How to Make Cultured Buttermilk?

Learn how to make cultured buttermilk or whole milk! It’s great for using in your baking recipes or as a culture in cheese making.

Welcome to another “Milk Mustache Monday” where I share how I’m desperately trying to keep up with all the milk accumulating in the fridge now that we have a family cow. Granted, my dear children are doing their level best to spill as much as humanly possible- even the baby who has taken to trying to kick her Daddy’s milk over since she sits in front of him in the center of the table. But alas, it continues to accumulate nevertheless. Praise the Lord for the abundance!! Today we’re learning how to make cultured buttermilk!

Homemade cultured buttermilk is even easier than making yogurt which is pretty darn simple. And it is a real blessing to the household economy because if you keep your culture going it is so much more frugal than buying buttermilk from the store.

You basically have three options for making homemade buttermilk.
1.) Make Cultured Butter and then your buttermilk is already cultured.
2.) Make Sweet Cream Butter and then culture the buttermilk.
3.) Add buttermilk culture to whole milk.

Obviously, the first option is the easiest. The work is done and the buttermilk is already cultured. But if you’re like us, we really don’t care for the taste of cultured butter. Or sometimes you need a higher yield than you’ll get from true buttermilk which makes using a buttermilk culture in whole milk a great option. Is it real buttermilk? No. But it ends up tasting just the same.

Ready for this recipe? Are you sure? It’s so super difficult and I don’t want to be held responsible for any injuries sustained in the making of this recipe. I don’t know if it will work with pasteurized milk without purchasing a culture. I’ve never tried or been interested in doing so since I can buy pasteurized cultured buttermilk even more easily than I could make it simply by taking two steps beyond the gallon milk jugs, reaching to the top shelf (not always easy when I’m 5’0″ on a good day), grasp the carton, pivot, and place in the cart.

How to Make Cultured Buttermilk from Whole Raw Milk or Fresh Buttermilk

Method One Using Cultured Buttermilk from the Store

• Get a jar of raw milk from the refrigerator. A pint will suffice unless you’d like to make a mesophilic starter for cheese making, then I’d use an entire half gallon.
• Add ½ cup of cultured buttermilk per quart of plain buttermilk or raw milk.
• Shake it very thoroughly and then set it in a warm place.
• Wait 24 hours. By now it should be thickened to about the consistency of yogurt. If not, wait until it is. It could take another day or two. (If it doesn’t thicken up in 24 hours try increasing the ratio of cultured buttermilk next time.)

Method Two Using a Buttermilk Culture Packet

(Buy Buttermilk Culture Powder Here)

• Warm your raw milk or buttermilk to about 86 degrees. Sprinkle the contents of the culture packet into the warm milk.
• Allow it to sit and rehydrate for a couple minutes and then stir it in well.
• Wrap the pot (or you could transfer them to jars first) in a fleece blanket and allow it to set up for about a day until it has thickened.

When you’re running low on cultured buttermilk, just be sure to reserve that ½ cup of buttermilk from the previous batch to add to your next one, and then just repeat steps four and five! Enjoy it with your biscuit!

13 Scratch Made Recipes Featuring Cultured Buttermilk

• Buttermilk Ranch Dressing
• Buttermilk Biscuits
• Milk & Honey Cupcakes
• Homemade Mesophilic Starter Culture for cheesemaking
• Strawberry Buttermilk Sherbet
• Cucumber Buttermilk Soup
• Spiced Buttermilk Cake with Pears
• Buttermilk Roast Chicken
• Peach Buttermilk Ice Cream (or here’s one for Blueberry Buttermilk Ice Cream)
• Pumpkin Buttermilk Pie
• Creamy Buttermilk Potato Salad
• Buttermilk Pancakes

Suggested Read: Sweet Cream Butter Recipe

What’s your favorite way to use buttermilk?

Try making your own Sour Cream.