FWIW, half-and-half over dry cereal is mighty tasty. Something about the OP suggested “cereal” to me (probably the reference to “bachelor living” 
).
Skim milk is nothing but water with milk proteins and sugars. If adding water to half-and-half won’t work, will somebody explain the mechanism by which adding water with protein and sugar magically will? Obviously, the taste will be closer to milk, because of the lactose (milk sugar), but the fat dispersal won’t have changed a bit, even with blending.
Long ago I used to have a land lady that would polish off a pint of Haagen das every night, and in the morning eat a big cereal bowl filled with grape nuts and half and half instead of milk. Yes, she was a “big gal”.
Milk is made up of three parts for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll call them butterfat, non-fat solids, and water. Half and Half is 10.5 to 18% fat, and mine runs about 19% total solids so, lets say about 9% nonfat solids. Skim is about 0.08 % fat and about 9% solids. Non fat solids does not vary with amount of fat, total solids increases with increased fat level. As I said in my last post, once homogenised, the fat globules will stay suspended. Due to one of those pesky laws of chemistry, they will automatically disperse themselves to form an equilibrium. Once milk has been homogenized, you should think of the fat as solubilized, because it takes about half an hour and some really inedible chemicals to seperate it out again.
Yes, it will work, except for the buttermilk. Buttermilk is a cultured product, so I guess you could make a machine that would pump out the milk of desired fat and a dairy culture, but then you would still have to incubate it before you use it.
Um, because it has milk proteins and sugars?
How does this affect the fat dispersal?
I know buttermilk nowadays is a cultured product, but wasn’t it originally the liquid left after cream was turned into milk? At least, that’s my interpretation of Little House in the Big Woods. What happens to that product now? I imagine it makes its way into processed foods (either human or animal).
It doesn’t, fat disperses itself by that whole “nature seeks a balance” thing. Mix brine with fresh water and see if you can maintain a physical seperation between the two. You can’t, its the nature of a solution or a suspension. Its simple intro to chemistry material that you can Google, I’m sure.
Back in the olden days, whole milk was left to seperate. The fat was collected off the top and placed into a churn. The milk off the bottom was drunk or made into cheese. Once in the churn, the cream was churned. During churning, the fat globules rupture and the fat coagulates into a semisolid mass. The semisold mass was collected as butter, the remaining fluid was buttermilk. Today, we take cream and churn it into butter, and we dump the buttermilk. Larger plants may (probably do) convert it into something like animal feed or milk protein solids for protein suppliments or something of the like.
Looking at your reply, xbuckeye, I realize I made a typo. I meant “cream turned into butter.”
And to think, I did chores on my grandparents dairy farm. :smack:
We’ve spent a few days making conjectures.
Why don’t you just experiment, astro, like ol’ Cecil would do? It’s a hell of a lot faster, easier, and more accurate than asking all of us. Let us know how it turns out.
Well maybe everybody who tried, died of milk poisoning, which is why you’re the first to post in this thread in a few months.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of ‘fat-free half and half.’ Luckily, Kiminy provided a link or I don’t think I’d really believe it, and I notice Land O’Lakes isn’t saying how they do it.
Take it from someone who has done it:
It don’t work.
who has done which, bouv? Are you replying to the original post or to the ongoing hijack about cream/skim milk mixing?
With respect to the hijack, my WAGs are leaning against Exapno’s position. Mixing cream with anything with less fat content doesn’t seem likely to produce anything with a fat distribution too obviously different from milk at whatever the appropriate level is. If you’re mixing with water, then the result will not be like milk because the only milk solids and sugars are coming from the cream. If you’re mixing with skim, then things have a good shot.
On the other hand, there’s one little thought nagging at me. Yes, cream is emulsified - but it’s emulsified at a fairly high fat level, and has the right proportion of emulsifiers to do this. Emulsification generally consists of ringing fat globules with emulsifier particles that are nonpolar at one end and polar at the other. Thus, they let the fat globules disperse evenly in a water-based medium, since fat is nonpolar and water is polar.
So, does cream have LARGER fat globules than 1% milk, or just more? If it has larger fat globules, then our home-mixed skim would have fewer and larger globules than 1%.
Is it in any way possible that mixing cream with something non-emulsified could throw off the emulsifier balance? I don’t really see how. Every fat globule would carry its emulsifiers with it, (except maybe the last one when the pouring of cream ends, but that one probably gets cut in half and can be ignored because it’s only one freaking tiny globule…) and I wouldn’t think that any forces involved would be strong enough to tear the emulsifiers away from their fat globule. IF, however, this is possible, it would probably lead to fat globules combining.
Hope that all of this rambling was entertaining.
Oh for the love of OG…this thread is back
The emulsifiers are naturally occuring in the milk already. We take advantage of the existing proteins for emulsification
It can be either, and is probably most often both, leaning towards more, not bigger since bigger would tend to seperate.
Once homogenized…always homogenized.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
True, but I’d put raw milk far ahead IMHO.
[QUOTE]
Unless you have your own cow, raw milk is very dangerous. It has no advantages at all, and many health risks.
If you like un-homogenized whole milk, you can still get that in Qt glass bottles.
Even if you have your own cow, raw milk isn’t 100% safe. Pooling milk makes the chances of getting contaminated milk higher, but the chance of you getting enough of a given pathogen to get sick relatively low. OTOH, if your cow is the sick cow then you get enough of the pathogen to get sick. The risk of an adverse outcome from raw milk is still low compared to some other raw foods, but if you play a game of chance long enough, you will find the adverse outcome.
However, if you have your own cow…chances are you are drinking milk less that 12 hours old (since you are milking her twice a day) so the pathogens haven’t had much of a change to grow.
And intersting and completely unrelated statistic: about 10% of the farms testing positive for antibiotic residue in milk 'round here last year were from organic farms. If you are drinking raw milk from the farms in one of those herd-sharing or other under-the-table coops, there is no state or federal oversite of mandatory drug residue screening you will get in a comercial processing facility. If you are allergic to any antibiotics, raw milk from the farms is really not for you.
Wait. What? Is this along the lines of ‘rare steak’ or ‘raw eggs’ being ‘very dangerous’ :rolleyes: or is there actual science or statistics you can cite?
Don’t know about the science o’ fat, but in real world experience:
My Sister-in-law does not keep whole milk in the fridge. She uses skim for her cereal and heavy cream or half and half for cooking/coffee. I can’t stand skim milk, and can tell you for a fact that mixing skim with either of the other two will produce a perfectly acceptable “whole milk”.
Okay everyone. I have a half gallon of half and half that was about to go bad,(I went on vacation and didn’t use it in time). Anywho, I couldn’t throw it out so I mixed it, equal parts of water and the half and half. It tastes fine! It’s not whole milk…tastes more like watered down half and half. Not bad at all, I’d drink it if that’s all there was. I love milk so I was not the least little bit diappointed and I’d do it again. Try it for yourselves. I don’t think I’d use it for cooking unless that’s all I had but try it…you’ll like it!