Description
You may not have a milking animal, or cannot find the "gold" of raw milk, you can still make kefir with good quality store-bought milk. Be sure to read all about Homemade Kefir on pages 415-417 of the original Trim Healthy Mama book!!
Ingredients
Instructions
- Place approximately a ½ cup of kefir grains in a sterilized quart glass jar.
- Fill 2 inches from the top with your milk of choice. The fermentation process usually needs room to expand, so don’t fill all the way.
- Cover jar with a loose cloth.
- Ferment kefir in a dark cupboard for 24 hours.
- Once you are ready to harvest your kefir, stir and pour it into a bowl through a plastic colander that has small holes. Use a plastic or wooden spoon to help the kefir drain through the colander.
- Place your harvested kefir in the fridge and place the kefir grains back in the same glass jar. Fill up with fresh milk to be placed back in your dark cupboard. For double fermentation, place your harvested (without grains) kefir back in the cupboard for another 24-hours sealed with a plastic lid.
Note
Recipe Notes
A Note About Homemade Kefir From Serene:
"Remember, while we consider milk a no-no for weight control, culturing the milk eats the lactose which is the milk sugar, and renders it a much lower glycemic beverage. If you use goat’s milk, your kefir will always be S, because goat’s milk cream will not separate. You can, however, make a Fuel Pull or E approved kefir by using cow’s milk that has the cream skimmed from the top, or a non-fat milk from the store. Amish farms that surround many cities are inexpensive raw milk sources. There are also raw-milk co-ops in many cities which you can research online, or contact your local Farmers Market for information. You can also look up Weston A. Price Foundation in your search engine to discover local sources of free range milk, eggs, and meat.
You may be the type who doesn’t want the bother of finding and collecting raw milk. Your adventurous spirit will be satisfied by making kefir from scratch at home with store-bought milk. This is still good for you and will cost much less than the already fermented counterpart at your health food market. Store-bought pasteurized milk, when cultured, comes back to life. Even though it may not be as nutritious as raw sources, it is still an anti-aging superfood when revived. Milk from Aldi stores does not contain growth hormones, nor is it ultra-pasteurized. It is my choice for kefir making when I don’t have raw milk. Many expensive, organic brands from Health Food markets have been processed using the UHT (Ultra Heat Method of Pasteurization).
There is no need to clean your jar every time. Leaving your jar with the kefir residue inside helps to culture a new growth of kefir grains. This is a healthy culturing practice for one week, after which you will want to exchange it with a fresh sterilized jar. At this time, if there has been enough growth of your kefir grains to be noticeable, remove them to store, give away, fertilize your garden, or feed them to your pets. Some people love to give them to their children as little pro-biotic chews. Sadly, my children don’t fall for that treat. You may want to place them in a larger glass jar to start culturing greater amounts of kefir.
If you are in a hurry, it has been 24 hours, and you don’t have the time to deal with straining your kefir, don’t worry. Place it in the fridge and this will slow down the culturing process and give you more time. You wouldn’t want to leave it more than another day as it will become sourer, albeit more slowly in the fridge. Kefir thickens in the fridge and I often use this trick as I enjoy the taste and texture even more.
What if you are leaving town and won’t be home to look after your kefir? You can’t find a kefir baby sitter and you wish they would go to sleep for a while like good little grains. Guess what? They can. Kefir grains are fun easy pets. They will nap for you and wake up with no grouchiness if you treat them kindly. To make them go to sleep, drain kefir as usual and run the colander of grains under cold clear water until the water runs clear out the bottom of the colander. Place the grains in a sterilized plastic container, cover with clean water, and freeze. Once you are ready to use them again, thaw, and use as normal. It might take at least one ferment cycle for them to become active again. The first renewed kefir is still healthy, only not quite as thick or tart. If your break from making kefir is not going to be long enough to warrant freezing the grains, place your sterilized plastic jar filled with grains in the refrigerator, but not for more than a week. What if your week is up and you change your mind? You still don’t feel like waking the pets, but you don’t know if you want to freeze them yet either. She’ll be right mate! Just add 1 Tbsp of any milk, per day, to the grains. This will feed them a little food to live on so they won’t starve or die."
Fuel Classification Note:
- Full-fat homemade kefir is an S (cow or goat’s milk.)
- Low-fat homemade kefir is FP.
- To use this in an E setting, just add some fruit to your low-fat homemade kefir and make an E kefir smoothie
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Be sure to check out the "Kefir" Page in the FAQ Area for updated guidelines on kefir!!
