Fancy That Friday – Great Food Mysteries

I enjoy sharing recipes. Particularly with my mom. I don’t know if she enjoys it, but I’m constantly experimenting with recipes and love having a sounding board. Plus, she’s just great at giving compliments on my inventiveness.

One recipe that I share a lot (probably because I love it. A lot.) is a chili cream sauce. My love for it is twofold. One, it tastes great. Two, it’s not a diet buster. It’s made with fat free half and half.

And now we come to the point of my post. Every time I mention fat free half and half as an ingredient I get the same reaction: “Can there really be such a thing?” Technically I wasn’t sure. So for you edification and mine I did a little research…

First, since I’m not a coffee drinker and wasn’t quite sure, I looked up what exactly real half and half is. Turns out it’s defined as a dairy product with a fat content of about 12%, so named because it is a mix of 1/2 whole milk and 1/2 cream.

Straightforward enough. But how do they make it fat free? Here’s the list of ingredients off the pint I have in the fridge:

Nonfat milk
Corn syrup
Cream ¹
Artificial color ²
Sodium citrate
Dipotassium phosphate
Mono and diglycerides ¹
Carrageenan
Vitamin A palmitate

¹ adds a trivial amount of fat
² an ingredient not normally found in half and half

Only 20 calories and no fat per 2 Tb serving.

So I guess it still is technically half and half, although I’m not sure how the cream part adds only a trivial amount of fat. Oh well. It makes my cream soups creamier and taste super yummy without adding fat. What do I care how they do it? Chalk it up to one of the many food mysteries that exist. What’s your favorite?