Reuse Recipe: Sour milk

This past week I had a whole gallon of 2% milk that went sour. I am not sure how it happened since the expiration date had not been reached and it was unopened?  But it was a fun challenge to see how many ways I could use it up.  Usually, when/if milk goes sour in my fridge it is a much smaller amount.

First, I made my go-to recipes for when I have sour milk:

1. Sally Lunn Bread from my favorite bread recipe book: The Bread Machine Cookbook. It used only 2/3 cup of milk.
2. Far: which I learned to love while living in Brittany, France. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it looks like the photo below.  My family calls it custard. It is good warm or cold. Normally, it uses prunes and raisins, which sink to the bottom of the pan while it cooks. 

Photo From: http://pepsakoy.blogspot.com/2011/11/far-breton.html

Here is the recipe that I have been using for it lately (very easy to make):
4 c. whole milk ( I used 2% sour milk and it still turned out, but I have also added an extra egg to make sure it was thick enough)
7-8 large eggs
1 c. sugar
10 T. butter (melted)
1/4 t. salt
1t. vanilla
Blend it all up a little bit.
Then add 1 1/2 C. flour and blend it up until it is only slightly lumpy. Use a cold stick of butter to really thoroughly butter a glass casserole dish. My French host family told me that that was what makes it yummy. Then put a few handfuls of raisins and/or prunes in the bottom of the dish and pour the batter on top. Bake at 375F for about 60 to 75 minutes. Check it by making sure the center is cooked, "set-up" and not liquidy at all.


Then since I had so much sour milk, I branched out into some new recipes.  Here are the 2 cookbooks that I used it this week:

From the Betty Crocker cookbook, I made:

 1. Waffles: which normally uses 1 3/4 cup of regular milk, indicated that 2 cups of buttermilk and less baking powder could be substituted.  I made 2 batches and froze one for quick breakfasts later in the week. I have tried several waffle recipes over the years and this one is great.  Crispy on the outside, but moist inside.

2. Buttermilk Brine Fried Chicken: This used about 4 cups of sour/buttermilk. My first time making this recipe. I hardly ever make anything fried, but wow it was delicious! The buttermilk brine is like a marinate for the chicken (I used thigh meat). It calls for 1/3 cup of salt and a 2-4 hour soak. By the time I got around to making dinner it had been in there about 7-8 hours. It was nice and salty.  I think I might try to leave it in less time on the next go and see if it is even better/mildly salted. 

From the Boston Cooking School Cookbook: 

1. Doughnuts/sugar cookies - I love this cookbook because it is from the depression (1932) and it has a lot of good reuse/thrifty type recipes, including a whole section on toast and crumbs! The sour milk section of the index listed doughnuts, which is another fried thing that I have never made before.  They were delicious, no comparison to the insubstantial store bought version.  But the recipe made a huge batch - like 2 dozen biscuit sized doughnuts. I fried half and baked half, just for comparison.  The baked "doughnuts" were more like not very sweet sugar cookies. My kids loved both.