shudder
I do not drink cow milk, it grosses me out. My gf drinks milk, so if I’m using milk in a recipe I’ll have her smell it, as all cow milk smells bad to me.
Mmmmm, cow milk. Food if the gods.
Kayaker, do you like (cow) butter?
Interesting question because I’ve wondered if slightly off milk could hurt me. Problem is that I just don’t consume enough milk to keep it around, but I like a little milk in scrambled eggs. I do buy shelf stable milk, which one container is about 1/2 again as much as I need for cereal. So I sometimes end up with a container with about a 1/4 cup of milk hanging around my fridge for a week or more before I’m ready to make breakfast again.
A number of recipes call for sour milk. Banana bread, off the top of my head.
I just read up on the issue of baking with sour milk, since I had some in the fridge and was pretty sure it was fine for baking.
Indeed, not only can you use sour milk in baking, it can actually make your baked goods better. The microorganisms that cause the milk to go sour are harmless to humans (obviously if you’ve got mold or foul-smelling liquid this doesn’t apply).
One of the things I read said that even if the milk seems REALLY sour, it will produce good results. However, I made some oatmeal bread with my very sour milk and didn’t care much for the results; the bread didn’t taste bad but it had kind of a funny edge to it so I ended up eating only half the loaf (it didn’t make me sick) and throwing out the rest.
Unpasteurized milk sours. Pasteurized milk spoils. I’d just throw it in the trash.
I must live in an area with an insane amount of bacteria floating around as it’s rare for a gallon of milk to reach its printed sell-by date before going off. And by “off” I mean it’s changed color and stinks. Perhaps my fridge is too cold?
more likely, your fridge isn’t cold enough. Or the fridge at the shop where you buy your milk.
If you’re going by the sniff test, you might want to pour it into a glass and sniff it there. Sometimes I’ve found that the neck of the bottle is what smells, and not the milk itself.
Maybe we have cheesier air 
Yes. Apples/oranges.
Milk never goes dangerous. Well, I suppose that eventually, it’ll get moldy, but that’s long past the point where it’s curdling.
The only way in which milk goes “bad” is that it (sometimes) tastes bad. So taste it. If you don’t like the flavor, then don’t use it. If you do like the flavor (even if it’s not the flavor that milk usually has), then go ahead.
My fridge is at 34, so not much opportunity to go colder and not turn into a freezer. And it doesn’t make much difference whether I get my milk from Trader Joe’s, Smart & Final, Target, or Safeway.
If it smells and tastes just a wee bit off but hasn’t curdled, it’s fine for making cooked pudding or custard. If it has curdled and really smells terrible, throw it out.
(Or give it to a livestock farmer if you know one.)
Do you leave it on the counter a lot? Toss the cap after opening it? Buy it at the start of a two hour shopping trip in 100 degree heat? Drink straight from the jug? Live in a barn?
And why do you keep buying by the gallon if it turns bad before you finish it?
Not true.
Even pasteurized milk may contain hazardous organisms.
Plus which, while I suppose it’s not dangerous to most people to spend most of the next day in the john emptying oneself out from one end or the other, it’s not fun; and can be dangerous to people who are otherwise ill.
You should try buying powdered milk. It’s “real” milk; it’s just had the water evaporated off of it, leaving only the milk solids…and it’s shelf-stable pretty much indefinitely. If you only use a small amount of milk, and only occasionally, the it’s just what you need. Make it up a quarter cup at a time, or whatever the recipe calls for, and you never need to waste a drop.
Yeah, but it also has a different taste. I don’t know how detectable it is in recipe, but I definitely notice it in cereal (and just drinking it).
That said, the Zyada says they buy the shelf-stable stuff, which also has a different taste to it. So maybe they’ll be okay with (or even like) the powdered milk taste.
Pur it on your compost heap.
PS - you’ll find a number of sources that say not to use “dairy” in a compost pile. Not sure why. Spoiled milk and yogurt are fine, especially in regular household quantities. Note that milk is a strong “green,” so add some browns to balance it if your pile is too green already. If your pile is tending too brown, the milk will help get things moving again.