By linking my account to the check-in system, I became a leisurely traveler.

Chapter 196 The Real Uses of Goat Milk! [Second Update!]

Li Younan never intended to drink goat milk from the beginning... even if she did drink it later, it was just incidental.

Rewind about six months and he went to western Sichuan several times, including Kangding, Jiuzhaigou, and Shijiu Line. The local people in these places are mostly Tibetans. Among the foods of these Tibetans, there is a dairy product that Li Younan can find everywhere: ghee.

Ghee is almost the most common food in snowy areas.

A traditional Tibetan's bowl of butter tea inevitably includes butter, tsampa, and cheese curds. With the development of the times, some people also add peanuts, walnuts, and other condiments.

In the wilderness, ghee is considered an absolute delicacy.

Good quality ghee is 99% fat, can be stored for a long time, and is rich in almost all essential vitamins. It also has an extremely high smoke point, reaching over 250 degrees Celsius.

The refining process not only solves the problem of fresh milk being difficult to preserve, but also increases the nutritional density through high-temperature boiling, thus meeting the needs of nomadic life.

Ghee can be eaten directly, but for Li Younan, eating it directly is the most basic function.

Ghee has a wide range of uses and can be considered the most perfect survival resource in the wilderness.

First, this product perfectly solves the problem of fresh milk not being able to be preserved for a long time. Second, it can reduce the unpleasant smell of goat milk.

This is extremely important to Li Younan. He has been eating fish for the past few days and it has been quite painful. Although the ingredients are top-notch, he is suffering from a lack of cooking seasonings. Even with his top-notch culinary skills, he can only pan-fry, boil, or grill the fish. In fact, fish is not suitable for such cooking methods.

He's someone who values ​​quality of life.

With ghee, the situation changed dramatically. Any food rich in carbohydrates and fats would taste pretty good.

With carbohydrates and fats, Li Younan can unleash his culinary skills to the fullest, cooking all sorts of dishes even in the wilderness... which naturally adds to the enjoyment.

Thinking back to that time, if other contestants were lucky enough to hunt a large animal, they might get some food, while most contestants were lucky to even have anything to eat, let alone delicious food. Meanwhile, I could be enjoying hot pot and singing... cough cough.

Ghee has more uses than just cooking. It is rich in various vitamins and oils and can be applied to the face to keep it from getting frostbite in winter.

The high-altitude environment in the snowy areas is even harsher than here, and herders used to rely on yak butter for skincare.

Even if it is not handled properly and accidentally spoils, it can still be used as a butter lamp to make the most of its remaining heat.

However, making ghee is not an easy task. First, you need the tools to churn ghee, but this is not difficult for Li Younan.

He sighed softly. His shelter was not yet complete, but there were still many things to make, such as various kinds of furniture, like dining tables and chairs.

The bed has been provided, but it's very basic—just a wooden frame covered with a layer of soft plant fiber.

Li Younan found some high-fiber grass in the forest, dried it, spread it on top, and then slept in it with his sleeping bag.

However, if possible, it would be best to find a complete animal pelt to cover it up later.

Right now, the priority is to make a tool for churning ghee.

The tools for churning butter are mainly divided into two parts. The first part is the container, the shape of which is not important, but it must match the churning device.

The device can be simply understood as a piston with gaps. The goat milk is poured into the container, and through continuous pressing, the fat in the goat milk can be gradually separated. The principle is very simple.

The difficulty in making ghee lies in the relatively long churning process, which requires thousands of churnings to extract the ghee.

Compared to yaks in snowy areas, the milk of these Shishan goats has a lower fat content, and the proportion of ghee produced is also significantly lower.

Li Younan estimated that the fat content of this goat milk is about 6%, which means that about 1 kilogram of goat milk can only make about 50 grams of ghee after accounting for losses.

For dinner, we had beggar's chicken. Compared to domestic chickens, this pheasant has significantly less fat, and the taste is a bit dry.

Although this is already considered a top-notch delicacy for wilderness survival, Li Younan couldn't help but think that if ghee had been used before making beggar's chicken, the taste could have been more than doubled.

Thinking about this, he became even more determined to make ghee.

The beggar's chicken wasn't finished; about half of it was left. Li Younan hung it in his new home.

Although the new house wasn't completely topped out yet, it already had a roof, so it was quite nice to live in.

The fireplace fire wasn't very big. Li Younan had already chopped a stack of firewood beside it, and he would add a piece when the fire went out, just enough to keep it burning.

To be fair, this black pine wood is really quite durable. You only need to add firewood once a night to ensure that there is a fire burning all night long. The next day, after skimming off the grayish-white ash, the charcoal underneath is often still burning quite brightly.

After all, this is his first night officially staying here, and the walls are still a bit damp.

Li Younan laid two layers of birch bark at the point where the bed met the wall to effectively reduce the impact of moisture.

Before officially taking a break, Li Younan went out and took some photos of his cozy little home in the wilderness from a distance.

In the footage, a small house stands in the dark wilderness, with a faint firelight scattering from the unsealed walls, flickering slightly. Flames occasionally dance from the fireplace's smoke-filled area, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere.

The biggest advantage of having a large space is that you don't have to worry about accidentally setting your shelter on fire when using fire.

With the use of fire, the night gained light. For Li Younan, this not only solved his boredom but also allowed him to make better use of his time. Time was quite tight in the early stages, but things would become more relaxed once he had all the necessary resources and tools. His current busyness was to lay a solid foundation for the later stages.

In fact, many of the tools used these past few days were made at night.

Making the tools for churning ghee was quite simple for Li Younan.

He still used spruce wood to assemble a rectangular container using mortise and tenon joints, and then made a piston-making tool. It didn't have to be perfectly fitted; it just needed to be able to effectively make goat milk.

It's important to know that goats produce far less milk than cows. Tonight's goat milk is only a little over one liter. Even if the goats recover, they can only produce a maximum of two to three liters of goat milk per day.

It's summer right now, and during the day the temperature will exceed 20 degrees Celsius, while at night the temperature will drop to single digits.

If the goat milk is milked at night, it can be kept overnight, but it will spoil quickly the next day when the temperature rises.

Therefore, the ideal way to handle it is to milk the cows at night and then spend an hour or two pounding them into ghee.

Another advantage of milking goats at night is that goat milk in the morning is relatively clear and has a lower fat content, while milk at night has a relatively higher fat content.

After making the churning tools, Li Younan couldn't wait to try churning ghee.

The method of making it is also very simple: just use a piston to squeeze the goat milk in a container.

Considering that the daily production of goat milk would not exceed three liters, Li Younan's container was not large, and the tools used to make it were relatively lightweight.

What follows is a rather tedious process of forging.

Fortunately, after several system enhancements to his body, Li Younan didn't feel particularly tired even after punching the body thousands of times.

By the light of the fire, Li Younan gradually saw a layer of pale yellow, crumbly solid material floating on the surface of the goat milk in the container.

Effort pays off; Li Younan is certain that this stuff is ghee.

Li Younan shook his slightly sore wrists, then used a wooden container he had prepared to filter out the ghee.

The goat milk at the bottom has now become very pure, completely skimmed milk, but most of the nutrients, mainly various vitamins, have been extracted by the ghee.

Li Younan thought for a moment, then poured it out and boiled it in an iron pot.

He suddenly remembered that skim milk that had been churned into ghee could be processed into another dairy product, namely milk curd.

The main components of cheese curds are protein and carbohydrates from goat milk, and their nutritional value is just as high as that of ghee.

More importantly, the curdled milk can also be preserved for a long time.

He thought herbivores were really awesome, because they ate grass and produced milk.

However, he doesn't plan to make cheese curds today because there's too little goat milk left, and he's too lazy to boil it.

He then continued processing the ghee residue that had been scooped out.

At this point, the ghee needed further processing. He rinsed the ghee residue with the little water remaining to effectively ensure that the ghee would not spoil.

Then, by kneading and squeezing vigorously, a block of ghee was finally obtained, which was not much larger than a contact lens case.

Although the quantity was small, Li Younan was very excited to have succeeded on his first attempt.

He carefully cut off a tiny bit with his hunting knife and put it in his mouth, savoring it slowly. Ghee itself didn't have much flavor, but it had a rich, fatty taste that was much lighter than cooking oil, with a strong milky aroma and virtually no gamey smell.

With this, goat milk becomes a resource that can be stored and used for a long time.

Today, because there is not much goat milk, we can only make this much. Later, when the ewe's milk comes in, we can make about 150 grams of ghee per day. If all goes well, even taking into account losses, he will have several kilograms of ghee to use before winter arrives.

Unfortunately, there was no way to catch a cow that met the requirements for milk production; otherwise, he could have made that much ghee from one cow in a week.

Thinking of this, Li Younan couldn't help but chuckle. He was really... taking an inch and wanting a mile. Having even one ewe was already a great stroke of luck.

After all that, Li Younan felt a little tired.

However, glancing at the time displayed on the satellite phone, it was only 9 o'clock. For a young person in modern society, it was still early before bedtime, but for someone in the wilderness, it seemed to be very, very late.

Before going to bed, Li Younan drank the heated skim goat milk, then boiled the last bit of water and washed his feet.

It's been over a week now, and I haven't even had a hot shower yet.

For Li Younan, not being able to take a bath was really uncomfortable.

He said to the camera, "Guys, it's been more than a week since I've had a shower. Once my shelter is almost finished and things are a bit easier, we need to figure out how to keep ourselves clean. Hot showers are a must."

(End of this chapter)