Not Familiar With

[sadlikeknives]

It's cooooooold.

From a scones recipe, one of the more bizarre notations I've seen in a recipe yet: If you are not familiar with buttermilk...

Not familiar with buttermilk?? Come on, people, it's buttermilk. Not some fancy ingredient you can only find in specialty stores or freakin' Whole Foods or something. Buttermilk. It's right next to the regular milk in any Wal-Mart. They sell it at gas stations, for crying out loud. Granted, I am speaking from an American Southern perspective, and we put buttermilk in everything and down it by the glass, but I cannot imagine that the situation is that different in other parts of the country, and this is an American website.

To me, it's like saying 'if you are not familiar with sour cream' or 'if you are not familiar with yogurt' or...butter or something. GAH.

Comments

[jasminelily.livejournal.com]

I think it is different in other parts of the country -- a lot of recipes that call for buttermilk tend to be traditionally southern, I think. I mean, I'm familiar with it, but, you know, I'm black, so it's the same. That said, I know no one who downs it by the glass.

And I'm pretty sure that there are people unfamiliar with it, given the idiotic questions that people ask in some of the cooking communities.

Hee, that reminds me of the question that I saw in Bon Appetit from probably about ten years ago, and someone from the Midwest wrote in "I keep seeing this ingredient listed in recipes and I've never seen it before: what is salsa?" Heeee.

[boodilly.livejournal.com]

Buttermilk is kind of a mythical thing here, heard of only in American movies and TV shows. So they might have put that in there for an international audience.

[elecktrik.livejournal.com]

I know we have buttermilk in grocery stores here, but I doubt that gas stations sell it...I've only ever used it when baking, and my grandmother taught me how to cheat by just adding vinegar to regular milk rather than buying buttermilk and wasting most of a carton, as we never use it for anything else!