I promised more fermented goodies in the near future.

Specifically cultured butter.

What is cultured butter? Butter that went to finishing school and went on to get a MFA from the Chicago Art Institute?

No.

It’s butter made from cream that has either been allowed to ripen over several days without the addition of any bacterial culture, or real honest to God homemade Creme Fraiche, or cream that has been cultured with the addition of commercial cultured buttermilk.

Essentially, it’s butter made from tangy cream, not sweet cream.

In the United States, not a whole lot of folks know about cultured butter, nor do they tend to like it. It’s rather hard to find and when you can find it–its very expensive. The first time I tasted commercially available cultured butter, I popped my head up and said, “Oh, it tastes like butter at Gram’s house.”

And this is how we can tell that my Dad’s father’s family were from fairly recent European immigrant stock. It all has to do with the foods they liked to eat–many of which were unfamiliar to most American palates when Dad was growing up and when I was growing up as well.

Gram always left her butter out at room temperature. She stored it in a cupboard and in later years, the microwave, to keep bugs, dust and mischievous cats from getting into it, but it was pretty much left out to the open air. I always thought it was to keep it soft so it was spreadable, but it always had a different flavor than everyone else’s butter, and my Dad told me why.

“The Old Man,” he said, meaning his dad, my Pappa, “Liked his butter to be kind of tangy, almost rancid, just like his father and mother liked it.” Apparently, Pappa’s parents, had kitchen help who made the household’s butter by skimming cream from the milk delivery and then letting it ripen on the counter for up to three days before churning it in one of those hand-cranked glass butter churns that everyone had back in the day.

That was the way their parents, who were from Germany, made butter and to them, that was just how butter was supposed to taste.

Dad didn’t know what that was called, but it was cultured butter–which is not at all what most Americans like–we prefer “sweet cream” butter–which if you look at most any package of butter sold in grocery stores these days, they are all going to be labelled as such.

Dad said Gram’s butter tasted sort of like that, but he didn’t like any of it at all–he preferred sweet butter.

I like them both, I have to admit, with a preference leaning toward cultured butter, especially when it comes to a spread on toast or bread, or for use in sauces or on vegetables. Sweet butter is still my preferred butter for baking.

But cultured butter is SO DARNED EXPENSIVE! Usually at least twice as expensive as sweet cream butter and it’s harder to find, too.

So, do like I did and figure out how to make it on your own.

How to Make Cultured Butter

Step One: To make cultured butter, you need cultured cream, which you are not likely to find at your corner grocery. So you need to follow my directions on how to make what the French call creme fraiche which is a tastier version of sour cream. Please do not try to use commercial sour cream to make butter. It will not work. There are all kinds of stabilizers, thickeners and who knows what all in sour cream to make it artificially thick and then it is usually pasteurized nigh unto death, which is going to make it nearly impossible to use for butter making. So take the time to culture the cream your own self. Start out with the best cream you can afford–I used Snowville Creamery heavy cream that comes from pastured cows. If you live where you can get Snowville, I urge you to use it–the butter it makes is fantastic, but if you cannot get it, use the best cream you can find. (If you can get cream from a local farm or your own cow–all the better!)

Step Two:You need to churn that creme fraiche into butter.

In order to do this, you need a means by which to agitate your cream so the fat molecules bash up against each other and start clinging together into clumps that eventually become butter. (In a nutshell, that’s what happens when cream is turned into butter. Molecules bash together and stick and you get something creamy and delicious to eat on bread or cook with.)

There are lots of ways to churn butter, some of them low tech, some of them high tech and one of them no tech.

Being a frugal sort by nature, I started to use the no tech version which is to stick the creme fraiche into a glass jar so that it’s only half full, seal it up tightly, and shake the dickens out of it until you see lumps of butter separating and floating around in the thin, bluish buttermilk.

There’s a problem with this method. Two, actually. Well, there are probably more, but the reasons I gave up on it this morning are that the rough and ready agitation that is necessary for sufficiently shaking the cream such that it turns into butter makes my boobs jiggle annoyingly, and it takes forever, so my hands and wrists started to hurt.

(No, there is no video available of me shaking the jar on YouTube so do not ask.)

I refuse to wear a sports bra and wrist braces just to make butter so I put the jar down and switched to a high tech method: I used Conan, my big bronze and barbaric Kitchenaid mixer.

I skipped straight over the low tech methods, because I do not have any kind of butter churn. Nope, I do not have the Little House on the Prairie model that sits on the floor and has a churn dash attached to a pole that you plunge up and down for however long it takes to make butter sitting in the corner of my kitchen looking all pioneery and picturesque. Neither do I have one of those really neat old glass one from the early part of the 20th century that you turn a crank and a dash inside swirls around and makes butter. That’s the low tech kind I’d have, because that’s what my Grandma used to make butter when my Mom was a kid, but they are pretty expensive. Apparently people collect them and stick them on shelves in their kitchens to look all vintage and retro. I mean, I’d stick one on a shelf in my kitchen, but I’d also make butter with it too.

But I digress. Be that as it may, I used a high tech method. If you lack a Kitchenaid, you could use a hand-held mixer. Or, you could use a good heavy-duty blender. Or a really good food processor would do the trick, too. You just need something that has a part that can move very quickly through the cream and act as a churn dash, whirling and bashing and sloshing that cream together so the fat molecules start getting dizzy and grabbing onto each other for support.

If you have no low tech churn or no high tech electric device to churn your butter, I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with the boobs and wrists problem and just shake, shake, shake your jar until the butter comes. I guess you could put on a Carmen Miranda or Harry Belafonte album and dance and shake to the beat so that you get a good workout. Maybe it will burn some extra calories to make up for the butter you are making and presumably are going to eat.

Step Three: Pour your cream into your churning vessel–I used four cups of cultured cream–and start agitating. With Conan the Kitchenaid, I used the whisk attachment and started on low speed and gradually moved it up to high speed, taking great care to adjust the speed so that I didn’t slosh the cream over the lip of the bowl and all through the kitchen.

So, you agitate.

And agitate.

And agitate.

(Do you feel agitated yet? No? Well, your cream probably does.)

After a few minutes, your cream is going to come to the soft-peaks stage of whipped creamdom. That’s good, but you need to keep going. Soft peaks are when you stop the mixer and lower the bowl or lift the whisk and you end up with the cream forming a peak that goes up and then slumps over into a Dairy Queen kind of swoopdydoo.

A few minutes more, and the cream will come to the stiff peaks stage. That’s when you stop the whisk, lower the bowl or raise the whisk and your cream stands right up at attention, like a, well like something stiff. It makes a nice peak. This is where you would stop if you were making whipped cream.

But, you’re not, you’re making butter. So keep going. Soon you will come to the stage where the cream stops looking creamy and glossy and all whipped and it turns all ugly, and lumpy and curdled looking. Like this picture right here.

Kind of unappetizing looking isn’t it? This is the stage where your whipped cream has broken, and if you were trying to make whipped cream, you’d cry, tear out your hair or gnash your teeth. (It can be rescued, by the way. Just add a bit more cold liquid cream and start whisking again, first on low speed and then on to medium until it goes smooth and starts acting like whipped cream again.)

But we’re not making whipped cream, we’re making butter, so no tears are necessary. Just keep going.

And going.

And going.

The cream stays at this stage for a long time. It seems like forever. But then, you will notice little odd clumps in your curdly looking yucky cream–little granules. They’ll look something like this:

Those are wee tiny granules of butter forming, so don’t stop now, but keep going.

It will seem as if it’s taken forever for those tiny butter granules to start forming clumps, but trust me, if you turn away for a few seconds (to comment on Facebook, for instance) you will find yourself being splashed in the face with buttermilk. (That is if you are using a mixer–something self-enclosed like a real butter churn or a food processor will save you from a buttermilk bath.)

Quickly, turn the speed down if you are using a mixer, so that you do not shower your entire kitchen with buttermilk. What you will see at first is small clumps of butter clinging together with pools of buttermilk in between and yellow, lumpy cream in the center, but within just a few seconds, all that will remain in the bowl will be butter that has for the most part adhered to itself and is entangled in the wires of your whisk, with a few smaller lumps floating in a small pool of buttermilk.

Stop your churn, mixer or other mechanical device, or your arms from shaking the jar, and lift out the butter.

Step Four: (I’ll bet you never thought we’d ever get to step four.) Pull your butter out and after letting as much buttermilk drain off of it as possible for a few seconds, set it in a bowl. Fish out any smaller lumps of butter from the buttermilk and set them in the bowl as well. Then, set a fine strainer over a jar and pour the buttermilk into the jar. Rescue any butter bits that end up in the strainer, and put them with their brethren in the bowl, tightly close the lid to the jar and put the buttermilk in your fridge. This can be used for baking, and I suspect for starting another batch of creme fraiche. Some people like to drink it–my Dad liked to when he was a kid, and so did my Mom.

Step Five: Now, you must knead the butter to extract as much buttermilk as possible from it. Here’s where I went all Little House on the Prairie, and used a small wooden (well, mine was bamboo, but whatever) paddle, working the butter all around the bowl. Pushing and scooping and pushing again with the paddle, kneading releases tiny droplets of bluish white buttermilk which ooze from the mass of butter, and form puddles in the bowl. Drain these off carefully by tipping the bowl, while with one hand you keep the butter from falling into our sink.

You could do this with your hands, but your hands are warm and will begin to melt the butter. This could make your hands slippery, so when you try to tip the bowl without dropping it–well, you can imagine the tragedy that could strike. You can’t very well scrape butter out of your sink into which shards of bowl have embedded themselves and then eat that. It doesn’t have to be a paddle–it could be a wooden spoon, or I suspect a metal spoon for that matter, though a wooden one would be more comfortable to hold for the job.

Keep kneading until you can get no more buttermilk out. The more buttermilk you remove, the longer your butter will stay fresh. If you leave buttermilk inside it, your butter will go rancid, which is not the same thing as cultured, and it will smell and taste awful.

Step Six: Rinse the butter by running very cold water over it in the bowl, while kneading it with the paddle. You can run water into the bowl until it is half full, turn off the water, knead for a while, and when the water turns cloudy, dump the water out and start again with fresh cold water from the tap. Keep rinsing until the water comes out perfectly clear–as clear as it was coming from your tap. This is how you get rid of those last tiny, stubborn droplets of buttermilk. Drain the rest of the water out–which magically doesn’t carry your butter out with it because fat and cold water do not mix!

Step Seven: Next, if you want to, add a bit of salt to the butter by sprinkling very fine salt over your mass of butter and kneading it in with your paddle. Taste as you go. Salt not only helps bring out the fullness of the cultured butter’s flavor, it also acts as a preservative, helping it last longer.

Once you’ve put in as much salt as you want–go slowly and sparingly with the salt–you do not want to overdo it–you can pack the butter into a jar or roll it up into a cylinder in waxed paper and pop it into your fridge to chill and solidify.

And that, my friends, is it. That’s how you make cultured butter!

It really is simpler than this huge post would let on. I just tried to make the explanations as thorough and descriptive as possible and then put in a lot of photographs so you’d see each step of the process. This isn’t meant to make it look complicated–it’s to help build your confidence if you decide to try making your own cultured butter in your own kitchen.

You can use these instructions to make sweet cream butter–just leave out step one and start out with plain old heavy cream from the store–not ultra-pasteurized if you can manage it.

Taste your butter and enjoy it. You can use it just as you would use sweet cream butter–on bread or toast, or in cooking. It adds a wonderfully tangy, somewhat nutty flavor to any dish to which it is added and pastry made with it has a more complex flavor than that made with regular sweet cream butter.

I hope you do try making this–it’s fun to do–especially if you have kids helping–and you end up with a product that would cost you quite a bit if you bought it in the store. Four cups (one quart) of cream yields about one pound of butter, and around two cups of buttermilk. If you bought that in the store–it would be about ten dollars for the cultured butter and the buttermilk usually goes for three or four dollars a quart.

I spent about four dollars, maybe for that quart of cream, so look at how much money I saved–but the money isn’t the main point. The main point is the flavor of the butter is so much more intense, fresh and delicious than any cultured butter I’ve ever bought, and I have the satisfaction of making it in my own kitchen using ingredients I know and trust.

Long ago, when I was a kid, my Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Uncle John and I made at least a hundred pounds of sauerkraut.

And no, that wasn’t even the German side of my family. That would be my Dad’s family, but oddly, he and many of his siblings despise sauerkraut and apparently never developed a taste for it.

Nope, it’s the Cherokee/Anglo-Irish/Lapsed Amish side of the family who made and ate all of that kraut.

Weird, huh?

But yeah, I remember the five of us gathering in the cold basement of Grandma’s house on a cool day in October or early November, with bushel baskets of plain old green late-season cabbages piled high around our feet, making kraut. I washed the cabbages in the sink, bobbing the heads up and down in frigid water until all traces of dirt were removed from the outside, then dried them and handed them off to Grandpa or Grandma, who would take turns shredding them using the horribly sharp kraut cutter that Grandpa had built himself.

That kraut cutter was ominous: it looked like a combination of a regular kitchen mandolin with just a whiff of guillotine added. I figure it was the rustic wood and carbon steel slanted blade that gave it a certain murderous air. And it was scary sharp. Only Grandma, Grandpa or Mom were allowed to touch the thing. And as Grandma got older, she wasn’t allowed any more.

Anyway, one would shred and the other would sprinkle the shreds into the two huge twenty gallon crocks. It was also my job to scoop a teacup of kosher salt and sprinkle it over the cabbage when directed to, sprinkling it over each crock, half a teacup in one crock, half in the other.

Mom and Uncle John had the hardest job of all–pounding the cabbage with the big, heavy wooden kraut tampers that Grandpa had turned out of oak and walnut wood on his lathe. They had a good time with it, pounding and squashing the cabbage like mad, laughing and even though it was cold downstairs, working themselves into a sweat.

I remember asking Grandma once why we never made kraut out of red cabbage, and was answered with laughter.

“Who’d want to eat purple kraut?” Grandpa said. “It wouldn’t be appetizing.”

“But kraut, when it’s been cooked with sausages isn’t very appetizing looking anyway,” I said. “But it still tastes good.”

“But being purple isn’t going to make it any better looking,” he stated and went back to making shreds of cabbage fall like snow into the deep bowl with the cutter.

Well, that’s why most folks don’t make kraut from red cabbage. Because who would want to eat purple kraut, and it’s not appetizing looking and there’s no reason in the world to make something like that.

Well, Grandpa was wrong.

Because I personally want to eat purple kraut, and it is perfectly well pretty AND it turns out to be really good for you, too.

Anthocyanins are the chemical compounds in plants that give them a blue, purple, pink or red hue. These are what give red cabbage their lovely red-violet tint, and many scientists are discovering possible health benefits for those of us who eat (or drink in the form of grape juice or especially red wine) our anthocyanins on a daily basis.

It turns out that anthocyanins are anti-oxidants, and they have properties that lower the risk of heart attack or stroke, and some of them have been found to help prevent or slow tumor growth.

Sign me up for some of that! (Note that many anthocyanin compounds are driven off or destroyed by heat, so many of these vegetables and fruits are best eaten uncooked or maybe just fermented, since acids preserve anthocyanins.)

And plus–I don’t care what Grandpa said–purple kraut is pretty and looks plenty appetizing to me–you can see for yourself in the photograph above. Seems so silly for him to say that since he loved pickled beets, but I digress.

I made this small batch of kraut with both white and red cabbage…two small heads of red and three small ones of white.

And since there was so little cabbage, I didn’t bother with the evil looking kraut cutter which resides safely high up on top of a kitchen cabinet, looking just as scary as it ever did.

Instead, I shredded it with a knife, by hand. I just cored and cut the heads in half through the stem end to the top, and then laid the half heads flat on the cutting board and then carefully sliced them into dime-thin slices. It’s easy and once you get into the rhythm, it isn’t too bad at all. In fact, it’s pretty darned good.

And it’s certainly safer than getting near Madame Guillotine, which is what I call the Grandpa’s cutter.

Since I’m the only one who eats kraut in the house now, and I was experimenting with using Caldwell’s Vegetable Fermentation Starter, I decided to not bother with dragging a crock out of the basement. I just used a glass jar with a locking gasket and lid. This wasn’t ideal, because the jar had a neck on it that is narrower at the top, just enough to make it difficult to weigh the cabbage down once it was put under the brine in the jar. I may end up finding a smaller crock and just using that.

Weighing the cabbage down once it’s in the jar is imperative, really. It keeps the kraut away from the air–air exposure is what allows molds to grow on the surface of the kraut–which, while it isn’t dangerous–can give a weird off-taste to the finished ferment. (You just scrape it off the top and toss it and eat the rest of the kraut.)

Also, kraut ferments faster in warmer weather. (That should elicit a big “duh” from the audience, but alas, it’s been a long time since I played with kraut. Though kimchi isn’t all that different and I just made a nice batch of that.)

AND, did I mention I was playing with a commercially available culture?

Yeah, I did, didn’t I?

And how did that turn out for me?

I’m still on the fence about it. I let the cabbage ferment for seven days, with the lid closed on it, but not sealed so there was still plenty of air circulation. There was no mold growing on the kraut, and there were little fermentation bubblings and fizzings here and there, but when I tasted it, it tasted saltier than I thought it should. It has a nice cabbagy flavor, but it doesn’t seem fermented enough to me.

I followed the directions on the package to the letter–and it included the use of a brine, which I had never done with kraut–instead we beat the hell out of the cabbage to make it release it’s own juices–and the flavor is okay, but saltier than I would like and not nearly as sour as I would want.

Hrm.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for me and my purple sauerkraut.

Next batch is going to be made old-school–the way Grandma did it, and if it works out, I’ll give the recipe.

Then, I’ll try this starter business once again and see if maybe this first batch was a fluke and I can get really tasty fermented cabbage from the little green box.

What’s next in my fermentation fun?

Stay tuned for cultured butter–coming soon from a kitchen near you.

It’s a good introduction to making your own cultured dairy products, too, as it is beyond simple, since you barely have to heat the cream above room temperature and add either some commercial cultured buttermilk or a creme fraiche starter culture. You then cover it loosely and let it sit on a warm, not hot countertop out of drafts and away from the sun for about twelve hours and like magic, you come back to some rich, thickened, lightly tangy cream that is stable when it’s heated.

Yeah, let’s say it again, and more firmly this time. Creme fraiche is stable when it’s heated.

Commercially available sour cream is most emphatically NOT stable when it’s heated. In fact, it’s rather unstable after being heated and will often “break” when whisked into a simmering sauce, There is nothing more annoying than adding sour cream to a delectable sauce at the end of cooking and have it go all lumpy and curdly instead of making a nice, smooth, tangy creamy sauce. And yes, this can happen even when you are good and “temper” the sauce by whisking a small amount of the hot sauce into the sour cream before incorporating it into the rest of the sauce. (This is part of why I’ve used full fat Greek yogurt in my Beef Stroganoff for years–because it can be boiled and it will not break once it’s put into a sauce.)

But creme fraiche–well, it doesn’t break. You can boil it. It’s fine. You can temper it into a sauce, but you don’t have to. For all it’s velvety, lightly tangy delicate flavor, it’s tough, like a streetwise flower child who wears love beads and a set of brass knuckles.

And it tastes really, really good, too.

Very rich and satisfying.

Oh, and did I mention how easy it is to make?

Well, I’ll say it again. It’s easy to make. Easier to make than yogurt, because you don’t have to hold it at 110 degrees Fahrenheit for eight to twelve hours.

If you use commercially cultured buttermilk, just heat up a pint of heavy cream to 80 degrees F. (I used our local Snowville Creamery Heavy Cream, which is from grass-fed antibiotic free, growth hormone free cows just one county over from where I am typing) to room temperature and stir in two tablespoons of buttermilk. Pour into a clean glass jar (I use the locking ones with the gaskets like the one pictured above) and cover with the lid, but don’t lock it. Leave it in a warm, draft-free area out of the sun for 12 hours. Yes, I said twelve hours. Twelve. Please don’t get all worried about spoiling your cream or food poisoning. In this process, you are making friends with good bacteria, and they are keeping the bad bacteria at bay and are making your fresh cream into something sublime. Trust me.

After twelve hours, the cream should have thickened without solidifying, and should have the texture of commercially available yogurt. It isn’t as thick as the sour cream you’re used to buying from the store, but if you want to thicken it, you can put together several layers of cheesecloth and spoon the creme fraiche into it and tie the ends together and hang it up to let some of the whey drain out for an hour or so.

I used a starter from the company Cultures for Health. They sell yogurt starters, kefir starter, various dairy cultures and starters for vegetable ferments and soy ferments, and so far, all of their products I’ve tried have worked well. (Yes, you’ll have more posts on culturing milk coming up in the future.)

Their instructions are a bit more complicated, but not by much. They instruct you to heat one quart of heavy cream to exactly 86 degrees Fahrenheit, then stir in the contents of one packet of starter (they are sold in a box of four packets which can only be used once for $4.99–which is more expensive than the buttermilk, but in order to not use milk from a confinement dairy, I decided to go with the culture instead) into the cream, cover it and let it sit in a nice warm, non-sunlit place for 12 hours. I used my jar as noted above–I covered the jar with the lid, but didn’t seal it up.

How did it turn out?

Well, let me just say that everyone who tasted it buckled at the knees and rolled their eyes up in their heads. I ended up giving lots of my first batch away, so I never got to use much of it. That’s okay. I love my friends.

What can do you with Creme Fraiche.

Use it in any way you’d use sour cream, except be prepared to have your socks knocked off by the result. You can use it to top a cheesecake. You can use it in your Beef Stroganoff sauce. You can use it on a taco, on a baked potato, in mashed potatoes or swirled on top of a bowl of cream of tomato soup. It can go on top of fresh berries.

You can also just dig a spoon in and have at it plain and straight up.

Just use your imagination.

It’s good stuff.

Trust me.

I get emails often from readers who have tried this recipe or that, or many of them and have had fantastic results and they just want to tell me about it.

And I love hearing from my readers, especially when they are happy with the recipes they have tried, but you know, I am just as happy to hear from folks who have questions, or who don’t understand something about a technique, or, heaven forbid, one of my recipes goes seriously awry. I haven’t often gotten any of the last emails, but I did get one a day or so ago, and I wanted to share what I said to the reader, because I think that while I have addressed this issue in the past, it was in the middle of a post, and there was no way for anyone to find it after this.

The issue is the use of yogurt in Indian cookery, and why I almost always specify full fat or two percent yogurt rather than lower-fat or non-fat yogurt in my recipes.

The thing about yogurt is this–if you use full-fat or two-percent yogurt, it is less likely to separate and curdle when you use it in cooking Indian curries. In fact, when I have used whole milk Greek yogurt (the brand I can get consistently here in Athens is Fage), in curries where the yogurt is part of a marinade that is then cooked for the full time on the stove at a simmer or boil, or where the yogurt is added halfway through cooking in order to cook into the sauce, I have never, ever had it curdle and turn a silky sauce into a glumpy mess. Never.Even when I have cooked it in a pressure cooker, which means it is hotter than boiling.

Whole milk regular yogurt, which is not strained generally does not cause any problems. The regular whole milk yogurt brands I like, in order of preference are Brown Cow, Seven Stars and Stonyfield Farm and they all work admirably in curries, though I have found that because they have the thin liquid–the whey–which is mostly water–still intact, they take longer to reduce into a good, thick, clingy sauce. That is why I have switched to using Greek style, strained yogurt exclusively in my Indian cookery.

Why do lower-fat yogurts curdle or separate when they are simmered or boiled?

The problem is the ratio of protein to fat in them. The fats in whole milk, cream and whole milk yogurt surround the proteins in dairy products, and create a buffer between the protein and the heat. (I am vastly simplifying here…but bear with me.) Protein chains, which in their uncooked state are smooth, will knot up and become firm when they are heated–that is why raw and rare meat are softer than well-done, fully cooked meat. If there isn’t sufficient fat mixed in with the milk proteins in yogurt or milk, when it is heated, the proteins will knot up and separate from what fat is there and the whey, causing a sauce to “break” or “curdle.” (This is the same way you can make cheese, by the way–you can heat skimmed milk, or you can add an acidic agent, such as vinegar or lemon juice, which will also cause the proteins to firm up, or you can add rennet, an enzyme, which will do the same thing–firm up and separate the protein molecules from the whey.)

But here then is the problem–what if all you have in your fridge is low-fat yogurt and low fat milk, as happened with the reader who wrote to me about her bad experience in making Safaid Keema Mattar?

Are you doomed to have a beautiful dish with a creamy sauce one second, only to turn your back to get a couple of plates then see a curdled mess where your delicious curry had been only a few seconds before?

No. There are ways around it.

One thing you can do, if you only have low fat or fat free yogurt in your fridge, but you want to make one of my recipes, is check and see if you have any cream in your fridge, too. If you do, you can whisk a few tablespoons of cream into your yogurt before using it, and then cooking it gently on lower heat than I specified in my recipe, for a slightly shorter amount of time–and you should end up with a delicious, smooth creamy sauce.

What if you don’t want to use high fat dairy items like cream or whole milk or whole milk yogurt in the first place? Are you still screwed?

No.

Here’s what you do–you still use your lower-fat dairy products, but you modify the way in which I specify the dairy products to be used in the recipe.

If you use only low-fat or fat free yogurt in a cooked curry, add the yogurt, preferably Greek, or if you use regular yogurt, strain it before you use it–at the very end of cooking. And when you add it, only use 3/4 of the amount listed directly in the sauce. Set aside the remaining 1/4 of the yogurt to be added later.

So here are the steps you need to take to successfully use lower fat yogurt in your curries–whisk your Greek or regular strained yogurt thoroughly before mixing it into the curry. Measure out 3/4 of the amount specified, and when the rest of the curry is cooked, turn off the heat and stir this amount of whisked yogurt into the curry. As soon as it is incorporated and the sauce has warmed itself through residual heat, whisk in the remaining amount to cool the curry further and remove the pan from the stove and serve the curry immediately.

You see, you are not cooking the low-fat or non-fat yogurt at all, which is why I specify that you use Greek or strained regular yogurt for this method. Since you cannot simmer or boil this sauce to reduce the whey and water in it in order to thicken it and concentrate the flavors, you must remove the whey in some other method, and that method is straining it! The Greek yogurt is already strained, which saves you the trouble of doing it, but you can strain your regular yogurt the night before by lining a sieve with cheesecloth and dumping the yogurt into it, then twisting the cheesecloth around it tightly and setting the sieve over a container to catch the whey. If you do this, don’t throw the whey out–you can use it in cooking–you can use it as the liquid in breads, you can use it cooking vegetables and grains, and you can add it to soups or vegetable broths–so long as you are not cooking vegan vegetable broth, of course!

If you must cook the yogurt somewhat and you are not using whole milk yogurt, proceed cautiously and only cook 3/4 of it in the sauce, on a very low simmer, stirring the entire time. If it starts to look suspiciously like it is going to curdle, turn off the heat, move the pan away from the hot burner and stir in the reserved amount of yogurt to cool the curry in order to prevent the incipient curdling action.

If you are using yogurt in an uncooked Indian preparation, such as raita, it doesn’t matter if it is fat free or whole milk–it will not change the texture unduly to use the fat free or low fat product at all.

I hope that this post clears up some of the issues surrounding the use of yogurt in Indian curries and why I often specify whole milk yogurt rather than non-fat or low fat.

Once again–you -can- use lower fat dairy products in Indian cookery and often that is desirable, but you must treat them carefully and heat them slowly, and gently, because they are just not as stable as the full-fat versions.

Some fresh foods can simply be converted to frozen foods without much work or trouble, and then, can be used from the freezer over the course of months, instead of days. Sweet and hot peppers can both be simply chopped or sliced, packed in plastic bags and frozen. The same can be done with onions and garlic. Spinach can also be frozen with minimal processing–if the leaves are mature, remove the thick veins and stems and either leave the leaves whole or tear into smaller pieces and then pack into bags and freeze. If you have baby spinach, you just pack the whole leaves into bags and freeze them. Frozen spinach leaves can then be added directly to simmering soups, stews or sauces without pre-cooking.

Fresh herbs can also be frozen with minimal preparation. Most of them can just be chopped finely and frozen in bags, although some people put tablespoon amounts into individual compartments in an ice cube tray, and add a little bit of water to hold them together, then freeze the cubes. After they are frozen, the cubes can be packed in plastic bags and stored for future use. Some herbs, like cilantro and basil, can be pureed and then frozen in ice cube trays without the addition of water, and can be used like the chopped frozen herb cubes.

Alternately, batches of green cilantro chutney or pesto can be made and frozen, either in small bags or containers, or in cubes, to be thawed and used later or to be added to curries, soups and sauces as they cook.

Fresh fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and mangoes can all be frozen simply as well: for the berries, you just wash and dry them, then layer them onto sheet pans, put them in the fridge until they are frozen, then pack them into bags, label and date them and store them in freezer. Strawberries can either be frozen whole or sliced. All of these fruits can be used to make pies, dessert sauces, ice creams, sorbets and smoothies in the future.

For mangoes, simply peel and pit them, and cut into slices. Treat with a bit of lemon juice to prevent discoloration, and freeze on sheet pans and then pack into bags. I like to use frozen mango to make lassi, chutneys, salsas and to add to curries.

Tomatoes can be frozen whole, but they are better, and they take up less space, if you make them into a nice marinara sauce or plain tomato sauce, pack these sauces into quart bags and freeze them flat, so they stack easily in the freezer for storage. (Speaking of tomatoes, you can also use the freezer to store excess tomato paste. Restaurant pack tomato paste is often sold in huge units of several quarts or pounds. If you don’t need that much in whatever recipe you are using, the rest can be stored in smaller portions from a cup to a tablespoon in freezer bags. For the smaller amounts, you can squeeze the paste into ice cube trays or freeze tablespoon-sized plops on a sheet pan lined with waxed paper. Once they are frozen, the cubes can be popped into a bag, or the plops can be peeled up and popped into a bag which then lives happily in the freezer until it is needed. You don’t even have to thaw the paste before using it, although I always do.)

Speaking of sauces, we come to the issue of stocks, soups, sauces and stews.

These types of recipes are the secret weapon of cooks and chefs when it comes to using up excess ingredients.

If you have some potatoes on hand that have gone a bit soft, or some carrots that are a little rubbery, or some celery that is no longer crisp, then don’t throw them out–use them in a soup or stew or a sauce. Daily soup or dinner specials are not just a way to vary a menu, they also help a chef or cook deal with surplus perishable ingredients in a delicious and constructive fashion.

I don’t feel in the least bit bad about using slighly older produce in soups or stews, because it isn’t like I am using rotted food. Far from it–slightly older vegetables which would be nasty in a stir fry or salad are perfectly fine to be boiled in a soup or stew where the liquid is meant to be eaten along with the vegetables. With vegetables that are a bit too old, often the only characteristic that suffers is texture, and with a soup , stew or sauce, that doesn’t matter. The boiling water extracts all of the water soluble vitamins left in the vegetable, and then they are eaten in the broth, along with the solids. The flavors are all extracted and present in the finished dish, and frankly, there is nothing more homey and comforting than a stew or soup.

Stocks are a special case. Stocks are made, in large part, from parts of animals and plants which are frankly, otherwise inedible to people. Bones are not a big part of the human diet when they are whole, but when they have had all of their goodness extracted by a long simmer in a stockpot, they create the basis for every great soup, sauce and stew–stock.

Every chef I have ever known has extolled the virtues of the stockpot, not only for creating kitchen gold, but also because it fits perfectly with their frugal natures. Bones cannot be eaten by people, but there is no need to throw them away without first extracting every ounce of goodness from them. Carrot ends, celery leaves and ends, leek tops and onion skins also are not palatable to humans, but they add flavor, fragrance and color to stock. (Onion skins give a golden color to chicken stock which makes it more appealing to the eyes.) Bones from every animal, along with fish heads and tails, shrimp, crab and lobster shells, and crustacean heads, are all saved by chefs and used to make stocks which results in every scrap of food being used to make a food product that only enhances every other dish to which it is added. Stocks can be frozen, too, in whatever increments one likes, so they can have a very long shelf life, although in larger restaurants, a stockpot or two are always going on a back burner of the stove and what it makes is used up as it is made.

Stocks are simple, and make goodness out of what many people would see as garbage, using bones, vegetable scraps, herbs (and yes, you can use some herbs that are not pretty enough to put on a plate as garnish, but are still good to cook with in a stock, and unlikely bits of carcass like chicken or pig’s feet. (For illustrated instructions on how to make chicken stock, click here. For Chinese style pork and chicken stock, click here.)

Running a restaurant does not have to be a wasteful enterprise. In fact, if the chef is clever, it can be the exact opposite–it can be a model of how best to use every scrap of edible foodstuff inherent to any given ingredient, but it does take a little extra work to avoid just throwing away raw materials.

The next post will talk about what happens to food that is already cooked in a restaurant, and how to avoid throwing it away.