The stages of milk.

[chaska]

Okay, time for some science.

What happens to milk (pasteurized) when it's not refrigerated? If milk is good and cheese is good and sour cream is good, why is sour milk bad? Is sour milk a stage on the way to cheese? Will milk left in a hot car turn into cheese? Will it poison me if I eat whatever it turns into?

Who knows the stages of milk?

And before anyone says it - no, this would not make a good band name.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Just a wild guess but I would imagine bacteria is the key

[tridim]

2. I left my half and half out all night yesterday

Put it back in the fridge and it was fine. I can take a little spoilage as long as it doesn't get chunky.

Buttermilk is the ultimate in "spoiled" milk. Even fresh it smells like milk that's been left in the sun for a few days. Yet, it's delicious in pancakes and biscuits.

[neweurope]

3. Hm. I know about the LAST stage of milk. Pasteurized or no -

it's GREEN, very much alive and is NOT good for you *g*

When I was a child - no yogurt yet known in Germany and you tended not to buy what you could make yourself - my aunt used to make us a "Satte" once milk was not so fresh anymore. She sat the milk out in the sun for a day or half a day (I forgot), and after-wards put the curdled milk in a cloth to press out excess water. Then she put sugar over it - mmmmmmmmh! Wish I could eat that again. I'm pretty sure that milk wasn't pasteurized, though. I don't know if it would work with the abomination they call milk nowadays :)


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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Deja Q]

4. I will say tHat milk treated witH rBST and rBGH spoils MUCH more quickly;

even before its expiration date.

Best to pay the 20 cents more and buy tHe non-treated stuff.

[neweurope]

5. Ah, forgot - milk will definitely turn into many things but never

into cheese unless you add rennet.



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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[chaska]

6. Oh yeah, forgot about that.

[chaska]

7. So is butter milk just milk that hasn't been refrigerated?

[neweurope]

8. No. You get buttermilk when you're making butter.

When you make butter from sweet cream you have a fluid left; you add lactic acid bacteria and get buttermilk.
If you make butter from sour cream you don't need the bacteria.

There are different kinds of buttermilk though - "buttermilk" with up to ten percent water added and "pure buttermilk" without anything added. Buttermilk that isn't called "pure buttermilk" has had an souring agent added, like Streptococci-bacteria.

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[purr]

10. Can also make fake buttermilk by adding

vinegar and letting it sit for 1/2 hour.

[chaska]

9. So - to conclude - if it smells bad throw it out. Correct?