How to Make Buttermilk At Home With 2 Ingredients

Let me guess: You’re about to make some kind of recipe, and it calls for some buttermilk. Instead of throwing on your jacket and running to the store, you would rather have some way to make buttermilk at home, correct?

Well, thanks to the power of science, you can actually make an easy buttermilk substitute that works perfectly for your pancakes, biscuits, or whatever else you’re whipping up in the kitchen.

What is buttermilk?

Before buttermilk was a product you could buy at the store, making it actually came hand-in-hand with churning butter. Buttermilk is actually the leftover liquid from churning butter, typically from cultured or fermented cream. It’s a tangy, milky mixture that makes baked goods light and fluffy.

However, the buttermilk you buy in-store is actually produced a little differently. The carton you find in the store is actually pasteurized milk with cultures that will turn it into the tangy liquid that we know and love today.

RELATED: The easy way to make healthier comfort foods.

How do you make a buttermilk substitute?

While it would be awesome to have traditional buttermilk to work with, people aren’t exactly churning butter anymore. Thankfully, making a buttermilk substitute is incredibly easy.

You can make an easy substitute with milk and freshly squeezed lemon juice. It sounds strange, but this combination works well. The acidity in the lemon juice will actually curdle the milk, giving it that curdled consistency that works very well in your recipes. Using half a lemon typically equates to 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, which is what the recipe calls for.

Don’t have a lemon? Try vinegar

If you don’t have a lemon lying around the kitchen, you can also use distilled white vinegar! The acidity in the vinegar will work similarly to the acidity in the lemon juice. Simply swap it out using the same measurement as the lemon.

Homemade Buttermilk Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup milk
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice or distilled white vinegar

How to Make It

1. Cut a lemon in half and squeeze out all of the juice.
2. Pour the lemon juice into the cup of milk. Mix with a spoon.
3. Let the milk mixture sit for 10 minutes. Then it’s ready!
4. If you need more for your recipe, simply double or triple the recipe.

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