Chocolate, exquisite gentleness

Summary

- Pasteurization
- Whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed?
- Milk in other forms
- Intolerance?
- The magic ceramic
- The future is white
- How to make a perfect cappuccino

Milk is a food that to a superficial look could appear, like it often happens for water, essentially devoid of substantial differentiations. That's banally not true. There are several different types of milk, and not only in terms of the animal specie that gives it, the most common of which is surely the cow. The element that mainly differentiates milk is the way it is processed in order to bring it into our glasses from the udders it belonged. Quality and durability are the most important features of a milk, and the procession method is central in guaranteeing both of them. Let's have a panoramic view on the most common of these methods.



Pasteurization
Pasteurized milk is the most spread. Pasteurization is a process of heating that brings the raw milk up to 72-75°C in 15 seconds. The term includes some subcategories such as: fresh pasteurized milk and high quality fresh milk, which last four days into the fridge before souring; high temperature pasteurized milk, which lasts from 10 to 45 days into the fridge; UHT milk (Ultra High Temperature), goes over a heating at 135-150°C that lasts 3-10 seconds and it is then quickly cooled at ambient temperature. It can be conserved out of the fridge for a period that goes from three months to one year. It is also referred to as "sterilized milk".
Pasteurization, since its adoption in the early 1900s, has been credited with dramatically reducing illness and death caused by contaminated milk. Drinking raw milk or eating raw milk products, which harbour a host of disease-causing organisms, in fact, raises the risk of contracting several infections from various pathogens.
In addition to killing disease-causing bacteria, pasteurization destroys bacteria that cause spoilage, extending the shelf life of milk.

Whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed?
The hunt for low-fat, fat-free and generally dietetic products involves milk as well. Besides the conservation processes listed above, milk can also be divided into three basic types in terms of skimming. Skimmed and semi-skimmed milk are not an invention of today, but they're appealing to many consumers attracted by the written "low fat" on every product on the shelf. But, is it useful to drink fat-reduced milk?
Whole milk contains 65 kcal/100gr, while semi-skimmed 45, and totally skimmed 35.
A first glance at these numbers can give a clear response: drinking skimmed milk is almost useless in a healthy perspective. Even if you drank a pint of milk a day - something that is already unlikely - the caloric saving, compared to the semi-skimmed, should be of 50 kcal. Considered that skimmed milk is little more than spotted water, to say absolutely tasteless, this choice is not worthless: you mortify the taste to save almost nothing.
A different matter is the choice between whole and semi-skimmed: it depends on the daily consumption, even if the saving with semi-skimmed milk continues to be negligible. If you drink 300ml or more of semi-skimmed milk a day, you could save at least 60 kcal, a quantity that in long terms is valuable. But if the consumption is less (i.e., a cappuccino in the morning), the game is not worth the candle: better choosing the tasty way…


Milk in other forms
Powdered milk
Liquid milk can be reduced into a powdered form after a treatment: it goes through a nozzle with many tiny holes and then sprayed in a hot chamber made of stainless steel; into this chamber the water evaporates and the particles fall off as powdered milk. The obtained substance, when mixed with water, turns again into liquid milk. The advantage of this process is that milk can be more easily stored and it can last much longer than in its liquid form. Powdering is almost always operated on pasteurized and condensed milk.

Condensed
Condensed milk is a sweet mixture created when milk has half of its water removed and then has sugar added to it. You can use condensed milk in desserts, but not in sauces and savoury dishes. In addition to its traditional use in desserts, it also has a certain usability in beverages.

Evaporated
Evaporated milk is simply unsweetened condensed milk, with no added sugar. The percentage of water removed by evaporation is about 60 (consider that normal cow's milk consists in 88% of water). It is mostly used as a low-fat substitute for half-and-half, light cream or coffee cream.

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