Old Fashioned Buttermilk & Jam Pie

Where I'm from in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we didn't count on a magic genie in a bottle. We put our faith in buttermilk. Same thing. Old-fashioned buttermilk is the whey left in the lesser of a churn, a by-production of making butter. It is lite, yet substantial, with flecks of butter floating through it like gilt flakes in a snowfall earth. Its origins are modest, if not happenstance. Starting way back, most families kept a moo-cow or had access to fresh milk — what some people called sweet milk. What they lacked was refrigeration to keep that milk fresh for very long. Turns out that milk left out overnight makes tastier butter. It too starts the growth of the harmless, agile cultures in the milk, similar to the skilful-for-united states stuff institute in natural yogurt, sauerkraut, and other fermented foods. Those succulent tangy cultures are what enable buttermilk to work culinary wonders in recipes. Cooks soon came to regard buttermilk not as a compromising make-practice, but as something they couldn't practise without.

Connoisseurs dear to drink buttermilk, non simply for its bracing taste but also for its purported curative powers. A drinking glass of bedtime buttermilk has soothed the tummies of the bitchy and the frayed nerves of many a late-night reveler. It's what folks used in lieu of Alka-Seltzer, Activia, and Advil. As one dairy farmer puts it, "Buttermilk might not fix all the world'southward issues, simply information technology'll help."

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Given its wonder-working powers, liquid buttermilk should always exist our showtime choice in both our drinking glasses and our mixing bowls. It's a shame that so many well-intentioned but misguided recipes encourage u.s. to replace buttermilk with reconstituted powder, or milk curdled with lemon juice or vinegar. Heavens to Betsy, that's bad advice. Other than existence acidic, curdled milk bears no resemblance to buttermilk, and information technology cannot evangelize the goods. It's alike to rice cakes in lieu of hot biscuits, or, yes, water for chocolate. Please, make a solemn vow that you will never again fool yourself into thinking that acidulated milk tin pinch-hit for liquid buttermilk in any recipe.

Without buttermilk, fully splendid (or even passable) fried chicken, chocolate cake, and biscuits would be incommunicable dreams. Even worse, there would be no buttermilk to become with, and in, our cornbread. Many Southern traditions celebrate buttermilk, but few garner more devotion and sentiment than this curious practise that hails from the mount S: Take a tall glass (never a bowl) and fill it with crumbled leftover cornbread and common cold buttermilk. Mash it around a chip until the cornbread is moist, but not mushy. Eat with a spoon, preferably a long-handled one.

Everyone agrees on the drinking glass and the spoon, only individual practitioners are detail about whether the cornbread or buttermilk goes into the glass first, leading to the two virtually popular names for this creation, which are "Breadstuff and Milk" or "Crumble-In." Some people add black pepper, chopped onions, salt, or sugar.

It's difficult to find a native of the mountains who doesn't crave this concoction as a meal, snack, or dessert. It's equally hard to discover folks from elsewhere who empathize the appeal. They don't know what they're missing. Simply I practise, and that but leaves more than for me and mine.

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Local Culture

A few family-owned, pocket-sized dairies in Northward Carolina are producing cultured whole buttermilk worth seeking out at your local grocery shop: Wholesome State Creamery in Hamptonville, Homeland Creamery in Julian, Ran-Lew Dairy Milk Company in Snow Campsite, Maple View Farm in Hillsborough, and Simply Natural Creamery in Ayden.

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