Salted butter or not?

[iej]

The strangest one I've had over here in Ireland was a US friend of mine complaining constantly that the milk is "too grassy" and the steak is "too grassy". She wouldn't drink Irish milk at all and claimed it tasted 'weird' and that it made the coffee taste weird and that she could 'smell the grass in her latte'

Also milk here is pasteurised, not UHT. It has to be stored in a fridge. A french guy I know seems to find the milk 'bizarre' and prefers to use the UHT stuff which, in France is often just bought in bulk and stored in the garage! For a country that is so obsessed with food quality, that's something that always surprised me. The same guy would have a major problem with cheddar cheese for example, even really good stuff.

I always found UHT milk something that I'd struggle to drink and sort of associate it with strange tasting breakfast cereal.

I guess you just get used to what you grow up with.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I believe most US cattle are "finished" off by being grain fed in feed lots. So that is the taste we are used to. "Grass fed" beef meat commands a premium price here. I think the grain feed lot practice is largely because it's a way for the cattle to gain more weight faster, so there is more profit per animal. There is no need for them to roam around eating grass, so more of the incoming calories go into beef, not exercise.

 

[iej]

You’d get a fairly strong consumer reaction to that here. There’s probably a lot more focus on animal welfare. The expectation is that cows live in a nice farm with lots of grass and there’s a lot of traceability, to the level that the individual farmer is identified in the pack in a lot of cases.

Just as an example: veal is something you’d typically never see here as there’s just no market for it due to the production methods involved.

Generally though you’ll get outstanding steak but, it’s grass fed and things like growth hormones etc are all illegal.

Pretty much all meat sold here, except maybe specialist cured meats would trend to be locally produced. It’s relatively unusual to encounter non Irish beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs etc and I’ve literally never seen non Irish milk sold here. It’s not that there’s any barrier to trade - EU single market etc, but just consumers are a bit paranoid about production.

Even McDonald’s uses entirely Irish beef & chicken as they had a huge PR issue and consumers being a bit put off back in the 70s/80s as they were using commodity beef and chicken. So even a Big Mac is 100% grass fed beef here and their eggs are free range.

 

[mattl]

Quite honestly you wont find veal around here much either.  I recall growing up my mother would make a veal pocket stuffed with rice, every now and then I get a taste for it but have not seen veal in the market ever.

 

[perc-o-prince]

Matt, must be regional

I see veal in different forms here regularly. It's a staple at most supermarkets here, though not a huge section; mostly chops and scallops or as 1/3 of a "meatloaf mix" package of ground beef, veal and pork.

 

Chuck

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Unsalted most of the times.
I will use salted only when I need to season something like corn or sweet potatoes. It is great on whole baked potatoes when baked I just cut them in the middle and put the butter and let it melt.
But other than that it will sit in my refrigerator and be only occasionally used, in fact I tend to purchase the small package of little cubes of salted butter.
The normal butter I will use it for baking or whatever else and I buy the big package.
Salted butter is not a big thing in Italy or southern Europe like it is countries up north.
In most supermarkets you only find costly scandinavian lurpak.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

James you might be surprised but I guess France is like Italy.
They are obsessed with the quality of milk for the cheese making but the milk you get in stores is nothing but watered down ultra pasteurized cooked garbage. It taste like it has been boiled for ages skimmed and watered down.
They don't know what they're talking about when it comes to milk to drink right away. And I'm talking about fresh milk, the UHT kind doesn't even taste like milk over here.
The best milk I drink is the one I drink in the United States the fresh milk you get in the big jugs..ahhhh
I only get one decent milk over here it is the one from our province's dairy and it is not a case it is sold even in other regions and supply restaurants and cafès throughout northern italy.
I never happened to taste Irish milk but I guess it's similar to what I drink in the States.
Also they never heard of half and half.
About butter you have differences based on making process, some say European butter taste better in my opinion is not so, I tasted far more better butters in America than here, but again in USA you have get a plethora of every kind of butter and brands each one got its own taste over here you just get three brands/kinds..litterally.
Lidl use to sell Irish butter and it's very good.
Looks like they don't give much importance to milk cream and butter but more to milk for cheeses and cheesemaking.

 

[jerrod_six]

I think Europe requires a higher fat content in their butter than what is required in the USA.
As for drinking milk- I stay as far away from that as possible. I don't mind butter but I really can't stand the sight of milk.

What does UHT mean? I see this term in the posts above.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

UHT

Ultra High Temperature processed.
As the name says it consists of a process where milk gets heated at an ultra high temperature for a brief period of time virtually killing all the bacteria and spores inside milk (and IMHO much of the nutrients as well as its taste) and rapidly cooled.
That way you can make it last months and months with out refrigeration.
I think UHT represents over the 50% of milk consumption in this country many people are not even accustomed to the taste of fresh milk finding that it tastes weird.
They basically don't know what the real flavour milk is or anyways they are accustomed to this other kind of milk which shouldn't even be called milk in my opinion.

Talking about butter yes more fat percentage is required by law but that doesn't mean all butters sold elsewhere got less.
The taste anuways depends on the quality of the cream and the process used also aging and fermentation.
Longer churning also changes and whip the butter more but is not necessarily a good thing at it may kill or vary the taste of the finished product.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

By the way if I remember right it was the Italian parmalat that introduced UHT milk in the US. Or at least tried to.
In the mid 90s...if I remember right of course it was kinda a big fail.
Beside the fact that in America many people just wouldn't trust to buy milk that hasn't been refrigerated the matter was not even much that but the fact that it tastes like s**t other than a great loss of nutrients (they say it doesn't lose but it actually does) milk is knokn for...
But again even the fresh milk over here sucks bad and especially the parmalat one I think it's one of the worst ever, even though being one of the most famous for reasons beyond me...
But again milk is something Italian are not good at.

Anyways the company almost went bankrupt shortly after that... I think it now survive only thanks to other shareholders.
I don't know what made these Italians at Parmalat think that they could sell their garbage milk in the United States.

 

[iej]

We’d have the same history of fresh milk delivered in bottles every morning by the milkman. They still exist but have disappeared in many areas. There’s a push to bring them back as they used glass milk bottles that were collected, washed (in giant bottle washers - sort of like continuous dishwashers ) and refilled every day. Many also delivered fresh yougurt, cheese, butter and even orange juice and the newspapers.

You’d a milk crate (basket with segments for each bottle) which had a dial on the side which you set for how many of each type of milk you wanted & you got a milk bill each week or month.

The extra products were often ordered on a slip of paper you just inserted into the basket with your empties.

The milk bottles had coloured foil caps for different types and the birds knew how to recognise the bottles that were non homogenised (cream at the top) by the colour of the foil and would peck the gold or red (depended on the area) bottles!

That service disappeared in most places, but is making a comeback and milk is normally in tetrapak or plastic jugs. I prefer tertrapak as it’s better at keeping the milk from reacting with light.

Schools also have always provided fresh milk - either in little tiny milk bottles with foil caps (about 1/3 imperial pint) or small tetra bricks.

You’d definitely drink milk cold, fresh & pasteurised.

Normal here you’ve:

Full fat - homogenised & pasteurised (not UHT)
Low Fat 2%
Low Fat 1%
Skimmed 0.35% (not a fan of it)

Several brands - usually also get entirely organic options.
Super milk / fortified milk - added vitamins.

Also various chocolate milks, strawberry, raspberry etc etc from the local dairies made with the same fresh milk. A lot of them do their own yogurts & increasingly Kifer etc.

Also you’d have widely available fresh cream. Usually as double cream, pouring cream, light cream and fresh whipped cream and Buttermilk (used in a lot of Irish breads and cakes but it’s also just a drink too).

As for cheese. There’s a vast array of cheeses here from the usual boring but nice commercial cheddars to loads of farmhouse and specialist cheese similar to anywhere else I guess.

Modern day milkman : https://www.mymilkman.ie/

 

[maytagbear]

As for me.........

as long as it is REAL butter, I am not too bothered. I can adjust a baking recipe easily to any salt level in the butter. I do add salt to all my bakes, to balance the flavors. -During World War Two, my Great Grandmother on my Da's side took butter rationing very hard. She called the substitute "CG," which meant "Colored Grease."

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[appnut]

James, the fat degree variations in your milk sound just the same percentages and grade names as we have here. From the 1940s through maybe late 1960s, home delivery of milk (in glass bottles) and other dairy products were popular, albeit a bit more expensive than comparable at the grocery store. but as the years progressed from the 1950s onward, the popularity declined. I think home delivery pretty much went away sometime in the 1970s, definitely by the 1980s. I think another reason as so many more women entered the workforce and weren't home when milk was deliver3d by the dairy company.
Particularly a problem in the hotter regions of the US., particularly in the south.
But with the pandemic, I've read some people are beginning to seek the service out again.

Federico, all my life our milk was bought at the grocery store. A year ago I received an Instant Pot form a very good friend of mine. One of the settings/programmes is for Yogurt. After studying the various ways to make yogurt, I settled on what's called cold start yogurt. It requires using ultra pasteurized, ultra filtered milk. After it goes through the 8 hours fermentation programme, I store it in the fridge over night. And then put it in a Greek Yogurt strainer. I am considering using the stained whey in my bread loaves. Also, I hve begun using organic milk for my everyday consumption as it has a longer shelf life in the fridge, which is helpful during the pandemic. I am not having to have groceries delivered as frequently.

 

[circlew]

When I was a kid, some of my neighbors had milk and other dairy products delivered. The Bates family bought Meadow Gold, and some others got French- Bauer. We always got it at the store, as my dad worked at his uncle's grocery store, which sold Sealtest, and later Borden.

In some places - probably large cities - milk was delivered early in the morning. Some houses had a milk door that opened from both outside and inside; otherwise, the milkman left it on the porch.

A company located around the corner from me picks up milk from various dairy farms in large stainless steel tanker trucks, and takes it to the processing plant.

I can't stand to drink a glass of milk, but I do like a chocolate milkshake if it's very thick and cold, and I also like hot chocolate during cold weather.

 

[combo52]

Home Delivered Milk

Jason and I have been getting home delivery of organic milk in glass 1/2 gallon bottles for the last 5 or 6 years.

 

Jason has it delivered to his house and brings it to work and I take a 1/2 gallon home every other week.

 

There has been a big resurgence of home delivered milk in the DC area, it seems that about 1 in 5 customers of ours has the milk box out on their front porch.

 

John L.

 

[sudsmaster]

I quit drinking milk about 20 years ago out of concern for gastic side effects due to possible lactose intolerance. For a while I drank Lactaid treated milk, but found eventually I lost interest in that as well.

I still consume milk, but mostly as an addition to coffee, or a base for chocolate milk. Recently I picked up a case of Horizon brand 8oz whole milk cartons. The advantage to these is that they do not require refrigeration. Typically I'll open one, insert the straw, add about four squirts to a cup of coffee (how much is a squirt? Use your imagination). Then the remainder gets refrigerated until used up (about five or more cups of coffee per 8oz serving; I don't really keep track of that).

Recently I spotted larger UHT bottles of whole milk at Costco, with screw lids. Next time I'll get those since it's easier to store and dispense from them over time, than from a foil lined mini carton bottle with just a hole for the straw.

From the little I've consumed straight, the UHT Horizon milk tastes just fine. The taste is certainly preferable to the rancid taste of many refrigerated milks, even right after purchase/opening, due to bacterial growth.

I was in Ireland in the fall of 1996 (Dundalk area). At that time you could not find any lamb in restaurants, due to the Mad Cow disease outbreak (spread through lamb). So I wasn't able to enjoy a traditional Irish stew. It had substituted beef instead.

Veal? Not a big fan, especially after I heard how the poor things are treated. Veal parmigiana was a big menu item decades ago, not so much now. And I actually doubt most of what was labeled veal was really that, anyway. Hard to tell with the breading and cheese coating.

Mostly I'll eat chicken (love them thighs) or beef steak (mostly rib). Like many I've noticed beef prices have risen during the pandemic, although I truly don't know why. I just wait for the specials at Safeway and elsewhere and then vacuum freeze most of it for use later.

 

[iej]

I don't remember 1996 in great detail, but I think it may well have been a shortage of lamb due to closure of imports from the UK. I know there was a period here where there wasn't all that much of it produced and there were a lot of precautionary measures taken.

 

I know until relatively recently if you'd lived in the UK from 1980 - 1996, until 2019 you couldn't give blood here due to the risk of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, but subsequently it seems it's never amounted to the kind of risk it was assumed to be back then, either because it's been eliminated or because it was harder to pass on than was assumed.

 

[sudsmaster]

It might be that blood testing has improved so that C-J disease can be detected and the blood draw either rejected or discarded accordingly.

I see you were "only" 12 in '96, so I can understand not being up on what was going on with lamb. I may have assumed it was mad cow related when it wasn't. I dunno. I was just a little disappointed. I remember when I was done with the business part of my trip, I drove up to the NI border, but didn't cross. Which seemed to trigger the gendarmes a bit cause one of them went racing after me after I did a three point turn. LOL. Nothing came of it, I figure he realized I was just a clueless American. Then I drove out to the west coast, then out to Kinsale, then to Cork. I wish I could have stayed longer but it was not a great time weather wise (December, as I recall). I spent a Thanksgiving there and sorry to say it was the worst turkey dinner I'd ever had (some sliced processed turkey with mashed potatoes) but at least they tried, LOL.

Oh, and I also ventured out to the desolate highway where Michael Collins was ambushed. Kind of spooky.

 

[iej]

It’s probably changed quite a bit even since the mid 90s, definitely has become a *lot* foodier but sounds like you just didn’t luck out on choice of restaurant. Thanksgiving doesn’t feature as an event here, unless maybe somebody from the US were celebrating it themselves as it’s a very US-specific thing & celebrated at home, rather than a public festival. If you’ve the right crowd anything from Bastille Day (la quatorze) to Thanksgiving to Chinese New Year can end up being a party.

1996 was the year that the British government published papers on vCJD being linked to cows and it caused absolute pandemonium, slight echoes although not remotely as dramatic as what is going on now with COVID. It took them a while to figure out and eliminate risks so there was a pretty drastic approach taken, removing anything even slightly suspect from the supply chain.

I do remember supermarkets being cleared of U.K. produced beef containing processed foods and them being placed in biohazard bags, which was a tad worrying.

I definitely remember my mom turned us all vegetarian for a few months! Cornflakes being served up with Soya milk, fake cheese and bizarre 1990s veggie stuff. That’s one market that’s vastly improved over the last couple of decades and gone from niche and a tad hippy to quite mainstream. Back then it was still very nut roast heavy!

 

[tomturbomatic]

Yesterday, I saw a recipe for rugelach, a delightful pastry. The ingredients call for salted butter and the recipe's contributor explained that it is a way to distribute salt evenly throughout a dough that uses no liquids.

 

[frigilux]

Reply 44: Delivered Milk

We had an insulated box similar to this one on our front step when I was a kid. You'd leave a note inside for the milkman requesting the dairy products you needed (milk, cream, butter, sour cream). They'd often sit in there for hours before I returned from school and brought everything inside to be refrigerated.

We also had (with all due respect to John Waters) an egg man who came by once a week.

 

[iej]

We’re not really exposed to the same temperature. I know a lot of the US milk on the porch would cook or freeze!

A friend of mine installed a fridge-freezer in what was her boiler house, just located in a side entrance (not far from her front door) and both milkman and home shopping deliveries get deposited there when she’s out.

She put in a full 2.03 meter (6ft 7in) tall one. So it has pretty decent space.

 

[Ultramatic]

I love milk but...

 

 

UHT milk. Ugh, don't get me started. That awful cooked taste. My husbands apartment was in the medieval section of Seville, and that is what was available. Fresh milk was hard to find. The only place it was available involved a looong walk where it sold at a premium.

 

This is the UHT brand we usually got.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

As for home delivered milk, It arrives via Instacart or Amazon Fresh nice and cold.