Sour milk, also known as sour milk, set milk or stock milk, is very easy to make. This old variant of acidification has been somewhat forgotten, but it is very tasty. Try it now.
In contrast to yoghurt, sour milk sours at lower temperatures and is therefore a lot milder. Well chilled, it is particularly refreshing on hot summer days and sour milk is healthy!
It is relatively firm and contains less liquid than other types of cream cheese.
Sour milk from raw milk
Traditionally, sour milk can be easily made from raw milk without additives. To avoid faulty fermentation, the milk should come from cows that have only been fed hay or grass. It is best to buy the milk directly from the producer.
However, since raw milk is hardly used nowadays, you can also produce sour milk with pasteurized UHT milk.
With UHT milk
To rule out contamination, you can also “vaccinate” pasteurized milk with lactic acid bacteria when making sour milk yourself. You then let them mature and soon you can enjoy them.
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Alternatives to starter culture
- lemon juice:
Add 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed juice from one organic lemon to one liter of milk. Then, cover and let the milk sit at room temperature for about 12 hours. - Leftovers of sour milk:
The next time you want to make curds, you can simply “inoculate” the milk with a tablespoon of the homemade curds as a starter culture. - Sour Dough Bread:
You can also use a thumb-sized piece of pure sourdough bread without any additives. Put the piece of sourdough bread in the milk and let it rest, covered, at room temperature for about 15 to 20 hours. Then you remove the sourdough bread and you can enjoy the soured milk.
Cleanliness top priority
Cleanliness is very important when making any kind of cream cheese and yoghurt yourself. Otherwise there is a good breeding ground for germs, which influences the acidification. Therefore, always sterilize your glasses and bowls well.
You can find tips on sterilizing glass here.
What the heck to eat?
Chilled pure sour milk is a refreshing and healthy snack. It tastes sweeter with a pinch of sugar, cinnamon, some honey or fruit of your choice. It is also suitable as an ingredient in desserts or with red fruit jelly.
In the warm kitchen it is eaten, for example, with fried potatoes, in soup or, typically in northern Germany, with sugar and pieces of black bread or rusks.
Curd milk is also used to make quark.
Storage of your homemade sour milk
You can store homemade sour milk in an airtight glass bottle in the fridge for about a week.
You can also make natural yoghurt, skyr or quark yourself.
Make sour milk yourself
Monitor stays on
Made from raw milk
- 1 L untreated raw cow milk
With UHT milk:
- Heat the milk in a saucepan to hand-warmth. Add the starter cultures and fill the mixture into sterile jars.
- Now let them mature at around 30° C for 24 hours. The best way to do this is in a yoghurt maker.
- When the milk has thickened, you can either process it into quark or pour it into a glass jar.
