Welcome to Another Hard Times: Exploring Recipes from Times of Hardship

Greetings my beautiful lovelies, it's Emmy welcome back to another hard times episode where I explore recipes and food from times of hardship. Today, I'm going to be making a recipe that I received from Ashley via email. Ashley thank you so much for sending me this recipe; she found this recipe in her grandma's collection of recipes so this recipe dates from World War II when food was rationed. Meaning you were only allowed to get a certain amount of things like cream and butter because much of it was supplied to soldiers. During this time, everyone is expected to do their part pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do whatever they could to supply the soldiers with the food they needed and also to feed their families.

The recipe that I'm going to be making today is called Knox spread; it's not a very descriptive title, but essentially what it is is a way to stretch butter. The key ingredient to making this butter spread is unflavored gelatin. That's why this is called nox spread because it uses gelatin to extend the butter. I've got some water coming up to the boil and back, and what I'm going to do next will involve dissolving that gelatin in hot water.

I'll start by boiling 1 cup of water in a saucepan, then add 2 tablespoons of unflavored gelatin to it. Once the gelatin is fully dissolved, I'll let it cool down for about 10-15 minutes. While the gelatin mixture is cooling, I can prepare my butter. Since we're using a bit of a different ratio with this recipe, I'll need to use only half of what's normally required, so that means 1/4 cup less butter than usual.

Now that both my gelatin mixture and butter are ready, it's time for the final step in making this spreadable condiment. In a separate saucepan, melt the remaining 1/2 cup of butter over low heat on the stovetop or on the microwave, just to make sure it melts completely. Once melted, remove from heat.

Now that my gelatin is at room temperature and the butter has been completely melted, it's time for the next step in making this recipe work. Add 1/4 cup of milk to one portion of the melted butter while keeping another portion of it separate.

Here's where the magic happens; by slowly pouring hot water (cooled down from boiling) over the unflavored gelatin and mixing well, we can get rid of all those lumps that come with using powdered ingredients in cooking. Once you've removed any excess lumpiness from your mixture, pour 2 tablespoons of cold milk into one portion of butter while making sure not to mix too much until everything has come together smoothly.

Now it's time for mixing the final two portions together, and then adding a half teaspoon of salt. The end result is that you have an edible condiment made using only these three basic ingredients: unflavored gelatin, salted butter and evaporated milk - something quite remarkable considering how simple this recipe turns out to be.

I'm about ready to try it now; all I need to do is spread the butter mixture onto a piece of toast. The moment you put this in your mouth, it's like tasting regular butter with a slightly more pronounced richness, yet one that tastes even better because there are no lumps or aftertastes from gelatin. The best part about this recipe, however, is how versatile it can be depending on what kind of situation you find yourself in.

Let's cut the toast in half; shall we I love toast okay here is the butter spread looks like butter, doesn't smell like anything other than just plain old toast, all right let's do I feel a lot like margarine when you get like a tub of margarine that's what it feels like very spreadable.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: engreetings my beautiful lovelies it's emmy welcome back to another hard times episode where i explore recipes and food from times of hardship today i'm going to be making a recipe that i received from ashley via email ashley thank you so much for sending me this recipe she found this recipe in her grandma's collection of recipes so this recipe dates from world war ii when food was rationed meaning you were only allowed to get a certain amount of things like cream and butter because much of it was supplied to soldiers so during this time everyone is expected to do their part pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do whatever they could to supply the soldiers with the food they needed and also to feed their families so the recipe that i'm going to be making today is called knox spread it is not a very descriptive title but essentially what it is is a way to stretch butter so the key ingredient to making this butter spread is this and this is nox unflavored gelatin and that's why this is called nox spread because it uses gelatin to extend the butter so i've got some water coming up to the boil and back and what i'm going to do first is prepare my gelatin so in a small bowl we're going to take two tablespoons of water and we're going to take our plain unflavored gelatin and we're gonna take two teaspoons of that and sprinkle it right on top the magical gelatin so a package is just a little bit more than two teaspoons maybe like two and a quarter teaspoons look at that look it's really shriveling like elephant skin amazing that smell of gelatin oh my gosh totally takes me back to like preschool when you ate orange jello all the time or at least i did okay so it's starting to do this kind of blooming thing now we're going to completely dissolve the gelatin into the water by heating this up we certainly could do it via microwave but this recipe is from the 1930s and 40s so it says to place this into a hot water bath i'm gonna place it in there place this in here and dissolve the gel look how stiff this has gotten it's pretty amazing okay next we're going to take our butter and this is a half pound of butter with one stick and i've let this sit at room temperature so it's relatively soft and it says to cut it up into small pieces replenish the hot water in this bowl here place my cut up butter right on top and now we're supposed to beat this up until it's nice and smooth and creamy we do not want to melt this so make sure your water is not too hot here we go okay my butter is very spreadable now one cup of evaporated milk to our cup of milk we're going to add the melted gelatin and a half teaspoon of salt now we're going to make an emulsion just like we're making mayonnaise so we use our beater beat this up and slowly add our milk mixture the recipe says we can also add a little food coloring if we like so i'm going to add one drop of yellow do you love how yellow food coloring looks like orange in the beginning i remember thinking that was just not right when i was a kid but it's all good all right so mix that in and just slowly add the milk mixture don't go too crazy with this whole beater thing because i'm just getting this stuff everywhere so bring it in this looks kind of loose we're putting an entire cup of milk into this butter it's kind of nuts oh my gosh this is why people wear aprons i'm sorry mr rogers initially when i was adding the milk this was incorporating pretty well but as i added more and more milk it looked like this was starting to separate or break out of the emulsion which was a bit worrisome because i want this to look like spreadable butter not like a lumpy kind of loose curdled way but as i was going along i place this back over the bowl of just warm water not even hot to kind of coax the gelatin to soften and mix back into the butter and i used a bit of a higher speed on my mixer and sure enough it works so now i've got this very spreadable kind of fluffy butter mix put this into a container it's really fluffy and the recipe says this is best used as a spread say on toast or on muffins and not really great for baking now i'm gonna cook this up and place this in the fridge until it's nice and firm and then we'll go ahead and taste it okay see in a bit alrighty my lovelies i'm back here is my butter spread i've also got a piece of toast i'm gonna give this a taste and then i'm also gonna compare it with regular old plain butter and do a little taste comparison okay so let's cut the toast in half shall we i love toast okay here is the butter spread looks like butter it doesn't smell like anything all i can smell is toast all right let's do i feel a lot like margarine when you get like a tub of margarine that's what it feels like it's very very spreadable all righty ready for this itadakimasu tastes like butter a little saltier but it tastes like butter it tastes like toast with butter i don't taste the gelatin at all all right let me try this straight up all i taste just toasty bread yumminess okay i'm gonna try this by itself and see if i can taste it all right there you go i'm trying to see if i can taste the gelatin i can't i'm amazed because i feel like i can taste gelatin pretty easily but i don't i just taste the butter and kind of a rich dairiedness there's a little bit difference in texture this is much more whipped and light and yeah it's more like margarine i would say in terms of consistency but in terms of flavor it tastes just like butter a little saltier which is no surprise because we added a half teaspoon of salt but i am totally shocked by that oh my goodness wow that's really impressive okay now let's compare that with regular butter so the butter spread that i made i added two drops of food coloring while this is just regular butter with toast crumbs in it just pretend you don't see those okay no toast crumbs in my my butter so it's almost the same color i would say the real butter is a little bit more golden pretty close spread that onto my toast the consistency when you spread it is a little different this is a little bit more waxy and the thicker wow this felt more fluffy and a little kind of looser a little bit more spreadable all right here we go when you do a side-by-side comparison you do notice a difference in flavor and texture the spread is a little bit oilier while the regular butter is a little bit richer in your mouth and has a different kind of mouth feel it's not as salty and in some respects because it's not as salty i kind of like the spread version for that reason it's nice and punchy and salty on your toast and the real butter also just tastes richer has more kind of fullness to it but that spread is remarkable and if i didn't have just plain butter next to it i don't think i would have noticed at all any difference in terms of flavor amazing amazing nox spread there you have it gelatin evaporated milk salt plus butter gives you an extender that doubles your butter amazing alrighty so there you have it yet another hard times recipe big thanks to ashley for sending me this recipe let me know down in the comments if there are any recipes that you'd like me to test out or try or get in touch with me via social media or email and share them with me because these recipes are absolutely fascinating to me i love the resilience of people and their ingenuity that comes with a time of hardship thank you guys so much for watching i hope you guys enjoy that one i hope you guys learned something please check out the hard times playlist for more of these inventive recipes and yeah share this video with your friends follow me on social media like this video subscribe and i shall see you in the next one toodaloo take care bye now i need honey and i need another jar of honey apparently because this is running very low oh yeah here we go so good you\n"