Food tips – Milk & Milk Products

Recipes

Mar 5, 2019

Milk & Milk Products

This month, the Crier will be featuring weekly “Food Tips” from Foodland Ontario.   We hope you enjoy these interesting facts and tips about buying, storing and using fresh Ontario products.

Buying and Storing

Pick up milk, cream and butter last when shopping so they stay cold.
Check the “best before” date on the package.
Refrigerate at 4°C as soon as possible after purchase.
Store milk on refrigerator shelves; the fridge door isn’t cold enough.
Leave milk in its original container to safeguard its flavour and food value.
Avoid exposing milk to light, which can destroy milk’s riboflavin content and cause “off” flavours.
Keep milk containers closed and away from strong-smelling foods.
Cream doesn’t freeze well. If freezing recipes such as soups that call for cream, add it after you reheat the thawed food.
Refrigerate butter in its original wrapper up to three weeks.
To freeze, wrap butter in additional foil or plastic and freeze up to a year.
Freeze unsalted butter up to three months.

    Bites

Butter, cheese, yogurt and ice cream can contain milk or modified milk ingredients imported from other countries such as the US, Europe, Australia or New Zealand.
Cows are usually milked twice a day. The chilled milk is picked up from the farm every two days by an insulated transport tanker that holds between 10,000 and 35,000 litres.
Whole milk contains at least 3.25% milk fat. Some fat is removed to make 2%, 1% and skim milk, which is virtually fat-free.
All milk is fortified with Vitamin D and contains the same 15 essential nutrients.
Cream naturally separates and floats to the top of freshly-gathered milk. It adds flavour and texture to recipes, or used to make butter.
It takes 10 L of fresh cow’s milk to make 500 g (1 lb.) of butter.
Butter is made with all-natural ingredients.
Butter is yellow because of the natural pigment carotene from the cow’s diet, which is mostly hay, grains and cereals. Our body converts carotene into Vitamin A.