What to do with Whey?

Making a recent yogurt recipe left me with a few cups of whey and whey is one of those things that people talk about but never seem to get around to actually using.  I really didn't want to waste perfectly good (and nutritious!) whey...so off to Google it was.  There were a few REALLY GREAT ideas I've culled with some basic google-fu; follow me after the break for that adventure because I'm sold: whey is where it's at.







In case you wanted to know...the yogurt recipe mentioned above was included with the (10 or so) pre-loaded set on Yummy Soup and is a delightful Dutch dessert called Hangop (Dutch for "hang up")  You can get the recipe yourself from the original blogger:

Kayotic Kitchen (http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/hangop)
(She seems wonderful. Srsly, I loved exploring her blog.)


This adventure was brought to you by the innocuous caption in the Hangop recipe,

"Here’s the whey that came out of it. I’ve been told it makes for a great soup base. Have to try that sometime."

Indeed.


Thing to do with whey, the first: make cheese!
So, the first thing I stumbled across when looking for whey was this incredible Instructables post on how to make great ricotta cheese from whey.  What a great idea!
And from the comments, you can further use the whey left over from the ricotta to make a Norwegian cheese called gjetost (or mytost).  An illustrated guide to making gjetost can be found here.

That's right!  You can actually just keep making cheese from whey until there is nothing left at all.  Humans are so smart.  If you start with a gallon of whole milk you can actually make Mozzarella, then Ricotta, then Gjetost and not lose a drop in the process!

Thing to do with whey, the second: make biscuits!
Apparently, you can substitute whey for buttermilk (who knew?) and make some biscuits.  There is a recipe that you can find here but I'm going to have to try it in my go-to biscuit recipe:

½ cup Cold Butter
2 ¼ cups Self-Rising Soft-Wheat Flour (White Lily, preferable)
1 ¼ cups Buttermilk

Cut butter into flour (I like to use a food processor)
Combine with Buttermilk (...or whey) and fold dough a few times.
Pat to 1/2 inch thickness, cut with a glass or cutter, place biscuits touching on a sheet
Bake at 450 for 13-15 min.

Thing to do with whey, the third: use as a soup base!
This is what I ended up doing.  I had about 2 cups of whey, just enough for a nice cream of potato soup.  I modified a recipe I found here.  This is what I ended up doing:

1 onion, chopped
2 T. butter
1 T. flour
3 large yukon gold potatoes peeled and diced
Whey (enough to cover the potatoes)
Pepper (to taste)
Dill (to taste)

Put the onion and butter into a large sauce pan
Saute gently until onion is sweated out (not hot enough to brown!)
Add flour and stir for a minute or so until the butter and flour are completely blended
Toss in diced potatoes and add whey until they are covered (you may add water or milk to make up any lacking liquid)
Stir in pepper and dried dill to taste (I just pinch and throw, it was probably 1 tsp pepper, and 1 Tbsp dill)
Stir periodically until the potatoes are tender (~1/2 hour).

I ended up adding 1/2 cup cream to the soup because I didn't make enough roux (butter/flour) at the beginning.  You can also add a corn starch slurry to thicken the soup if you prefer.  But it was fine as was, I simply prefer a thicker soup.  Also, please don't take this recipe as law -- you can add stuff to it or subtract as needed.  The whey added a nice bite; kind of like buttermilk, or sour cream.  Yum...

Here are some other ideas:

• Add bacon, or ham bits.
• Add corn (I did this!  Yum!) 
• Use chives rather than dill.  
• Use half and half or evaporated milk (not condensed!) instead of cream.  
• Try creamer potatoes instead of yukon gold.  
• Try blending the whole soup in a food processor or blender when it is done for a creamier soup instead of adding any sort of liquid.
• Make cream of broccoli instead of cream of potato
• Make a thick vegetable soup instead of cream of anything

You get the idea.  The possibilities are endless but I'll tell you -- that soup was DARN TASTY.

I may try the Mozzarella to Gjetost thing next time.  If I do, I'll fill you in next time on "Adventures in Whey II:  Not Just for Little Miss Muffet Anymore."

[UPDATE: Done!  Click here for Part II!]

Blooper reel: Some words I typed while trying to type "whey" while writing this post: why, when, where, what, whit... ::sigh::

Credits
Image: Gouda - Removing whey a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from grongar's photostream