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It's tangy as in potato salad; it tenderizes biscuits and chocolate cake; it's thick like cream for a great herbed marinade in chicken and fish; it is a famous salad dressing ingredient, and no, it does not contain butter.

Way back when, buttermilk was the liquid left over after the butter was churned. This liquid combined naturally with airborne bacteria to become thickened and “soured.” Today's buttermilk starts from lowfat or skim milk and is cultured with lactic acid. At 2 grams of fat per cup versus the 78 in a cup of cream.

HOMEMADE BUTTERMILK RECIPE

1 CUP WHOLE MILK
EITHER 1 AND 3/4 TBSPOON CREAM OF TARTAR OR 1 TBSPOON WHITE VINEGAR OR 1 TBSPOON LEMON JUICE

ADD ACIDIC INGRED (TARTAR, VINIGAR OR LEMON JUICE) TO THE MILK AND STIR. LET IT STAND FOR 15 MINS AT ROOM TEMP. FOR 15 MINS. THE MILK SHOULD START TO CURDLE. STIR WELL BEFORE USING.

A COMBINATION OF PA\LAIN YOGHURT (3/4 CUP) AND WHOLE MILK (1/4 CUP) CAN ALSO BE USED TO REPLACE A CUP OF B/MILK IN MOST RECIPES.

You can't make buttermilk yourself unless you make butter yourself because buttermilk is by-product of butter making. (cloudy liquid after you extracted fat in milk) You can buy it in many major supermarket these days because of increased demand (I buy mine from Waitrose. They have it on the same chilled shelf as yogurt, cream, etc.), but if you can't find one plain yogurt can be a good substitute in most of recipes.

I would do a Google search to find out exactly what buttermilk is.
For the substitute use half semi-skimmed milk and half natural yogurt. I've used this for years and its extremely successful because it almost has the consistency of buttermilk. You can then use this in cakes, muffins etc.