Using That Evaporated Milk

An item that disappears from our food supply at a surprising rate is evaporated milk. While we use nonfat dry milk in some cooking, we find that supplementing it with evaporated milk gives us more variety in our menus, makes our food taste better, and helps us use our dry milk more quickly.

We use evaporated milk in several ways. For cooking, we reconstitute it by adding one-half cup (4 fluid ounces) of water to an equal quantity of evaporated milk to replace one cup (8 fluid ounces) of whole milk. For pouring cream, we combine equal portions of reconstituted nonfat dry milk and evaporated milk. And we have found that adding a little evaporated milk to our reconstituted nonfat dry milk makes it taste better for drinking.

Reconstituted evaporated milk has a little more butterfat than regular whole milk. It has a rich, slightly carmelized flavor that enhances the taste of foods such as puddings and pie fillings (especially the cooked variety), cream soups, frozen desserts, casseroles, and beverages like eggnog and hot chocolate. However, if we want to minimize the milk’s characteristic flavor, we simply scald it.

We make a tasty dessert topping (with less than a quarter of the butterfat of whipping cream) by whipping evaporated milk. We thoroughly chill the evaporated milk, then add two tablespoons of lemon juice for each cup (8 fluid ounces) of evaporated milk. We whip it until stiff, then sweeten and flavor it. One cup of evaporated milk makes three cups (24 fluid ounces) of whipped topping.

To make sour cream, we add one tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice to one cup (8 fluid ounces) of undiluted evaporated milk and allow it to stand for five minutes.

Now that we know how to use our evaporated milk, we find that we need to replenish our supply about every six months. But if you don’t use your evaporated milk as quickly as we do, manufacturers recommend that you invert the cans every few weeks to keep the solids from settling.—Winnifred Jardine, Salt Lake City, Utah