Don’t Leave the Milk Out
Many a Saturday morning, as the children and teens stray from bed into the kitchen with dragging feet and crusty eyes, they make their way to the assembly line, compiling bowls, boxes of cereal, spoons and cartons of milk. In a daze they pour their perfect ratios and head toward the living sofa and remote control, content to carouse tv shows and leave their breakfast tsunami engulfing the kitchen counter. Chances are nobody put away the milk.
When an adult finally emerges to the scene, surely they are vexed that there is cereal bits on the counter and floor but what make them hem and haw the most is the milk that’s been left out on the counter. “Nobody put the milk away!” And with insolence they either put the carton back or call someone away from their show to do it. “You can’t leave the milk out,” one final chide before moving on with their morning. This may warrant an apology from the now wakeful children or they may log it away as an important truth to live by when they one day buy milk and host a living room of children of their own eating bowls of cereal. Don’t Leave the Milk Out. We’ve all been told this.
Whether kids know why this is told to them on a weekly basis, adults know why. Milk that is left out on the counter long enough to get warm goes bad. It sours. It goes from being pleasantly sweet and smooth to horrifyingly chunky and foul, bringing you to tears and possible wrenching should you get close enough to sniff or, God forbid taste it. Don’t Leave the Milk Out.
Even if it’s not left on the counter, but say, left in the fridge too long, the same is true. Many a faithful parent has forced the family to binge huge glasses of milk before vacation to use it up, not wasting a single ounce before the carton is disposed as they head out the door for a week long trip. They’ve learned that if you forget about the milk, it becomes a nasty welcome home committee in the fridge when you return.
I get it. I’ve felt the heat of my mom’s frustration for leaving the milk out as a child. I guzzled my pre-vacation glass of milk faithfully like the rest. But, at a crucial moment in my adult life, I realized I was living a lie! In one crashing moment, my world of milk cartons and condensation jugs was shattered when I found out the actual truth. You can leave milk out. And in some cases, for some purposes, you need to leave the milk out!
It all happened a few years ago when we bought a beautiful brown Jersey with a heart on her forehead milked her that first week. We had gallons upon gallons jars of real, fresh milk sitting on the table. We didn’t even have enough space in the fridge to house this much milk, no system in place for processing it and not enough stomach room to keep up with the supply. I had to find ways to turn this milk into a variety of foods that were delicious and safe to eat and this is where I discovered the truth; REAL MILK CAN BE LEFT OUT.
A Tale of Two Milks
I say real milk because there is a difference between milks. Milk from the grocery store has been pasteurized, heated to a 160°F minimum to kill any bacteria that may be getting cozy among its sugars, proteins and fats. Milk, after all, is the perfect superfood for growing life be it a nursing calf or dangerous bacteria. Pasteurization essentially sterilizes the milk to keep it safe to consume after it travels far and wide from cow-country to the grocery store shelves. It’s not harboring bacteria at the point you buy it, it’s not harboring anything but its sugars, proteins, a fraction of its fat and whatever vitamins are added to make it “healthier”.
This is not real milk. This is conventional milk. Industrialized milk.
Real milk is another story, raw milk, by another name. Real milk is not pasteurized and therefore contains a slew of probiotics and enzymes, gifted to it from the inside of the cows teat, inoculating the milk with beneficial bacteria that help preserve and safe guard the milk against pathogens and harmful bacteria. Real milk is full of life! It contains the necessary enzymes to break itself down within the gut of the consumer, enzymes which are destroyed in the pasteurization process. A reason why many people that struggle to digest conventional milk have found raw milk far easier on their gut and in some cases, actually healing, or reversing, their aversion to dairy products!
Letting Real Milk Sit Out
Because of these properties of real milk, something magical happens when you let it “sit out” in a clean jar covered with a clean lid. Depending what temperature you let it sit out at, it will become a cultured product; it will turn to yogurt, kefir or clabber, a curdled form of milk that is used for cottage cheese! Going back to my desperate need to use up all this milk we found ourselves with, I got to work setting up very clean jars of this real milk and letting them sit in the pantry of all places! Some sat at room temperature for twenty-four hours, others sat days on end and then some went right into an Insta-pot at 104°F for 12 hours and the result shattered my world. They not only remained edible but became even more beneficial to my body than they were before.
Prior to that day I would spend five dollars for a quart of Kefir because I valued its probiotic benefit for my gut. That day, I made my own kefir by doing nothing but letting the milk sit out for 24 hours with a spoonful of leftover kefir whisked in.
Before that day I would spend nearly ten dollars per week on plain greek yogurt, loaded with Lactobacilli for its creamy texture and gut benefits, and that day, my yogurt making journey began, producing the most delicious, thickest greek yogurt with absolutely no thickening agents, only pure probiotics working their magic.
After nearly crying with joy at the beauty and simplicity it took to reap the benefits of using raw milk this way, my next reaction was one of anger. How dare we call that white liquid in the one gallon plastic jug milk?! How dare we withhold this kind of nutrition and benefit from children across the country. How dare we make this perfect food illegal in many states across this nation! How dare we disturb such a wonderful process that had been in place for millennia. How did we get to the point where we tell our children “Don’t leave the milk out!”?
How We Got Here
Well, I understand why we have gotten to this point. Milk is still incredibly nutritious, even stripped of all its goodness. Protein is still protein; calcium is still calcium, a macro nutrient and essential mineral humans absolutely need in their diet. But when folks stopped getting milk from their local farmer and grocery stores met the needs of people in cities and suburbs, milk needed to be handled differently. From cow to carton the process changed and raw milk was no longer safe the way they now had to handled it. Instead of hand milking or using a small, easy to clean pump machines to milk, farms switched to using enormous and extensive pumping systems in order to milk hundreds of cows twice a day, requiring miles of tubing and giant vats to collect, store and dispense milk to tanker trucks for shipping and bottling. When quantity is prioritized, quality usually dissipates. Since it’s nearly impossible to guarantee that all harmful bacteria, dirt, manure and pathogens are kept out of these milk lines, vats and equipment on such large scales, pasteurization became necessary. Pasteurization has made industrialized milk production possible. I get it.
However, it came with a cost. Milk has become ravaged of its benefits and digestibility, and adversely, because farms have moved from easily managed by keen eyed farmers who are familiar with each cow, its even loaded with antibiotics and in some cases growth hormones to keep production going, and then passed off as real. Raw milk has been branded a dangerous villain and nearly impossible to come by unless you live in farm country or are as radical and blessed as we are, and buy a dairy cow, or choose to live the life of a rebel and buy it off the milk black market.
Raw milk is not dangerous whatsoever when it’s handled in the appropriate way. Industrial techniques don’t work with raw milk production and they don’t need to. Raw milk producers don’t have hundreds of cows they have very small herds if only a few cows. They can sanitize their equipment and keep a visual check on the entire process; every cow, every teat, every step along the way. In fact, the best sanitation overseer is the milk itself. Real milk is full of an army of probiotics, helpful bacteria, ready to eliminate any threat that comes its way, short of a poop patty falling in the bucket. It’s very hard to taint real milk to the point it becomes dangerous. Very Hard.
People across the globe have been raising animals for milk for thousands of years, long before refrigeration existed. The cow folk of Romania, the goat herders of the Levant, the camel people of Arabia, the horsemen of the Steppe, shepherds of the Alps…the list can go on. These people have milked their animals without Dawn dish soap and sterilized glass jars and stainless steel buckets, without fridges and even running water. They relied on the miraculous nature of real milk to culture itself and preserve itself without modern interventions that we now have. They drank real fresh milk and whatever was left they let it sit out. They salted it, heated it, curdled it and turned it into cheeses. They used common sense and traditional methods and not only survived but thrived as people groups in little part because of their animals.
Fermented Foods and Cured Meats
And this just speaks to milk. The same could be said of other naturally fermented food and drink that were the staples of the ancient, pre-electric, pre-refridgeration diet. Kombucha, fermented tea; Sauerkraut and Kimchi, fermented cabbage; Soy sauce, fermented soybean. And what of other salt cured cheeses and meats?
Consider prosciutto for heavens sake! The king of all cured products. This was another eye opening, mind shattering experience on our farm and in our kitchen. A reminder that we we know so little of the traditional ways and have been so far removed from real life that we don’t believe somethings until we do it ourselves.
A few years ago we raised a herd of seven pigs for meat to stock our freezer and the that of family and friends. Since we absolutely love prosciutto di Parma, and had a surplus of pork legs, we found out how to cure our own prosciutto that year. So, we took a leg from the hind of a pig, what would typically turned into a ham, and we laid it in a bed of salt, then covered it with salt, packing it tightly so we were lift with a white kosher mound. This bin of salt encapsulated pork leg was sent to sit it a spare corner of the barn and occasionally we would check it to see that no cracks formed or opening were exposed in the salt adding more as we needed to ensure it stayed enshrouded. This took over three weeks. Then we washed off the salt and pat it down and let it air dry for about 24 on the counter on a rack before slathering it generously with rendered lard, fat from the pig itself. Next we tied a clean string around the ankle and hung it up to dry and finish curing, no place other than the attic! It was the driest and darkest place in the house after all. This took place over winter so the pork leg hung up there for a few months.
When spring approached we moved the leg to the basement where it would be cooler. This is were things got crazy. Mold started to grow on the leg. We learned white mold wasn’t a risk but green or black mold could be. Wherever we saw a hint of black or green we cut it off the surface and reapplied lard. Six months into the curing we brought this leg upstairs, now nearly half the size from water loss from curing, its meat had been transformed into the dark and marbled cured meat we were familiar with when we finally sliced into it. We feasted on our long awaited delicacy and I kid you not it was more delicious than any prosciutto di Parma we’ve ever purchased. Prosciutto di Cottingham was far more complex, more robust and satisfying.
Again, I was met with near tears of joy and anger. This was done without refrigeration. This was true food security and it went against modern conventional wisdom. Don’t Leave the Milk Out in another variant, Don’t Leave the Meat Out; but we did. And it was one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives.
What Other Lies Have I Believed?
So this got me thinking, what else have I been told that’s not entirely true? What has been passed off as wise council that is actually an ignorant misunderstanding? A lie packaged as modern conventional wisdom? Once I went down the milk and cured meat rabbit hole I was ready for the fight. The fight for information, the fight for reality, the fight for truth!
See what other lies you’ve been told in more posts to come!