Heat-treated Milk

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In some countries, when you buy milk it comes in a box. It has been ultra heat treated and will remain fresh for months. This design allows it to be stored for emergencies, taken camping (though with more weight than milk powder) and is more convenient. Does it taste as good? Possibly not, but when I had it it was not possible to compare it to refrigerated milk. At any rate, it tasted a lot better to me than a non-dairy white powder like Coffee-Mate.

  1. Are boxes of milk available where you live? Are they cheaper than jugs or bags of refrigerated milk? Big boxes, or just juice box equivalents?

  2. Do you have a strong preference?

  3. Do you notice a difference in taste?

2

I used to get the ultra pasturized milk at the regular grocery here in North Carolina. It tasted the same to me as the regular milk. I think it was a bit more expensive but it would last long enough that it would actually get drank instead of part of it being thrown out.

It got hard to find and now I usually buy almond milk or soy. I know the almond milk has a long shelf life but it doesn’t taste like milk.

3

I’ve heard of it for years, but I’ve never see it on sale here in the midwestern U.S.

4

I have had it and I don’t like it. Boxed milk is sold to preppers out this way (Arizona), and is fairly pricey. I think there is a big taste difference between boxed milk and regular refrigerated milk. I honestly like properly mixed powdered milk better than boxed milk. I’m not a huge fan of canned milk either.

Something new I’ve been seeing in the US is lactose free milk which does need to be refrigerated and tastes the same as regular milk to me. It’s shelf life is much longer than regular milk and it’s useless for making cheese.

I’m still seeing the ultra pasteurized milk sometimes, I think the lack is more a supply chain issue than anything. I think it tastes the same as regular milk and it does last much longer as well. I’ve been told that Ultra pasteurized milk cannot be used for cheese, too many of the good bacteria have been cooked off.

ETA unless milk is raw, straight from the cow, it’s all heat treated. Boxed milk takes higher heat at longer temps than regular pasteurized milk does, but it’s all heat treated.

5

There are shelves of it in any Australian supermarket. When I was a family man I used to keep plenty at home for use when we ran out of milk. It isn’t different enough to real milk to care about - even kids never complained.

I am puzzled by what use dairy creamer is. You can just dissolve modern skim milk directly into a cup of coffee with the same effect as adding milk.

6

I’ve had Parmalat and some other brand. Not as good as milk but much better than coffee mate or powdered milk.

For the record, after having Dairy Farm Milk & Cream, store milk was disappointing for a while. I’m guessing you get used to Ultra-Pasteurized after a while. I got use to 1% and 2%.

7

We give it to our clients at the food pantry and have had no complaints.

8

Coffee mate and the like are NON-dairy products and are mostly used for sweetening coffee or tea. Powdered, portable, sweet. There aren’t a lot of natural ingredients in the stuff, I used to love it when I was young, not so much anymore.

Also, the pasteurization process in Oz is different than in the US. That’s why your chocolate is so much better than ours. IMO.

9

I, too noticed that the lactose free milk, which I will buy if it’s on sale, keeps longer than “regular” milk. Even though I’m not lactose intolerant, I think it tastes better.

To me, UHT has a “cooked” taste that regular milk doesn’t. I’ve purchased it for food pantry donations.

10

I play with milk for fun and profit, so I am very familiar with dairy cases in the stores out this way. I couldn’t tell the difference in the taste, but I bought it on sale and thought I’d see how it worked for cottage cheese. I heated it to the proper temp, added the rennet and let it sit for the normal four hours. It was still liquid when I checked, so I gave it another hour and checked again. No change, it didn’t even smell like it was ripening. After 10 hours, I gave up and poured it out.

I’m retired and have way too much time on my hands so I bought more and tried again with lipase and double rennet. Ten hours later, I poured it out again. You can’t even acid shock the stuff.

It’s perfectly good milk that lasts much longer than regular milk, it just can’t be used for certain things and I was trying to chemically force compliance in order to bend it to my will. Did I mention having too much time on my hands yet?

At first glance, my thought was that if I was relying on a food pantry for my meals, I wouldn’t complain either, but…some people would complain if they didn’t have anything to complain about. When I worked for the food stamp office, all of our clients trash talked the food bank boxes. All carbs, all sugar, salt free soups that taste like garbage, etc., etc. Us workers believed it because that’s what everyone told us.

After I retired, I started volunteering for St. Mary’s food bank and saw what was actually going into the boxes. It was good stuff, fresh veggies, eggs, milk, cheese and some sort of meat along with breads, chips, mac’cheese and canned veggies. (For the record, the powdered skim milk that comes in the commodity boxes will make acceptable cottage cheese.) I honestly was outraged about how long people had been lying to me.

ETA: Cottage cheese is a fast, simple, and very predictable cheese that I use to test new products or techniques.

11

I don’t know about the midwest, but I’ve seen it for sale in US supermarkets in Connecticut and elsewhere on the coasts. It’s not near the refrigerated milk but instead is, I think, on the shelf in the aisle with the unrefrigerated juices.

12

I don’t drink milk straight, I just use it for cooking, so I am a big fan of UHT milk. It was extremely common in Jakarta (at least in the grocery stores where I shopped) and I always kept some on hand. Once the box is open, it keeps extremely well in the fridge, so chances are I can think of a way to use up the leftovers if I open a box because I only need half a cup.

UHT milk is rare to nonexistent here on Hawai’i Island so I have learned to do without. I did see it at one grocery store one time, and so I bought some. But it’s not a store I generally frequent and now that I have learned to keep powdered milk and evaporated milk on hand as alternatives, I haven’t felt compelled to go back.

Since I don’t drink milk straight, I can’t address the taste issue for sure. But based on smell, I am pretty sure it is different from fresh milk. I never had any complaints about it for cooking purposes.

13

I bought it on Hawaii island when my husband and i vacationed there. We found little containers that were perfect to open one a day for our breakfast cereal. (Meant to be a child’s lunch drink, i think.)

I’ve found boxed parmalat locally, too. Doesn’t need to be refrigerated until it’s open. There are always several brands of supermarket refrigerated milk that are ultra pasteurized. I don’t think they are cooked quite as hot, because they need to be kept chilled, and they taste more like fresh milk. But they keep a lot longer than ordinary pasteurized milk. Nearly every brand of cream at the super market is also ultra pasteurized.

14

Interesting. I should look harder.

15

It was in some big box store in the Hilo area. Probably a Target, but i don’t remember for sure.

16

I never cared much for UHT milk, but could drink it if it was very cold, so I rarely did. After many years living overseas and not drinking milk, I found that when I got back to the states I couldn’t tolerate cow’s milk any longer, or at least only in small amounts.

17

I used to live on Oahu 30 or so years ago and noticed right away that the milk tasted off. Hawaiian milk was weird stuff, most of it is shipped in huge containers which can spend days without refrigeration. I could freeze it and it would taste the same when it thawed as long as I gave it a good shake. I’m actually thinking that was my first experience with UHT milk but I didn’t know it because there were no other options available.

(I heard rumors that some of the butterfat had been replaced by coconut oil but they were just rumors. I think.)

Which is the bane of my cheese making existence. The same bacteria that cause milk and cream to spoil are the ones needed for making cheese when properly redirected. I do think that ultra pasteurized milk is the future, cow’s milk is pretty fragile.

18

Wouldn’t that make the milk smell and taste like coconut?

19

Not necessarily all of it, at least not in the past.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925818763448?ref=cra_js_challenge&fr=njs

20

IMNSHO, it tastes noticeably different from regular milk (I use 2% all the time, I think the boxed milk I see is 1%). I don’t like it. But it is okay to use when cooking stuff. I use it to cook hot cereal, for example. I wouldn’t drink it straight.