Wizard Recipes

Milk and dairy products provide many of the key nutrients needed daily, particularly calcium. Milk and dairy products also supply high-quality protein. Because of its animal source, milk protein is complete - meaning it provides a sufficient amount of the nine essential amino acids.

Dairy products are also naturally rich in B vitamins and most of the minerals considered to be essential in the diet, including calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, iodine, and selenium. In addition, milk also contains several vitamins and minerals that have been added to meet the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration.

Low-fat and nonfat milk may be fortified with vitamin A because this fat-soluble vitamin is lost when the milk fat is removed. Vitamin D is added to all milk to help the body better use calcium.

Milk also is a good source of carbohydrates. With the exception of cheeses and butter, milk products are higher in carbohydrates than protein or fat. Milk’s carbohydrate is lactose, a sugar unique to milk that is actually two sugars (glucose and galactose) linked together.

Food scientists call this type of sugar a “disaccharide.” Lactose is not as sweet as other sugars. It helps the body absorb calcium and phosphorus and may even help in the growth of friendly bacteria needed in the intestines.

In addition, galactose, one of the sugars in lactose, is a vital part of brain and nerve tissue. It is released when the body digests lactose. Lactose is a bit of a paradox, however.

Although it has these beneficial properties, many people have difficulty digesting .

Despite all the nutrients in milk, the nutritional advantages of dairy products must be weighed against the potential health drawbacks of two key components in milk: sodium and fat.

Whole milk, cream, and cheeses contain substantial amounts of fat, especially saturated fat. These fats add calories and have been tied to higher cholesterol levels and cardiovascular disease. However, it is important to note that low-fat and nonfat milk varieties are available and are significantly lower in fat than whole milk.

In addition, depending on how much is consumed, milk or products made from milk may be a major source of sodium - a special concern for anyone following a low-sodium diet.

As many as 50 million Americans are estimated to have lactose intolerance - an inability to adequately digest ordinary amounts of dairy products such as milk and ice cream.

Worldwide, nearly 70 percent of the adult population is thought to be lactose intolerant, and the condition is very common among American Indians and those of Asian, African, Hispanic, and Mediterranean descent.

Lactose is the sugar that is naturally present in milk and milk products. It must be broken down by lactase (an enzyme found in the intestine) before the body can use it. If there is not enough lactase, undigested milk sugar remains in the intestine. Bacteria in the colon then ferment this sugar. Gas, cramping, and diarrhea can follow.

Most of us begin to lose intestinal lactase as we age. However, this occurs to varying degrees. Thus, people with lactase deficiency vary in their ability to comfortably digest milk and milk products.

As obvious as the symptoms of lactose intolerance may be, it is not easily diagnosed from the symptoms alone. Many other conditions, including stomach flu and irritable bowel syndrome, can cause similar symptoms.

See your physician to determine whether you are lactose intolerant. Measurement of the hydrogen in your breath after you have taken in lactose is a useful test because large amounts of hydrogen indicate that lactose is not being fully digested and that you are probably intolerant.

Persons with milk allergies should avoid milk, but those with lactose intolerance often do not need to follow a diet that is completely lactose-free. The following suggestions may help:

• Avoid eating or drinking large servings of dairy products at one time. (Several smaller servings over the course of a few hours are much easier to digest.)
• Drink milk or eat dairy products with a meal.
• Choose hard or aged cheeses, such as Swiss or cheddar, over fresh varieties. Hard cheeses have smaller amounts of lactose and are more likely to be tolerated.
• Take lactase tablets or drops, such as Lactaid or Dairy Ease. These types of products contain the enzyme that breaks down lactose, reducing the amount that your body must digest on its own.

For help with meal planning, you may want to see a registered dietitian.

Butter is a common ingredient in most of our cooking. It is absolutely crucial in French baking, in fact, in any French cooking. But the majority of western cuisines also choose butter as the principal cooking fat. Oriental cuisines generally do not. Only Indian cooks use it extensively in its clarified form, ghee.

While perishable, butter doesn’t spoil nearly as quickly as milk. When Indian cooks remove its milk solids (by clarifying), they don’t even need to refrigerate butter. In clarified form its shelflife is as long as that of any vegetable oil.

The major problem posed by butter in our culture today is its high saturated fat and cholesterol content. (The fat in butter is called butterfat, a chemically distinct type among fats). Many U.S. households have banned butter from their kitchens with regrets, substituting margarine or oil.

How do we obtain our butter? First the milk processor pasteurizes, then ages the cream for at least 8 hours and finally churns it into butter by physical agitation. Aging the cream allows the milk fat to crystallize and weakens the fat globules.

The forceful agitation of churning breaks each tiny globule’s delicate membrane and allows the globules to clump together into a solid, that we call butter. The churning action expels a byproduct liquid, that the industry calls buttermilk. This is not the kind of buttermilk we drink, it only has the same name.

After the cream becomes butter, it goes through washing and then a mechanical manipulation (something like kneading bread dough) to reduce the size of the fat crystals. This makes it softer and more spreadable.

Butter oxidizes (turns rancid) at room temperature relatively fast. Chilling slows down the oxidizing process. Antioxidants would help reduce rancidity, but U.S. law restricts adding anything but salt and a coloring agent to butter. Salt extends its shelflife, coloring enhances its appearance.

Salting butter is a habit left over from the days before refrigerators. By the time refrigeration was common, people were used to the flavor of salted butter, and processors encouraged its use because it extended the shelflife. The amount of salt they use in butter is 1.5 to 1.8 percent (about 1¾ teaspoons in a pound or 450 g).

The most common coloring agent is annatto, a natural reddish-yellow dye. Without coloring, most butter is too white to look like the real thing. The natural color depends on what the cows, who produce the cream, eat so in some seasons they must use coloring to boost the yellowness-or consumers start complaining.

That 15 to 16 percent water you see in the table is the reason butter sizzles when you heat it in the sauté pan. The water boils in the hot pan, turns into steam and tries to escape from its covering blanket of fat. The bubbles of steam pop and they make a symphony of sound that we hear as sizzle. Oil, lard and vegetable shortening never sizzle in a hot pan because they are free of moisture.

Don’t confuse unsalted butter with sweet cream butter. The sweet cream label refers to the fact that they started the churning process with sweet instead of soured cream. North American processors don’t use soured cream to make butter, but the French and several other Europeans do as consumers prefer it. They let the cream sour slightly before churning it.

The difference in flavor between the two types of butter is slight-the European style has a slight tanginess. No one knows why we still retain the outdated term sweet cream butter, but it has nothing to do with its salt content.

Butter blends and dairy spreads are a combination of butter and vegetable oils. Mixing oil in butter reduces the price since oil is far cheaper than butter, but it also reduces the cholesterol while maintaining some butter flavor. Don’t be fooled-total fat and calories remain about the same. In low-fat spreads, water replaces some of butter’s fat, reducing not only fat but calories, cholesterol and flavor

Margarine

Margarine is not a dairy product but since so many people substitute margarine for butter, this is a good place for its discussion.

A food scientist in France, H. Mège-Mouriès, developed margarine in 1869 as a substitute for butter in case of unexpected dairy shortage. He produced it by churning together high-quality beef fat, called suet, and milk, but production was limited because of shortages of suet.

In 1902 W. Normann, a German scientist improved on the technique, and was able to bypass suet and harden oil with the addition of hydrogen (this is the process called

hydrogenation), which changed liquid oil into a solid fat that we know as today’s margarine.

Margarine is mainly oil and water. The processor uses huge hydrogenation converter drums with a nickel catalyst at 200°C (392°F) and violent agitation in contact with a flow of hydrogen gas. Then they cool and filter the resulting margarine to remove traces of the nickel catalyst.