{top tip} Make Your Own Buttermilk on the Fly

In my home kitchen, I use a lot of shortcuts and tricks gleaned from my checkered pants past. From time to time I will pull one out of my toque and share it with you! If you have questions or requests, leave them in the comments and I’ll tackle them in a future post.

One morning you want to make buttermilk pancakes, so you buy a quart of buttermilk (the smallest size available) and then use the 1/2 cup your recipe calls for. Flash forward a month or two and you find a funky smelling carton in the back of your fridge that contains exactly 1 quart minus 1/2 cup of skanky old buttermilk. Does this sound familiar to you? No problem. Unless you are a total purist and insist on only the finest buttermilk, you can make your own buttermilk in whatever quantity you need for a recipe. Just mix lemon juice (or vinegar) with any type of milk–nonfat, lowfat, or whole–and wait 5 to 10 minutes for the acid to curdle the milk.

Here is a guide for what proportions to use:

• 1/3 cup milk + 1 teaspoon lemon
• 1/2 cup milk + 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon
• 1 cup milk + 1 Tablespoon lemon