Grilled Chicken Thighs In Buttermilk Chive Marinade I Made It

mommyluvs2cook 9 years ago said:

What a perfect picture! Yeah I'm not sure of the comments about using wings. I personally don't think there is enough meat on wings to even bother with them....

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frankieanne 9 years ago said:

Thank you, Michelle. I don't know why they were thinking it was perfect for wings. I don't even know if you could taste the little bit of lemon with a little wing. Weird.

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MissouriFarmWife 9 years ago said:

Thighs are much better than wings! They are the piece of choice for us!

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chuckieb 9 years ago said:

That's a yummy looking chicken dish Frankieanne. I haven't used buttermilk much in cooking over the years. Are we going to see another recipe being made by you having used the excess buttermilk? :)

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

Seems this recipe could be converted to oven bake (for those of us without a grill) without too much trouble.

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frankieanne 9 years ago said:

haha, Janet. Yes, you know me well. Stay tuned, as I like to say.
Not sure how this would work, pso, as baked. I don't think I would try it without breadcrumbs but let us know if you do.

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NPMarie 9 years ago said:

Wow, does that look good! I have never used buttermilk in a chicken marinade..I'll have to give it a try! Then I'll be searching for other recipes that have buttermilk as an ingredient as well FA! Beeutiful pic:)

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bakerme 9 years ago said:

Yum, another delicious looking chicken recipe! Too bad my hubby doesn't like chicken much so I could try it :(

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notyourmomma 9 years ago said:

Okay, for those that do not want to buy a quart of buttermilk for a recipe, you can sub one cup of whole milk with one tbsp of vinegar added. You will have instant buttermilk.
Buttermilk and hot sauce is a superior soak for wings. That might be what the commenters are responding to, instead of a thigh preparation. However this recipe for more meaty thighs and the lemon juice is ideal.....the lemon enhances the tart factor of the buttermilk (faux or real), the dark meat of the thigh can stand up to the tart, dill is a perfect herbal flavor to complement both. I don't know why anyone would use a wing. This looks gorgeous, FA. To convert to an oven bake preparation, I would marinade per recipe....and bake on a rack over a lipped cookie sheet until done and then a quick broil to brown the "marinade" on the thigh. FA your dish looks great with b/l sk/l thighs. Lemon and dill are another match made in Heaven. I can see this with a feta and tomato salad on the side and a toasted pita. ( or some of those homegrown skillet spuds with rosemary). :-)

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mommyluvs2cook 9 years ago said:

I do the milk and vinegar trick too for buttermilk, Tina!! Always seems to work like a charm :)

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NPMarie 9 years ago said:

Thanks for the buttermilk tip Tina!!!!

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notyourmomma 9 years ago said:

I can't spend money on buttermilk when I can do the same with a little kitchen chemistry.
I love an acidic milk for tenderizing.
Just like yogurt these days.

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frankieanne 9 years ago said:

Thank you, dear Tina. :)

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

I shouldn't chime in here. But it needs to be said that vinegar in milk is soured milk NOT buttermilk. The vinegar trick can be used to make cottage cheese and ricotta, which are curds of soured milk, but they can also be made using a live bacterial culture.
Buttermilk is a clumping of milk made with a live bacteria culture, in which the bacteria grows into lumps of Streptococcus Lactis at a temperature slightly higher than room temperature, about 80F.
Yogurt is also made by using a live bacterial culture, not vinegar, that grows at an even higher temperature of 120F.

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notyourmomma 9 years ago said:

The point of using buttermilk is the tang and flavor that is added to a marinade. Vinegar or lemon juice with whole milk is an appropriate marinade.
http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-a-quick-easy-buttermilk-substitute-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-185757

The esteemed Nigella Lawson team considers the milk/plus lemon juice as an appropriate sub. There are a few things that can be used to stand in for buttermilk if it is not available. If you have some regular, plain yogurt to hand then use 200mls (2/3 cup) yogurt to 50mls (1/3 cup) milk. If you have Greek yogurt only then use equal quantities of Greek yogurt and milk. The yogurt/milk combination is particularly good as a substitute for buttermilk in marinades.
Alternatively you can sour some milk by adding some acid. Pour 250mls (1 cup) milk into a jug and stir in 1 (15ml) tablespoon of lemon juice or white wine vinegar. Stir well and leave to stand for 5 minutes before using as directed in the recipe. Full fat (whole) milk or semi-skimmed (reduced fat) milk work best here as skimmed (non fat) milk tends to turn a little watery.

I am not one to belabor a point in this instance and create strife. However, I have successfully subbed a soured milk or yogurt as a marinade or as an ingredient in a pancake batter instead of purchasing a quart of buttermilk. It is the acidity that is the reactive agent in the recipe, not the actual proponent. Most respectfully offered as a long time, "make do with what your are given" cook. I'm not a cook who follows the recipe to the letter. I am more of a cook who sees the general method and direction of the recipe and failing the actual ingredients feels empowered to make it my own. There are many recipes that are too sweet just looking at the ingredients and I will cut back on the sugar rather than critique the recipe. It is the experience of the cook that can adapt a recipe to the taste and ingredients on hand.

There are many charts available on the internet that are printed from cookbooks that are held in great favor, each of them will list an appropriate substitute for a missing item.
Often recipes are adapted to reduce fat and sugar, those subs are available in the charts. I'm not going to eliminate a recipe that "sounds" good for lack of an ingredient. Nor will I chase an ingredient to fulfill a recipe. I would rather make the recipe 'my own' by using what is readily at hand.

I was only giving the IMI group an option for the buttermilk option. The sub I mentioned is a well known option of seasoned cooks.

All is well. Happy cooking.

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notyourmomma 9 years ago said:

http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-to-make-buttermilk/

Another opinion on purchased buttermilk and the advantages of learning to make your own.

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

Yes, I agree with everything in your last long post. I was just pointing out that buttermilk and soured milk are two different animals.
When you say
"Okay, for those that do not want to buy a quart of buttermilk for a recipe, you can sub one cup of whole milk with one tbsp of vinegar added. You will have instant buttermilk."
That is patently false.
New I never should have said nuthin'.

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bakerme 9 years ago said:

I have to agree with Points here. Most of what I've read about buttermilk vs.soured milk says to use real buttermilk when called for for best results, but In a pinch, soured milk can be used. I've even seen a few recipes that state you can use buttermilk or soured milk, but very few. You may get away with using soured milk in cooking, but in baking, which is more of a science than cooking, stick to real buttermilk or you may compromise the final results. Just because something "comes out" with a sub doesn't mean it's the best it can be, and isn't that the goal of baking and cooking, to make the best you can?

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NPMarie 9 years ago said:

I have to agree with Notyourmomma..she's an awesome cook and if she says it works well, then it works well! And super easy to boot!

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mommyluvs2cook 9 years ago said:

I have baked with the milk and vinegar method or "soured milk" at least 20 times with perfect results.

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

I'm not saying it won't work. My contention is soured milk is not buttermilk.
Soured milk can be used as a sub for buttermilk in a lot of situations but it is still not buttermilk.

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mommyluvs2cook 9 years ago said:

I understand what your saying Points, I was mainly just responding to what Bakerme said about baking with it.

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bakerme 9 years ago said:

I'm glad you got good results with the sub, Ml2c, and wonder if you've tried any of those recipes with real buttermilk to see the difference. I've tried a few of my own, buttermilk pancakes and pound cake in particular, and notice a definite difference!

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notyourmomma 9 years ago said:

The store-bought buttermilk all has seaweed or starch in it to thicken it. Some of it has acids to make it tart. Ingredients: cultured low fat milk, nonfat dry milk, modified food starch, salt, mono and di-glycerides, carrageenan, carob bean gum, vitamin A palmitate and vitamin d3.
Looks like store bought buttermilk has no relation to real churned fresh buttermilk.

Please note: following is from the "What is real buttermilk" The Garden Web, Harvest Forum
Poster: I thought I was getting some real buttermilk when I bought a $5 glass quart of buttermilk at Whole Foods. But when I got home I read the small print...it was homogenized lowfat cultured milk with vitamins A and D added. I don't think that is real buttermilk, but I have no idea.
Response from editor at the Garden Web.
When I was quite little, back in the 1960's and early 1970's, my mother would sometimes want some buttermilk like she had growing up on a farm, where they milked their own cows, churned their own butter, etc. The process also yielded a small amount of actual butter, to be used separately.

What she would do was actually take cream and half and half, mix it together, put it into a bowl, and go at it with a hand mixer. It would go through a stage sort of like whipped cream, and then it would go beyond that, and the butterfat would start to coagulate out and accumulate on the beaters and around the rim of the bowl. Keep going long enough, and you ended up with a mass of butter floating around in a pool of liquid after you scraped down the beaters and the rim of the bowl. The liquid that remained behind was the buttermilk. I sort of recall that you can also do this in a blender, and it ends up the same way, with the butter clinging to the rim of the glass.

I think it was actually mostly whey, with enough milk proteins on other things in it to be sort of white, but I recall it as being less white than even skim milk. And, it had actually little tiny flecks of butter floating in it.

Also, it was NOT sour at this point, unless you started with cream or half and half that was already beginning to sour. You could LET it get sour if you wanted to.

Now, she said that, for much of the year, the buttermilk they had on the farm WOULD be sour, because they had no electricity and little cold storage, just an icebox, not big enough to store large buckets of milk, so, it sat out, and turned sour after about 12 hours. But, in the colder times of the year, it wouldn't sour as fast, and they would have "sweet" buttermilk.

So the big difference between "real" buttermilk and storebought buttermilk is that storebought buttermilk is cultured milk, not the leftovers from making butter. Most containers of buttermilk will say this. So what does that mean? No idea. LOL Ok, seriously. It's sorta like the process of making yogurt, where you encourage certain types of bacteria to grow in the milk, giving it the thickness & sourness we're used to. You can do this at home too, it's about like the process to make sourdough.

It would be interesting to see the poundcake recipe that had a significant difference in flavor by using 'real' buttermilk versus 'soured milk'. I guess we can agree that we aren't going to be churning our own butter from fresh unpastueurized milk and using the remains as the 'real' buttermilk.

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bakerme 9 years ago said:

The difference in the pound cake wasn't so much flavor as texture. The buttermilk made a denser texture that we like, whereas the soured milk made a lighter one, more like you'd get using regular milk. With the pancakes, I had the opposite result. The pancakes made with buttermilk were fluffier and rose higher, while the soured milk made flatter, denser pancakes. I think at this point, we're going to have to agree to disagree on the merits of using buttermilk vs. soured milk - LOL!

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

I'm agreed that "old fashioned buttermilk" and store bought buttermilk are not the same animal. And store bought buttermilk probably does have those other ingredients in it, as does other milk products, but not to the same extent. Yes, churning does produce buttermilk as a residue when the butter is removed, see: Butter. And even in that recipe the cream is pasteurized, which is different than real cream.
There are stores, all be it limited, that sell whole raw milk, but it too is pasteurized.
Besides getting it from the cow or goat or other milk giving animal or buying it straight from the farm, the milk will be processed in some manner to the ultimate safety for human consumption. With all the bad bugs killed and additives added to comply with FDA mandates and to make it pleasantly palatable, the milk can be had in volume to the general public.
Milk and its byproducts from the farm were not always safe to consume. When the bad bacteria grew in the milk it had to be pitched or someone would get sick.

There is one ingredient in store bought buttermilk you forgot to mention. It is the culture bacteria that sours and thickens the milk. Some companies process their buttermilk without the aid of bacteria and others use the live culture. Isn't modern technology great?

YOGURT: Yogurt is produced by a mixed fermented culture of two types of bacteria. Imbedded in particles of the protein casein are Streptococcus thermophilus and either Lactobacillus acidophilus or L. bulgaricus.
Yogurt can be had with live bacteria or not. The live bacteria in yogurt is what we eat to replenish the bacteria in our digestive system. The other stuff is just a make believe feel good thickened milk product and a waste of money. See Yogurt on how to make yogurt at home.

BUTTERMILK is the fermentation of milk by a culture lactic acid-producing Streptococcus lactis plus Leuconostoc citrovorum which converts lactic acid to aldehydes and ketones which gives it its flavor and aroma. Buttermilk can be had with live bacteria or not. The live bacteria in buttermilk is what we eat to replenish the bacteria in our digestive system. The other stuff is just a make believe feel good thickened milk product and a waste of money.

SOUR CREAM is produced by the same bacteria as buttermilk, but the starting milk product is pasteurized light cream. Bacteria are less numerous than in buttermilk. Sour cream can be had with live bacteria or not. The live bacteria in sour cream is what we eat to replenish the bacteria in our digestive system. The other stuff is just make believe feel good thickened milk product and a waste of money.

All these milk products have a specific temperature range they grow in the best.

Isn't modern technology great, in that, we can mimic the look and feel of certain products and be allowed by law to sell them as those products?

Cultured buttermilk is probably the easiest and most fool proof fermented milk product to make. (Note that cultured is different than "old fashioned buttermilk.") All you need is active cultured buttermilk for the starter, and fresh milk for it to act on (store bought is fine). The formation of buttermilk is based on the fermentation by the starter bacteria which turns milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid. As lactic acid is formed, the pH of the milk drops and it gets tart. Milk proteins, most notably casein, are no longer as soluble under acid conditions and they precipitate out, causing what we recognize as clabbering. Thus the two marked characteristics of buttermilk, its tartness and its thickened nature, are both explained by the presence or the action of lactic acid. Additional by-products of fermentation give subtle variations in buttermilk flavor.

The acidity of buttermilk also explains its long refrigerator shelf life. Acid is a natural preservative because it inhibits the growth of pathogenic bacteria. Thus buttermilk keeps easily for weeks in your refrigerator. If you keep it longer, it may develop mold on the inner walls of the jar. This mold belongs to the same group of fungi which grow on cheese and is not dangerous. Remove it and the buttermilk can still be used for baking. However, because the desired bacteria may have died in older samples, buttermilk older than three to four weeks may not work as an inoculum to make buttermilk.

SOUR CREAM can be made with the same procedure as buttermilk, using one cup of cream mixed thoroughly with 2 Tbl fresh active buttermilk and letting it sit for 12-24 hours at room temperature. The higher butterfat in the cream, the thicker the finished sour cream.

So the first paragraph in your comment, although it may be true, is not the standard for all buttermilk. It is a false produced buttermilk that although it may taste good, does not have a live culture that makes a beneficial buttermilk. It should perform just as well as soured milk from the addition of an acid, usually lemon juice or vinegar. Read the labels and choose wisely.

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frankieanne 9 years ago said:

Methinks Frankie Anne needs to do some new experimenting. Buttermilk vs. buttermilk substitution. I'm off the oven fried chicken. For now, that is. Although I think I may be heading off to batters for fried fish. Although it does sound like Bakerme has done a comparison on a couple of foodstuffs.
Lots of research going on here!

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pointsevenout 9 years ago said:

Yes. Store bought buttermilk with and without a live culture. Bakerme too.

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frankieanne 9 years ago said:

Hmmm, if I could combine the buttermilk experiment with the oven fried chicken or fried fish experiments, I would be doing great! :-P

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lovebreezy 9 years ago said:

Oh Points, you wouldn't be you if you didn't chime in. I was waiting for it as I remembered how you feel about the buttermilk substitute.
You have a plethora of information in that head and if you don't know something, you'll research it. I admit, I don't always understand some of your scientific facts but I love that you offer them. I have been accused of being too blunt at times and I believe, you are, on occasion, seen that way too. What you contribute to this group outweighs any seemingly social blunders, in my book. I hope I am not having my own social blunder with this comment.
So, sour-milk is not buttermilk but is still a good substitute.

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