Uses for Leftover Raw Milk, Cream, and Eggs

June 24, 2022

It’s time to pick up your next shares of milk and cream and eggs, and you still have some left over in your fridge. What do you do with it? First of all, it may very well still be good for awhile yet. I once put a fresh jar of milk in our fridge, labeled it, and left it alone for 3 weeks. When we shook it and opened the jar to use it, it tasted as fresh as day old milk and was not a bit sour. If you’d rather make something with it, here are some options:

• Farmer Cheese (Cottage or Ricotta)
  • My grandma calls this “farmer cheese” - I don’t know if that’s the right term for it or not, but she made a lot of it, and so did her mother. Put your milk in something with a wide top (like a wide mouth jar or gallon jar). Skim the cream off your milk and put it in a different jar and refrigerate. Set the skimmed milk on the counter with the lid on. Lightly shake it and open the lid twice a day to release air, in a few days it will separate. You’ll have curds on top and whey on the bottom. Put it through a fine strainer, and the whey can be used for baking and lacto-fermenting. The curds can be salted and mixed with a little bit of cream for cottage cheese, or used as ricotta cheese (use in lasagna or spread on toast and drizzle with some honey).

• Cream Soup alternative (white gravy)
  • Rather than using store bought “cream of” soups, you can make your own, which will taste WAY better and be much better for you. Make a roux of ⅓ cup each of butter and flour (any kind), add a pinch of salt, some dried onion flakes, and whisk in 3 cups of milk. Cook until thick, and that’s it! I have made this and kept it in the fridge for 2 weeks. I have also frozen this and thawed it before using it in a recipe. The texture is a little funky after freezing, but I used it in cheesy hashbrowns and it came out just like it usually does. Every Thursday, we have a beef roast in the crockpot with carrots and/or potatoes, and I add one recipe of white gravy to it. I start the roast either the evening before or by 5 am. Grassfed beef roasts needs more time to get really tender. I spread the white gravy on top of the roast, and add the veggies on top of, or around it. If I start the roast the evening before, I don't add the veggies until morning. Let it cook on low, and it will be ready by 6 pm. Sometimes I add a few spoonfuls of Frontier's Onion Soup Mix on top of the white gravy, and that adds some flavor to everything as well.

• Ice Cream
  • I take out a one-gallon jar, and put 4-6 egg yolks in it. I add a pint of cream and 1 ¼ cups of maple syrup or maple sugar or organic cane sugar. I add a little milk, and use the immersion blender to get everything mixed well. Finish adding milk until you’ve filled the jar, and then put it in an ice cream maker. You can also pour it into an empty plastic bowl or gallon ice cream bucket and set it in your freezer, and stir it good every hour. It will take all day to freeze, but you will have ice cream eventually. You can skip the cream and make this with just milk as well. I add a couple extra egg yolks in that case, to help bring up the fat content.

• Pudding
  • I love homemade pudding. It is so much better than Jello instant. Here is a recipe for vanilla, and here is my favorite chocolate one. You can also use the vanilla pudding to make a banana cream pie or banana pudding.

• Baking - it can be used to replace liquid in any baking recipe.

Leftover cream can be used for:

• Sour Cream
  • There’s not much to this one - set it out on the counter and shake twice a day, open the lid to release air, and it will sour after a couple days (depending on the temp in your kitchen). It won’t be as thick as sour cream, but it tastes great. Alternatively, if you have a yogurt maker, you can add yogurt starter to it and incubate it to make it sour (that’s what I do)

• Cream Cheese
  • Pour your thickened sour cream into some butter muslin and let it drain overnight. You will be left with cream cheese in the butter muslin in the morning. It’s a softer, more spreadable version than what you’re used to from the store. We put it on bagels or use it for cheesecake.

• Ice Cream (see the recipe above)

Leftover Eggs can be used for:

• Eggbake
  • There are a ton of recipes out there for eggbakes too. They can have bread or potatoes, or just be meat and eggs. I love putting croissant dough on the bottom of a cake pan, then a pound of crumbled bacon, a dozen eggs that have been whipped good with a little bit of milk or cream, and then about 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese on top of that. If you want one without any kind of bread, a pound of crumbled breakfast sausage (or diced sausage links) along with a dozen whipped eggs (with a little milk or cream) and shredded cheese is so simple and yummy. 

• Souffle
  • I don’t know if you’re a Caribou fan like I am, but if you are, you may have had one of their souffles. They are so good! Like an eggbake but lighter and in an individual serving size. Recipes abound for them - find one you like. You can also make chocolate souffles, which are delightful.

• Egg Custard
  • I have been using this recipe for 8 years for egg custard. We love to eat it over frozen mixed berries.

• Angel Food Cake with Frosting
  • This is the recipe I use for the cake (I don’t add the almond flavoring), and this is the recipe for the frosting.

• Boiled eggs, Deviled eggs, Egg Salad, Potato Salad
  • Boiled eggs are good for so many things. First of all, just salted and eaten (alone or as a topping for a salad) they are great. You could also make deviled eggs with them, egg salad for sandwiches, or potato salad.