Why Skim Milk Deserves a Place in Your Fridge, Based on an Skilled Baker

When you dabble a lot within the meals world, you’ve got possible heard the phrase “fats carries taste.” Although true sufficient in a normal sense, this mantra has additionally inspired the fats philosophy that extra is all the time higher. For starters, that is merely false—there is a motive we do not pour cream over our cereal within the morning. However even when used judiciously, fats would not all the time carry taste; typically it may possibly uninteresting, mute, or outright obscure it. Simply think about a scoop of lemon sorbet versus lemon gelato.

So when a good friend advised me she was serious about dumping the skim milk left in her fridge by some vacation houseguests, I threw myself between the jug and the drain. Whereas skim milk will not be everybody’s first selection as a beverage, it is a exceptional actor in dessert. That is as a result of milk is never a main supply of fats in a recipe, making the distinction between entire and skim nearly negligible within the face of heavy hitters like butter, chocolate, cream, and egg yolks.

To place that in context, the distinction between entire and skim milk is eight grams of fats per cup, understanding to +/- 0.66 grams of fats per serving in recipes for muffins, cake, or pie, which generally serve 12. Which is to say: no large deal both approach. There are definitely recipes that depend on entire milk for fats, taste, and physique (assume ice cream and flan), however for general-purpose baking, it is not almost as important as you’d suppose. To raised illustrate that time, listed below are eight of my favourite recipes that do not actually care what sort of milk you may have readily available.

To reiterate, my affection for skim milk has nothing to do with reducing energy—did you see what number of whipped cream recipes I’ve revealed?! Slightly, it is about acknowledging milk’s function as a water/lactose supply system somewhat than a supply of fats in most desserts. Certain, there’ll all the time be ice lotions and oven-baked custards that rely on each final gram of dairy fats, and such recipes will certainly make that clear by calling for “entire milk.” However when a recipe of mine requires milk, know that I am not making a concession after I say that “any share will do.”

January 2017