[Smashy the Hammer] [An Aspiring Luddite]
I carry no phone
An aspiring Luddite
In a wired world.
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[Jeff Berry]
Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

The Whey Forward
18 February 2019
[Oxtails]

I have recently gotten back into the habit of cheesemaking. The immediate result, of course, is that we have homemade cheese! So far it is proving excellent in salads and on pizzas. It's not bad on its own either. That's neither here nor there, though. The side effect of regular cheesemaking is the generation of whey. Which leads to the perennial problem of the cheesemaker - what to do with the whey?

Now, if I had pigs, this would be a solved problem. The whey could just go in with the rest of their food and provide a nice bit of extra nutrition. Whey contains some carbs, but also calcium, zine, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamins B 6 and 12, and so on. After all, it's just milk with most of the fat and protein removed. I don't have pigs, though, but I don't want to lose all that good stuff. One thing I'm trying is using it instead of some or most of the water in my various bread recipes. Since I like my sourdough sour, the extra acid tang from the whey isn't a drawback at all. As long as it's not so acid as to harm the yeasts, it should be fine.

This past weekend, I tried another experiment that worked out quite well. I used it as most of the braising liquid for a batch of oxtails. I chopped a bunch of carrots and onions and put them in the slowcooker with some salt and pepper, and liquid which was about three quarters whey. I browned the oxtails, added them on top and let them go all day. About an hour before serving, I made a slurry with flour and olive oil and added that to thicken the liquid. Easy-peasy.

So good. Served over rice and with some steamed broccoli. So good.


© 2019 Jeff Berry
The Aspiring Luddite