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I have another beef - this time about milk!

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Aely Sun 09-Feb-25 19:00:09

Homogenised milk is absolutely useless for a really good, thick, creamy rice pudding - which I love as a winter pud! It just doesn't thicken properly with homogenised whole milk. And what can I put on my porridge? Homogenised whole milk is ok in coffee and I use semi-skimmed in tea.

Have you noticed how rare it is to see non-homogonised milk on the Supermarket shelf now? A couple of years ago I had to stop having milk delivered as the dairy had gone online only and my computer was on its last legs. A darned nuisance as the nearest shop was at that time a bus ride away, but not so bad since an Aldi opened just up the road in a little mall that had previously only allowed clothes, furniture, electrical goods and similar shops. If I wanted whole milk with the cream on top I could still pop into town, to the supermarkets there when I had other reasons to go that way.

Problem is, quite recently the unhomogenised whole milk seems to have disappeared from the supermarkets. Even the more expensive brands, which weren't, have gone homogenised. Only Waitrose seems to stock any now and they only get one delivery a week, a few bottles which are gone in no time. Also, I have to go to the next town for Waitrose - and it isn't worth the journey now they don't sell real bread.

I have a new laptop, so I have looked at resuming milk deliveries. We have two providers now, one of which only sells homogenised. The other sells both - but the price! It was about 85p/pint when I stopped. Now it is £1.25. I don't mind paying extra for delivery, but that is ridiculous. Going online only was supposed to be to keep the price down.

What do you think? Will I have to make my famous rice puds with cornflour added to thicken them? I've tried adding a little butter but it doesn't seem to help and I don't want to buy cream to add as most of it would be wasted. What happened to buyer's choice? I know why it is all homogenised - shop shelf life is longer.

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Aely Sat 15-Feb-25 17:33:19

Sorry not to have been back. A spot of computer trouble plus no notifications of new posts. I use my Mum's recipe for rice pud, probably from around WW2. About 2 1/2 oz. Pudding rice, Pint of milk, sugar to taste, evaporated milk plus the same amount of water totalling abt. 1/4 pt or so. A few hours in a low oven, stirring occasionally (so I make one when I make stew, to save gas). I like nutmeg on top. With mum, if there was any left (not usually!, she would add the remains to custard the next day. Nice.
I was shocked when I took a bottle of Graham's whole milk and found it was homogenised! These days I don't take anything for granted. Not since Paterson's shortbread suddenly contained Palm oil instead of butter. They seem to have rectified that now, though.

Waitrose seems to be the only supplier of unhomogenised milk around here, but they only get a little, occasionally. I dare say that will soon go the way of their real baked bread and disappear altogether.

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25Avalon Tue 18-Feb-25 04:53:10

The cream is still there in homogenised milk. It gets processed into small particles which remain in yhe milk. The thing with unhomogenised milk is that it tends to be from milk which is very rich in cream such as from Jersey cows, which produce less milk overall than Freisian or Holsteins. When I was young the less fatty milk came in glass bottles with silver tops whilst the richer Channel Island milk had gold tops. I remember it being very snobby to have gold top which wad more expensive. A bit like marge and butter in those days.

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