Au lait
This month in Culinate:
Mighty Milk: What makes good milk good?
I had no idea what silage was until I looked it up. It’s fermented grass or grains. To a cow, I imagine this is the equivalent of cheese.
This was a really fun piece. I am now an insufferable milk snob.
Related posts:
Comment by ts
A few coffee places on Vashon use Kurtwood Farms raw milk: Cafe Luna, Burton Coffee Stand and Minglement Coffee Bar. http://www.kurtwoodfarms.com/
Posted on February 21, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Comment by mamster
Is the milk good? I’ve never tried it.
Posted on February 22, 2009 at 7:42 am
Comment by ts
Haven’t tried it either, but I hear great things about Kurtwood in general. There was a big deal about offering raw milk in coffee houses, but a few stuck to it.
Posted on February 22, 2009 at 11:35 am
Comment by ts
You might call before making a special trip to Vashon - there was some talk on the blog last fall that the Health Dept said no to re-selling of raw milk in the cafes. Not sure where this landed.
Posted on February 22, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Comment by Wendy
Just how many kinds of insufferable snob are you now?
Posted on February 22, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Comment by mamster
I’m trying to collect the whole set.
Posted on February 22, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Comment by Andrew Feldstein
Have you read Ed Behr’s article on Milk in the Art of Eating (republished in the Artful Eater)? He disagrees on the breed issue. His bottom line? Colored cows.
Posted on February 24, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Comment by mamster
Interesting. I think I read it a long time ago, but not recently. I will take a look.
Posted on February 25, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Comment by Jason L. Cheung
Thanks for this post, Matthew. Looks like I need to start hitting up PCC more.
Posted on February 28, 2009 at 3:39 am
Comment by mamster
Okay, I read the Behr, and he says the same thing I did, that the best milk probably comes from traditional milking breeds but that Holstein milk can be very good; there are many other factors.
One thing he gets into that I didn’t at all is why milk can be bad even when it comes from pastured cows and is gently pasteurized/unhomogenized. Basically, milk is really easy to screw up. It can be due to bad pasture, eating (especially silage) too close to milking, inconsistent temperature control, or even a smelly barn.
Posted on February 28, 2009 at 8:05 am
Comment by Andrew Feldstein
Now I’m going to reread it. My recollection was for the best, go for colored cows, especially Guernsey.
Still mourning the loss of our local Thomas’s Organic Creamery—vat pasteurized, nonhomogenized, delicious. We had it for a couple of years—it was worth every penny of the almost $5 per half gallon.
Posted on March 3, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Comment by Another "mamster"
Another thing to note about the way milk tastes is the sweet flavor of grass-fed milk vs. the salty flavor of typical milk found in the store.
The salty flavor is a result of an elevated white blood cell count in the milk of SICK cows being kept indoors that are eating grain (at best), silage, processed municipal garbage, chicken manure, animal byproducts, sawdust, and other disgusting things (at worst). Healthy, grass-fed cows have low levels of white blood cells in their milk because they are HEALTHY.
Posted on March 5, 2009 at 8:41 am
Comment by mamster
Hi, other-mamster. I agree with you in principle, although I am trying and failing to detect a salty flavor in some supermarket whole milk here.
The term “grass-fed” is pretty ambiguous. Are you talking about 100 percent pastured cows? What about in winter?
Posted on March 5, 2009 at 2:00 pm