@queerlaurabarton, I’d send this to you in an ask, but I ran out of character room rapidly lol.
Regarding your tags about making your own replacement buttermilk w/ milk & vinegar or lemon juice:
I'd suggest replacing a portion of the milk w/ yoghurt or sour cream, as that helps to thicken it, adds a bit of the buttermilk “tang”, and creates a moister end product. (The amount of yoghurt/sour cream you use will depend on the quantity of buttermilk you're creating of course, but I'd generally say somewhere btwn 1 tbsp-1/4 cup for every cup of “buttermilk” in total. A lot comes down to personal preference and to the liquid-to-dry ingredient ratio of the recipe.)
Alternately (or additionally!), you can melt a bit of butter & add it to the still-cold “soured” milk. When you stir the melted butter in, it should create little chunky globules of butter--which, once again, thickens the liquid and, in conjunction w/ the “soured” milk, acts as an additional tenderizing agent in your recipe.
Also: Some recipes take to replacement buttermilk better than others. You generally can’t tell tell difference in the end product when you’re baking, for instance, but you might notice a more significant difference when making buttermilk fried chicken.
Anyway. Yeah. Hope this totally unsolicited advice is helpful and doesn’t come across as condescending or pushy. ;-)
