Whey Not? Des Harris’ talks about…

It seems like every week there’s a new fashionable health food filling up our feeds, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. But there’s one that consistently appears – whey. You may have first heard about it when Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, but its benefits have been recognised for over 2000 years. It was originally used as an immunity-boosting serum in Ancient Greece, and from the Middle Ages right through to the Victorian era it was a popular medicinal tonic in the spa towns of Europe.

Through advances in science, we now know that the Greeks were onto something. Whey is a great source of high-quality protein, it may help to lower blood pressure and inflammation, and bakers are starting to use it in place of gluten and eggs.

Whey is often discarded when making yoghurt or cheese, but it is becoming increasingly common to save it for use in other dishes. This helps to reduce waste in the kitchen – an easy way to live more sustainably in today’s world.

Chef Des Harris has been using whey for years to add a nice lactic quality to his dishes. As an example, he has shared his recipe for lightly steamed salmon with whey Beurre Blanc. Des has used yoghurt whey in his Beurre Blanc to cut some of the richness of the butter and give it a bit of tartness.

Leeks; The Unsung Hero of Winter Food By Sophie Gilmour

Vegetables that taste great in their own right but also contribute greatly to the flavour of a dish when they play a less obvious role, deserve more praise. Garlic is a great example; the earlier you add it to a dish, the less ‘garlicky’ the end result, but it still plays an essential role in balancing flavour. The most obvious of these vegetables are the ones used as the base for soups, stews and casseroles around the world; ‘mirepoix’ in French…