Enjoy a glass of Buttermilk
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If you’re having stomach problems we have a lot of options for medicine and care these days. That’s not always been the case but our mountain ancestors had solutions for their problems nonetheless. Buttermilk was a favorite medicine.
Of course buttermilk is what’s left in the churn after you’ve made butter. True buttermilk is not at all like the cultured stuff you can find in a store today. However, they are both beneficial.
Today’s cultured buttermilk is great because it has live cultures added, just like yogurt. These microorganisms help the naturally-occurring bacteria in your stomach which is there to digest food, produce vitamins and trigger immune responses. There are also bad bacteria and cultures in yogurt and buttermilk fight against those.
We established that old fashioned, homemade buttermilk doesn’t have anything added to it. Making butter and therefore making buttermilk is really easy. Start with whole milk, give it a good long shake then strain out the solid butter and what’s left is the buttermilk. Nothing is added – except what the good Lord adds.
Amazingly, those naturally added “ingredients” were the reason that homemade buttermilk has long been used medicinally. Butter can be made from either sweet milk or sour. My grandmas would always offer you a glass of “sweet milk” to differentiate from the buttermilk. It’s just milk that hasn’t turned yet.
However, everyone on the mountain always thought you could only make butter from sour milk. As the milk turns, the natural bacteria in the milk begins to ferment and that makes it easier to churn and makes the butter keep longer – both of which may account for why the old folks wanted to use sour milk. The added benefit are those “cultures” that they couldn’t have named yet they counted on them to cure stomach troubles.
Now some people just enjoy the taste of buttermilk – as some enjoy yogurt. I can’t help but wonder if that earlier generation appreciated the taste or drank it simply for their health?
How do you eat buttermilk?
