Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Powdered Milk For Your Preps; Which One Should I Pick & Why

Powdered Milk For Your Preps; Which One Should I Pick and Why?

By Jalapeno Gal77 via APN

milk 7Mentioning powdered milk often gets a curl of the lip at the mere thought of drinking it.
However, powdered milk has more uses than just drinking, which makes it essential as an addition to your food storage.  In this article I plan to share the different types of milk that can be purchased, their nutritional benefits, shelf life, and ways to make them more drinkable if you just can't stand the taste.

Nutritional Facts:
  • Powdered milk is produced by extracting water and fat from pasteurized milk, and has the following added:  vitamins and minerals such as A,D,E, K,  magnesium, calcium, zinc, potassium and phosphorous.
  • Vitamin A is beneficial for your vision, immune system, reproductive system, and aides in cellular growth.
  • Vitamin D helps your bones, joints, and heart.  It also helps your intestines to absorb calcium and phosphorous.
  • Vitamin K aides in proper blood clotting.
  • Vitamin E is an antioxidant that protects cell membrane and stimulates your body's immune response to disease.
  • Powdered Milk contains a carbohydrate called lactose.  Lactose aides' diabetics because it doesn't increase blood glucose levels and digests more slowly than glucose.  If you are Lactose Intolerant you may have a hard time with powdered milk and might want to find another source of vitamins and calcium.
  • Milk, much like red meat, contains 20 different amino acids required to maintain proper health of the human body.
Powdered Milk is produced by removing most of the water through a drying process.  Back in the day, this was done by drum drying.  This process was accomplished by applying a thin layer of milk to a heated drum and once the water had evaporated, the dry milk particles were scraped off the drum.  However, this method tends to create a cooked flavor due to over-exposure to heat.
Today a process known as spray drying is used.  This process is done by taking pasteurized milk in an evaporator to approximately 50% milk solids.  The concentrated milk is then sprayed into a heat chamber where the water evaporates almost instantly, leaving fine particles of milk powder.  (Information found here.)

Different Types of Milk Powder:
  • Whole Milk Powder;  Between 26% and 40% milk fat with no more than 5% moisture.
  • Skim Milk Powder and Non-Fat dry milk;  Contains 1.5% or less milk fat and 5% or less of moisture.
  • Buttermilk Powder;  Buttermilk powder is made from buttermilk that is churned, pasteurized and condensed.  It has 4.5 percent milk fat and less than 5% moisture.
According to the Latter-Day saints food storage chart, if stored properly, dehydrated milk powder can last 20 years or longer in your food storage.

Powdered Milk can be used in many ways:  any recipe that calls for milk, for drinking, and even making cheese and sour cream! (Click here for ways to make it taste better.)  One VERY popular *secret* to making milk breads, is to use powdered milk verses real milk.  (Milk conversion chart)  I also came across a woman's experiment with different brands of powdered milk that was a very interesting read.  (Click here to read this article.)  According to her ratings, there was a toss-up between these 3 brands, Provident Pantry, Morning Moo's and Country Cream.  Below are links to these powdered milk brands if you want to give them a try.  I was surprised to find in her experiment that the LDS powdered milk was rated the worst as far as taste is concerned.  That is primarily what we store in our food storage.  Don't throw it all out though because it can still be used for cooking.

For 9 ways to make the powdered milk you drink taste better, click here.

Morning Moo's:
Provident Pantry:
Country Cream:
Tomorrow's Harvest:  This is a brand we enjoy that was not on the list shared above.  It is 100% real milk.
I hope with this article you become a little more excited about the thought of powdered milk in your pantry/food storage.  No powder milk can ever compare to whole, real milk, but it doesn't have to be all that bad with the right brand and preparation of the milk.  Good luck on your journey to find the powdered milk your family prefers.  Please feel free to leave your experience, preference and ideas in the comment section below.  We love to hear from you!!

Nutritional Value of milk

Keepin It Spicy,
Jalapeño Gal