Whey, whey, whey coming out of my ears. The second thought I had after making cheese was, “Wow… this is a lot of whey. Wonder what I do with it.” (The first was something along the lines of, “Omg… OMG! I MADE CHEESE!”)
Electronics + food = how I roll.
I stuck the whey in my fridge, then I moved the whey (and the fridge), and back into the fridge it went. And there it sat. I did a little bit of cursory googling, but most of what I came up with were suggestions to soak oatmeal or flour with it. A tablespoon at a time. I was never going to get rid of all this whey. In fact, the only suggestion that I could find for using a ton of it was to use it in soup. Now, I am decidedly anti-filler. I don’t believe in hiding food in other food just for nutritional value. Whey in soup kind of seemed like filler to me, and I really wanted to find a recipe in which the whey got to live a life of purposeful whey-ness. (Yes, I know I’m weird with my existential food thing.)
I have to confess that I was mildly grossed out by the Sustainable Eats lacto-fermented blog carnival. I’m still working on getting over my aversion to letting food sit on the counter for days on end. But I was sold on the idea when I discovered that lacto-fermenting is all about whey. No WHEY! I gotta find a way to use all this whey…
Could my toaster oven be more grimy?
I decided to try out Annette’s recipe for lacto-fermented marmalade. Not only do I love marmalade, but having a ton of marmalade on hand gives me an excuse to eat another food I love: English breakfast sausages. Yum. Serious yum. It also gives me a reason to try to make Irish soda bread, which I believe calls for clabbered milk. (Clabbered milk also ends up in my fridge pondering for the meaning of life.)
Watch me melt my laptop on accident...
Marmalade it is. Fun new thing: learned about scalding jars. I scalded the jar. And my counter. And the stove. And almost myself. Apart from the scalding issue, which was definitely a user-error, this marmalade was a snap! I can’t wait to try it in a few days. But here’s what I really want to know. Rapadura – the sweetener in the recipe – is brown. That is why my marmalade is kinda brown. So why isn’t Annette’s marmalade brown??
In other food news, last night my kombucha completed its second ferment. I know this because when I opened a bottle to do a taste test, it exploded all over my counter. Sufficiently carbonated, VERY tasty. Kombucha rules!
Too funny! Mine isn’t brown because I used organic sugar and not rapadura. What kind of cheese is your whey from though? Because if it’s been heated above 115 it may no longer be viable as a fermentation agent since the good guys would have been destroyed. This is why raw milk drinkers are against pasteurization.
Here are some other things to do with cheese whey though: soak livestock grains in it to increase calories to them, although I don’t beieve there are enough good guys left to reduce phytic acid or bathe in it (think of goats milk soap – dairy has long been esteemed as an anti-inflammatory and skin softener.) You can save it for smoothies by freezing it in ice cube trays. You can bet any of that processed whey is made from what you have – it’s a market that sprung up as a way for dairies to use up their whey once the infant formula industry had claimed all they could. Thanks for participating in the blog carnival!
Aha! No wonder mine is so weird looking.
I actually have no idea if my whey will work or not. Now I’m thinking maybe not. I made paneer – I brought the milk just to a boil, but didn’t use my thermometer. Well shoot! I guess all I made is slowly spoiling oranges in whey/sugar water.
I’ll have to try again once I make some raw-er whey!
You can always turn it into regular orange marmalade: http://www.canningacrossamerica.com/2010/02/21/now-is-the-season-for-making-marmalade/
I ended up being way too chicken to try that – I’ve never jarred anything before! It is still sitting on my counter, only now I’m afraid of it. Good grief
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[...] full circle. Except I guess that next time I pull out the recipe, I’ll probably try to use lacto-fermented marmalade. And rapadura. And soaked flour. And I’ll probably make my own yogurt from local raw [...]
I am an avid lacto-fermenter and love marmalade. I’ve resisted making the recipe in Nourishing Traditions because I like my marmalade not so liquid. I’m going to try adding pectin, if it will work without boiling the mix. And using local raw honey as sweetener.
But meanwhile, more ways to use up whey:
1. ricotta cheese!
2. I also use my whey in smoothies, not to hide it, but because of the excellent protein and probiotics it adds (along with yogurt or kefir).
3. If you want to freeze it in ice cube tray and have children, why not make popsicles with fruit juice and whey.
Thanks so much for your comment!
I don’t blame you – I put marmalade on sausages and that’s trickier with the liquid marmalade. Let me know how the pectin & honey work with the NT marmalade recipe.
And I love these ideas! I don’t have kids, but I basically am a kid, so fruit juice/whey popsicles sound delicious
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