Expired Raw milk? what to do with it.

[chaoticzenmom]

Ok, title says it all. The healthfood store has expired raw milk and they gave me some. She says that people have a lot of uses for it and that many culture it.

What would YOU do with it? It's sell by date was 5/30. It still looks good...haven't smelled it yet.

[EdnaMarie]

Er... is it expired as in, past sell-by, or expired as in, spoiled? Is it in a clear container (some vitamins can be killed by light)?

If it's not totally spoiled or rancid, yeah, I think you could culture it or at the very least, boil it and use it for cooking like regular milk (e.g. in pancakes or waffles or a cake or something). Since I have two small children to care for and my yoghurt has never turned out, that's probably what I'd do.

[JamieCatheryn]

You can cook with it, pancakes or biscuits are good with buttermilk (which is almost what soured milk is), and anything possibly dangerous should be killed by the cooking.

[EdnaMarie]

Originally Posted by JamieCatheryn

You can cook with it, pancakes or biscuits are good with buttermilk (which is almost what soured milk is), and anything possibly dangerous should be killed by the cooking.

Meh, I think you need to boil for a certain amount of time to ensure that dangerous bacteria are dead. Five minutes would do it for me, on a low boil.

I mean it all depends who's going to be eating it. If I were serving it to young children, I'd definitely boil it before using it in pancakes where the middle may only get hot for a short time. If it were only for us healthy adults, I'd take more of a risk!

[TeriAnna]

If you can find no other use for it, pour it in your garden. Milk is great for plants too and they don't care what it taste like. We very rarely have milk go bad but I can actually see a difference in the size of my plants that have received milk compared to those that didn't.

[RootBeerFloat]

I'd smell it first and then decide. When I've had raw milk that's starting to go sour, I turn it into yogurt.

[Bensmommy]

If you have animals, give them some! They love sour milk!

[ememers]

If it's gone sour, you can let it sit on the counter until it separates and strain out the whey to use in ferments (like pickles), it speeds up the process.

I often use soured milk in the sourdough bread recipe that I use (use soured milk instead of fresh, it works totally fine and I can't taste the difference in the end). I would use soured milk in place of fresh milk in pretty much any recipe, without boiling it beforehand. I wouldn't put it on cereal or in coffee, but that's just my preference--you certainly could do so.

lucky you! raw milk costs $19/gallon in my area, I'd love to get a windfall of soured milk!

[chaoticzenmom]

Well, I opened it this morning and it smelled really, really good! I think I'll drain it and freeze the whey, then figure out what to do with the cream. I don't have anything in the house to ferment....or could I make the whole thing into yogurt and then make yogurt cheese? We eat lots of yogurt here.

19 dollars a gallon!!! Holy moly! It's 9 a gallon here, but they only sell it by half gallons. I'll be picking up a bit every week and asking for the expired stuff along with it.

[mimid]

In the stores raw milk is $20 a gallon. At the rawfood co-op it is $10. Which is another reason I need to get back into the habit of going to the co-op. LOL