Making tasty treats with full cream milk – PART II

Continuing with the guide on how to make tasty treats from full cream milk, here’s some more of the milk products that you can easily make in your home.

Butterand Buttermilk–Yummy butter! It tastes so good that it’s difficult to resist. While the western world may claim it to be their own, the fact is that butter has always been a part of Indian culture.

Making butter is a lot more time consuming as compared to paneeranddahi and there are several ways to do it. Here we will talk only about the traditional way, which involves making butter from cream (malai in hindi), which comes from full cream milk. First, you need to cumulatively skim the cream and store it in the refrigerator. The cream (malai) collects at the surface of full cream milk after you boil the milk and set it aside for some time. Keep collecting this cream for 15-20 days, after which you will have the required amount to make butter. Once you have collected an ample amount of cream, you need to take it out of the refrigerator, put it in a large vessel, add some water and whisk it for a while till the butter forms and separates from the water. The water that separates would be buttermilk, which you can treat as a bonus for the hard work you have done to make butter. Buttermilk too has several health benefits and is widely used for improving digestion and keeping cool during summers.

Desi Ghee – Spread some vegetable oil on a roti and it may spoil your taste, but when you add some desi ghee, you will automatically realize its goodness. Apart from great taste, desi ghee, especially cow ghee, also offers a host of health benefits as it is a rich source of Vitamin A,D, E and K.Research studies have also linked cow ghee to improved brain function and natural immunity.

Making ghee is very simple, if you consider only the ghee making part and ignore the butter making procedure. To make ghee, you just need to melt the butter you made at home at low heat. Once the butter melts and heats up, the impurities will settle at the bottom, and desi ghee will remain at top. You can then collect this in a separate box or vessel.

Khoya / Mawa – This is a rich source of essential fats and proteins. For making khoya/mawa, you need to boil and stir the full cream milk continuously till the time most of the water evaporates. At the end, you will get a thick creamy mixture, which will be khoya/mawa. This is widely used for a wide range of delectable delights such as barfi, gulabjamun, ghujiya, gajarhalwa, etc.