairy substitute.

Fat’s dishonorable reputation has strongly shaped the character of one of our most fundamental foods. So much so that our herder ancestors would be hard-pressed in recognizing our modern “milk” as the same nutritious and transformative food they so highly revered. Once a whole source of macro-nutrients and a stellar source of micro-nutrients, milk has been dismantled–skimmed, pasteurized, homogenized–and, through this process, rendered nutrient-dead and, I would venture, detrimental to our health.

Milk has long been touted for its high content of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. In our modernized dairying system, cream, or the fat portion of milk, is partially or fully removed lowering the bio-availability, or how active a nutrient is within our bodies, of those fat-soluble vitamins. When only partially removed, the milk is homogenized, a process that involves the high pressure pumping of pasteurized milk through very small nozzles, so that its fat globules are reduced in size and thus evenly dispersed throughout the milk. The cream never rises to the top with homogenization. The benefits of this process are limited–milk “conveniently” no longer requires the quick dispersing shake it once did–while, from my vantage, the hazards are as manifold as in any processed food. More specifically, I believe homogenization is so detrimental because it requires pasteurization, or the transformation of milk into “milk.”

Milk must be pasteurized either before or during homogenization to to prevent its enzymes from attacking the unprotected fat globules and producing off-flavors (McGee 23). Pasteurization is a process of heating milk at extremely high temperatures for set intervals of time in order to destroy pathogens, or harmful bacteria. In our modern dairying system–where milk is pooled from many different farms, where milk is drawn from often disease-ridden cows–this process is necessary.

However, pasteurization destroys, not only all bacteria, but also, as earlier mentioned, all enzymes. Enzymes are complex forms of protein in our foods that, essentially, help us digest our food, absorb and assimilate nutrients from our food and, indeed, the test for successful pasteurization is the absence of all enzymes.

Pasteurization denatures milk in many other ways, as well: it reduces or destroys many of its vitamins and minerals–thus the fortification, or in more accurate terms inflation, of milk with the synthetic versions of vitamins it once inherently contained; it alters its amino acids lysine and tyrosine making the whole complex of proteins less available; it promotes the rancidity of unsaturated fatty acids; and it destroys the Wulzen or Anti-Stiffness factor. (Fallon 35) There is even evidence that it may render lactose more readily absorbable, thus rendering milk all the more injurous for those with lactose-intolerance.

While many of us can lose our ability to produce the enzyme that facilitates the digestion of milk sugars–lactase and lactose, respectively–as we age, I believe our enjoyment of other dairy foods–cream, butter, ferments like yogurt and cheese–is not only a sustainable choice for those of us living in more Northern climes, but can also be a health-promoting one.

Choosing dairy foods that have been made from milk that is raw, that has been unaltered in all its nutrient-dense glory, is wise. Enjoying one of these foods, namely cream, with the bounty of this sweet season, namely the last of summer’s strawberries, is self-love.

References:
Fallon, Sally, 1999, 2001. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC. Newstrends Publishing Inc.
McGee, Harold, 1984, 2004. On Food and Cooking. New York, Scribner.

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