Our Top 5: Dairy Department

June is National Dairy Month, so we’re celebrating our top 5 best dairy department bestsellers. See something you love on the list? Stop by today or add it to your order for curbside pickup. Don’t do dairy? The St. Peter Food Co-op carries a wide variety of plant-based alternatives. Let us know if there’s something specific you’re looking for!

Hope Butter

Based in Hope, MN, Hope Creamery is one of the last small batch creameries in Minnesota. Their butter is created using an age-old process—vat pasteurization and small batch weekly churnings using local, growth-hormone-free cream. Hope Creamery never stores inventory, ensuring that you get the freshest, smoothest, richest-tasting butter available. Their business model is simple; they make butter, they sell butter, and then they make more butter. Simple & delicious.

Crystal Ball Farms Milk

Crystal Ball Farms does things things the old fashioned way—by slowing down and focusing on what’s best for their customers. They are a single herd producer who has bred exclusively for A2 proteins for over 14 years—one of the first to do so in the state of Wisconsin. Everything happens in one place ensuring that customers get the freshest milk possible. After their cows are milked, the milk is sent directly to the creamery.  The milk is then vat pasteurized, which keeps the integrity of the enzymes and good bacteria naturally occurring in the milk. All natural & non-GMO.

Brown Cow Yogurt

Rich, creamy, and delicious—Brown Cow has been perfecting cream top yogurt since 1975. Made gently in small batches in New Hampshire, this yogurt has no artificial ingredients or sweeteners and is made with whole milk from cows who have not been treated with artificial growth hormones. Wondering what “cream top” means? When the milk used to make yogurt has not been homogenized, a layer of cream rises to the top, forming a rich yogurt cream.

Kalona Chocolate Milk

Kalona SuperNatural™ is based in the small farming community of Kalona, Iowa, where they work with sustainable family farms to provide delicious, certified organic whole chocolate milk from pasture-grazed cows. The bottled milk products offered by Kalona contain fresh, locally-sourced milk from Iowa Amish and Mennonite farms. Six days a week, milk from these local farms arrives at the creamery and is gently processed so Kalona can deliver milk in the most natural state possible. They use a lower-temp pasteurization process and do not homogenize their milk–leaving a delicious cream top for you to enjoy (shake to mix).

Kalona Cottage Cheese

Not one but two products in our top five list! As the name suggests, cottage cheese was first made in the kitchens of country cottages using only the simplest ingredients. Kalona follows this timeless tradition, making cottage cheese that has a distinctively pure texture and flavor. Starting with organic milk from grass-fed cows that is HTST pasteurized, enzymes are added to start the curd-making process. Over four to five hours, the curds continue to form inside the cheese vat. The whey is removed, and the curds are cut, cooled, and moved to a new vat where the cottage cheese dressing is added. Kalona’s whole milk cottage cheese is a blend of nonfat milk, cream, and Celtic Sea Salt®, an unprocessed whole salt that is hand-harvested on the Brittany coast of France.

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