I've been straining it and it tastes somewhere between sour cream and Greek yogurt: yum! I haven't strained it long enough to make cheese, but that will be next. I can't wait to try kefir ice cream.
I ran out of milk, though, and thought I'd try the grains in cream.
The only cream I have (and the only cream they sell around here) is ultra pasteurized. The kefir experts say "never use ultra pasteurized dairy," and I thought they were just being snobs.
Uuum... no, they're definitely not. The cream smells gross and it never thickened, either. Lesson learned!
At least my blukeberry (blue/blackberry mix) bars turned out...
So all is not lost.
Ultra pasteurized dairy has been heated to such a high temperature that the molecular structure actually changes. It becomes nutritionally useless, or actually harmful. The kefir bacteria can't do anything with it, neither can the helper bacteria in your gut. Around here, I can only find one brand of cream that is not ultra pasteurized, but they have my brand loyalty.
ReplyDeleteDiana
Interesting. Yeah... the poor kefir grains look like they tried hard to work with it but just had nothing to work with :). At least our milk isn't ultra pasteurized :).
ReplyDeleteI did kefir in store-bought milk...YUCK!! Although the other day I got super thick kefir by accident (I left it too long to culture) and I never used it. Do you usually make it thick? I wasn't sure if it was "bad" or not??
ReplyDeleteAlso - I tagged you in my post: http://allthingsgale.blogspot.com/2011/08/7-links-year-in-review.html
Hehe, thanks for tagging me in your Year in Review... I think I'll have to participate :).
ReplyDeleteI like mine really thick, but our kitchen is pretty warm so it doesn't take too long to get there (about 24 hours). I don't think it's bad unless it smells bad. The kefir I made with the ultra-pasteurized cream smelled GRODY so I threw it out, but normally (no matter how thick it gets) it smells great to me. And to get it thicker, I strain it overnight through a coffee filter (plus I get all that whey).
I haven't tried raw milk with mine 'cause I refuse to buy it when I've got a jersey cow in my pasture, despite the fact she's not lactating... it's a mental block. I like the pasteurized stuff fine, but have noticed that it doesn't get as thick as I like if I add too much milk, at least until my grains proliferate enough to handle more milk.