What is the difference between buttermilk and yogurt?!
What is the difference between buttermilk and yogurt?
Answers:
The first answer is technically correct, but only refers to traditional methods of producing buttermilk. Traditional buttermilk is watery and naturally sour. It's the whey leftover from churning cream into butter.
In the modern world, most buttermilk is cultured from low fat milk, using a lactic-acid bacteria and another bacteria that converts the lactic acid to the right flavor and aroma. Cultured Buttermilk is typically pasteurized to preserve shelf life.
Yogurt is also cultured from milk, but it has to have 2 specific types of bacteria in order to call it yogurt. Acidophilus and Termophilus. (I think I spelled these correctly..) In addition to these two required bacteria, other types of bacteria can be used to enhance the flavor, and thicken the culture. More often than not, gelatin or pectin are used to thicken yogurt, and it is pasteurized to preserve shelf life.
Basically they are similar in process, and the only real difference is the type of bacteria used to make the culture, causing two completely different tasting products with different texture and different nutritional values.
buttermilk is what is left after making butter, yoghurt is made from whole milk using some bakteria cultures