Making Whole Milk from Skim Milk and Heavy Cream

[Steve Freides]

OK, I know this is silly, but waste not, want not, so here we go:

We keep heavy cream in the 'frig - my wife likes to use it in sauces,
soups, etc., in small quantities.

Our next door neighbors are taking a trip and this morning, they brought
us an unopened container of orange juice (no problem there) and another
of skim milk.

My oldest is going to be home from college for a week and he's a whole
milk drinker. I'd like to mix heavy cream and skim milk, in the right
proportions, which I hope someone here can tell me, to make the
equivalent of the whole milk I normally buy.

Shaking it won't be a problem - we buy unhomogenized dairy from time to
time and they're used to that particular weirdness of mine. :)

Thanks in advance, and apologies if I don't respond because I might not
have newsgroup access for a day or so myself.

-S-

[Dave Smith]

Put the skim milk in a container. Add some cream. Taste it. If it's not
rich enough for your or his taste add more cream. Repeat.

[Bryan]

Heavy cream is ~50% butterfat by volume. The minimum standard for whole
milk is 3.25% by volume.

If you pour out 16 oz of milk, then add 8 oz of cream, you'll have 120 oz
of 3-1/3% with room to shake. Be nice. Add an extra ounce, and up the
milk fat to ~3.72%, or add a full 10 oz of cream for a delicious ~4.1%,
which is what whole milk, IMO, should be anyway.
>
> -S-

--Bryan

[jmcquown]

The simple answer would be to buy some whole milk when your son is visiting.

Freeze the skim (non-fat) milk *if* you have a reason to use it. But
experiment another time. Unless you think you can interest him in
playing around with how to reconstruct deconstructed milk. LOL

Jill

[Bryan]

On Saturday, March 2, 2013 9:33:16 AM UTC-6, jmcquown wrote:
> On 3/2/2013 8:57 AM, Steve Freides wrote:
>
> > OK, I know this is silly, but waste not, want not, so here we go:
>
> > We keep heavy cream in the 'frig - my wife likes to use it in sauces,
>
> > soups, etc., in small quantities.
>
> > Our next door neighbors are taking a trip and this morning, they brought
>
> > us an unopened container of orange juice (no problem there) and another
>
> > of skim milk.
>
> > My oldest is going to be home from college for a week and he's a whole
>
> > milk drinker. I'd like to mix heavy cream and skim milk, in the right
>
> > proportions, which I hope someone here can tell me, to make the
>
> > equivalent of the whole milk I normally buy.
>
> > Shaking it won't be a problem - we buy unhomogenized dairy from time to
>
> > time and they're used to that particular weirdness of mine. :)
>

> > -S-
>
>
> The simple answer would be to buy some whole milk when your son is visiting.
>
>

It might be simpler if someone hadn't already done the math.

I just realized that Steve had not specified that the container was a gallon.
It's easy enough to halve everything for a half gallon. A gallon lasts 2-4
days in this house.
>
> Jill

--Bryan

[George M. Middius]

Bryan wrote:

> If you pour out 16 oz of milk, then add 8 oz of cream, you'll have 120 oz
> of 3-1/3% with room to shake.

Somebody isn't very good at arithmetic.

[Steve Freides]

Thank you. One answer, from you, plus one person telling me my question
doesn't need an answer, plus one person telling me I'm a bad parent for
even asking the question. Ain't newsgroups just wonderful? :)

The math is what I was looking for - it's not a gallon, so I can adjust
accordingly.

-S-

[Bryan]

What I omitted was that the directions were for a gallon. I think of milk
as coming in gallons, since that's the way we always buy it.

128-16+8=120, 4 ounces of butterfat, divided by 120 ounces total, gives you
3.333 repeating percent.

--Bryan

[Nunya Bidnits]

I think you'd have to find the percentage of butterfat in the cream, and you
need to know the percentage of butterfat in whole milk. Then you can
calculate by volume how much cream to add to nonfat milk to approximate
whole.

MartyB

[Steve Freides]

Nunya Bidnits wrote:
> I think you'd have to find the percentage of butterfat in the cream,
> and you need to know the percentage of butterfat in whole milk. Then
> you can calculate by volume how much cream to add to nonfat milk to
> approximate whole.
>
> MartyB

That's why I asked - I don't know those things, don't know if heavy
cream is a standardized thing, even.

I now know what I need to know. Thanks to everyone.

-S-

[Nunya Bidnits]

Susan <su...@nothanks.org> wrote:
> x-no-archive: yes

>
> On 3/2/2013 12:38 PM, Steve Freides wrote:
>
>> That's why I asked - I don't know those things, don't know if heavy
>> cream is a standardized thing, even.
>>
>> I now know what I need to know. Thanks to everyone.
>>
>

> It was even faster to google it up, than it was to do the math, btw.
>
> Just sayinzall. :-)
>
> Susan

You took a sawzall to Just sayin'? Sacre Bleu!

[pltrgyst]

On 3/2/13 12:09 PM, Susan wrote:

> I totally suck at math, but with heavy cream at least 36% fat and skim
> at 0% and whole milk at about 4%, isn't it a straightforward 9:1 ratio
> of skim to cream?

It would be 8:1, but you were close enough!


-- Larry

[Chemo]

Shouldn't there be some calculus involved in that?

[Chemo]

On Mar 2, 7:33 am, jmcquown <j_mcqu...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On 3/2/2013 8:57 AM, Steve Freides wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > OK, I know this is silly, but waste not, want not, so here we go:
>
> > We keep heavy cream in the 'frig - my wife likes to use it in sauces,
> > soups, etc., in small quantities.
>
> > Our next door neighbors are taking a trip and this morning, they brought
> > us an unopened container of orange juice (no problem there) and another
> > of skim milk.
>
> > My oldest is going to be home from college for a week and he's a whole
> > milk drinker.  I'd like to mix heavy cream and skim milk, in the right
> > proportions, which I hope someone here can tell me, to make the
> > equivalent of the whole milk I normally buy.
>
> > Shaking it won't be a problem - we buy unhomogenized dairy from time to
> > time and they're used to that particular weirdness of mine. :)
>
> > Thanks in advance, and apologies if I don't respond because I might not
> > have newsgroup access for a day or so myself.
>
> > -S-
>
> The simple answer would be to buy some whole milk when your son is visiting.
>

>

> Jill

For Steve...it's not that simple.

[Chemo]

Good grief...you had to even ask!

[Dave Smith]

We could have done the math for you but some of us might have been
confused by the quantities, since you left that a mystery. You wrote
only that you have a container of skim milk. You didn't mention the fat
content of the heavy cream. It could be 35% but it could be something
else. We don't know. You didn't say. You also didn't say what fat
content you son is used to. According to Wiki. whole milk, also known
ans homogenized or homo, in Canada and the US is 4%. Yet,the homo milk
most commonly available here is 3.25%. There is a premium brand that is
3.5% I have never seen 4%.

> The math is what I was looking for - it's not a gallon, so I can adjust
> accordingly.
>

Okay.... it's not a gallon. So the quantity remains a mystery. Did you
really expect us to answer a question based on zero real information?

I don't know what your milk and cream prices are compared to ours, but
there is a darned good chance that added enough cream to skim milk to
make it homo would probably cost more than it would cost to buy some
whole milk. Seriously. Around here it costs about $4 for four litres
of skim milk and about $4.50. It would take about a lire of cream to fat
it up to whole milk, and a litre of cream is going to be $4-5. You have
paid as much just for the cream.

[Dave Smith]

n
>>
>> Thank you. One answer, from you, plus one person telling me my question
>> doesn't need an answer, plus one person telling me I'm a bad parent for
>> even asking the question. Ain't newsgroups just wonderful? :)
>>
>> The math is what I was looking for - it's not a gallon, so I can adjust
>> accordingly.
>>
>> -S-
>
> Good grief...you had to even ask!
>

I would like you to figure out how much cream of an unspecified
butterfat content I need to add to an unspecified amount of skim milk
with an unspecified to turn it into whole milk that his son likes,
without knowing what BF that is.

You can use paper and pencil if you want.

I confess that math was never my best subject at school, but I thought
that you needed at least one value in order to calculate the variables.

[Dave Smith]

n
>>
>> Thank you. One answer, from you, plus one person telling me my question
>> doesn't need an answer, plus one person telling me I'm a bad parent for
>> even asking the question. Ain't newsgroups just wonderful? :)
>>
>> The math is what I was looking for - it's not a gallon, so I can adjust
>> accordingly.
>>
>> -S-
>
> Good grief...you had to even ask!
>

[djs...@aol.com]

Look at how many grams of fat are in a serving of whole milk. It's
usually 8 grams per cup. Now multiply that by how many cups you have
(16 cups = a gallon) to get the total grams of fat that's needed in a
gallon of whole milk (128 grams). Now figure out the total number of
grams of fat in the same amount of skim milk and subtract. That will
give you how many grams of fat you need to add to the skim milk to
give it the fat content of whole milk. So if the skim milk has .5
grams of fat per cup you would need to add 120 grams of fat to it to
bring up to 128 grams of fat for a gallon of whole milk. Simply
divide 128 by the amount of fat in one serving of cream to figure out
how many servings of cream you need to add. Also, since adding the
cream also increases the volume you'll need to add slightly more to
compensate. Another thing, whipping cream has other ingredients in it
that could affect the taste. If you could find some plain unsalted
butter that doesn't have any added ingredients such as natural
flavorings you could also add that to the skim milk to raise the fat
content.

[Chemo]

That's better.

[Dave Smith]

On 02/03/2013 1:00 PM, Susan wrote:
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> On 3/2/2013 12:38 PM, Steve Freides wrote:
>

>> That's why I asked - I don't know those things, don't know if heavy
>> cream is a standardized thing, even.
>>
>> I now know what I need to know. Thanks to everyone.
>>
>

> It was even faster to google it up, than it was to do the math, btw.
>
> Just sayinzall. :-)
>

You're right.... and it says 2 Tbls heavy cream per cup of skim milk.

[Roy]

==
Not discussed but more importantly...is the taste. The formula might
be correct but the re-constructed whole milk will never taste
as it should. This is my opinion as one who has experimented with
a similar circumstance.

Having been brought up on a farm and involved in milking and
handling of milk I still enjoy drinking milk and despise the 2% and
skimmed milk which I equate with colored water.
==

[djs...@aol.com]

> --Bryan- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Fat percentage in milk is by weight, not volume. The fat content is
expressed in grams ( a measure of weight). So the total amount of
milk used to calculate the percentage has to be expressed as a weight
too.

[Dave Smith]

On 02/03/2013 5:39 PM, djs...@aol.com wrote:

>
> Fat percentage in milk is by weight, not volume. The fat content is
> expressed in grams ( a measure of weight). So the total amount of
> milk used to calculate the percentage has to be expressed as a weight
> too.
>

Weight or volume... doesn't matter. OP wanted to know how much heavy
cream to add to skim to make it whole milk but never said how much he had.

[Nunya Bidnits]

Then answers must be given for all possibilities.

You go first. ;-)

[Bryan]

The carageenan and mono and di-glycerides don't really affect taste,
but do affect the physical properties.

> If you could find some plain unsalted
>
> butter that doesn't have any added ingredients such as natural
>
> flavorings you could also add that to the skim milk to raise the fat
>
> content.

It would be difficult to get the butter into emulsion.

--Bryan

[Dave Smith]

I did. I told him to add some cream and try it. If it wasn't rich
enough, add more.

[Steve Freides]

The heavy cream I have is unhomegenized and doesn't have anything else
in it.

8 to 1 sounds like where to start with this one.

Thanks again to all who responded - well, all who responded with
something other than a complaint. :)

-S-

[Dave Smith]

On 03/03/2013 3:25 PM, Steve Freides wrote:
yan
>
> The heavy cream I have is unhomegenized and doesn't have anything else
> in it.
>
> 8 to 1 sounds like where to start with this one.
>
> Thanks again to all who responded - well, all who responded with
> something other than a complaint. :)
>
>

Oh come on.... it was a dumb question.

[Steve Freides]

Bye, Dave.

-S-