Make it Yourself: Butter
by Rachel Tayse • April 8, 2009 • Local Food, Make it Yourself • 15 Comments
We receive 1 1/2 gallons of un-homogenized whole milk every week from a local farmer. Every week we skim the cream. A few nips are used in coffee, but the rest is dedicated to butter.
While at first I thought making butter might be a chore, I remain amazed every week at the transformation of liquid to solid. I feel like the 15 minutes of shaking is a bit of exercise that burns some of the calories of the delicious butter. It’s actually kinda fun!
First, start with fresh skimmed cream. We fill jars 1/3 of the way and allow to warm to room temperature. Cold cream takes much more time to separate and makes less creamy butter in our experience. For a different (yummier, in my opinion) flavor, make cultured cream by adding a Tbsp of yogurt and allow to culture in a warm place for 24 hours.
cream warming
Next, start shaking. After about 5 minutes the cream will fill most of the jar.
agitated cream
Now keep shaking until your arms feel like they might fall off. They won’t.
Alex the butter man
Soon magical yellow lumps form from the mass of white and you have butter!
butter floating in buttermilk
Pour off the buttermilk and reserve for use in baking. (Note: this is not the tangy buttermilk you might buy in the store for making biscuits. The tangy kind is cultured. You can make cultured buttermilk by adding starter.) This buttermilk is high in protein and low in fat, making it a great addition to pancakes, waffles, or muffins.
butter and buttermilk
Now shake a minute or two more. This helps get the last bit of buttermilk out of the butter and forms your butter into a neat pyramidal log.
butter pyramid
Take the butter pyramid out of the jar and rinse under cold water until the water runs clear. You may want to press the butter a few times and make sure all the buttermilk is out. Butterfat will last for weeks unspoiled, but if buttermilk remains spoilage will occur much sooner.
The butter is warm now, so if you are interested in compound butter, now is the time to add herbs and spices. Add a pinch of salt or leave plain unsalted for baking. Spread into a bowl, butter dish or butter bell and there you have it! Delicious butter!
Butter is not necessarily a healthy fat, but it is remarkably delicious. Butter made at home from a healthy grass fed free range cow is arguably healthier than butter from the store because it has no hormones, no chemical residues, no colorants, and only the salt we add. It still has plenty of saturated fat and calories which is why we use it sparingly.
Other than a slight health advantage, our favorite reason to make butter at home is to play with the flavors of cultured cream and salt. When you start from cream, you can control the degree of cultured flavor and adjust seasonings as you need.
While not everyone faces our situation of receiving whole unhomogenized milk weekly, I encourage you to try making butter at least once. You may find yourself adding homemade butter into your regular routine.
that is some wicked coolness. i have got to try that. i find it strange i’d rather shake some butter into creation than make yogurt.
yum, I need to try this soon.
I did it! it didn’t turn into a nice pyramid but more like a rounded square. I don’t know…but it was good!
I want to try this, but not sure if I must use raw cream, or if I can make butter from homogenized cream?
Thanks for the great step by step, I’ll have to try it. Un-homogenized cream from free range, grass fed, Ohio cows is available at the Clintonville Community market in Columbus, OH. Snowville Creamery offers heavy cream for about $8 a half gallon. They also have half-and-half, whole, 2% and skim milk. All un-homogenized and good for making all sorts of cultured milk and cheese.
I am going to try this, Rachel, you ROCK! Thanks for posting this on the WAPF facebook page, that is how I found this.
Kimberly
.-= Kimberly Hartke´s last blog ..Dairy Intolerance Vanishes with Raw Milk =-.
Great how-to! Thanks for sharing!
And I’d like to add, butter is ABSOLUTELY a healthy fat! The saturated-fat/heart-disease link is overly dramatized, distorts the research outcomes, and removes one nutrient out of the context of the whole diet.
As you said, butter from healthy animals is the way to go and deserves a place in our diets!
.-= Anna Macnak´s last blog ..Living a full (fat) life =-.
Every time I make butter, I tell myself I will use the buttermilk for a recipe. It taste so darn good by itself, I end up drinking it every time. Oh well! I think your great for shaking your own cream btw. I’m lazy, I just use the food processor.
.-= Tiffany@ The Coconut Mama´s last blog ..COCONUT BABY’S FAVORITE FOOD: BRAIN FOOD =-.
Can you give some more details on how to skim the cream? I think this should be easy, but I’m wondering what type of bowl or jar you put the milk in to let it separate. Do you use a strainer?
The milk and cream separate naturally in the jar. We pour gently off the top into a fat separator typically used for gravy and then let that separate overnight. We pour off any milk left at the bottom, pour the cream into a fresh jar, and shake away.
You’re much more energetic than I am. I use a food processor. But I also use raw cream already separated by the farmer from raw milk from GRASS-FED (not grain fed) cows. What I don’t use for my coffee, I use for butter. I also don’t think butter is an unhealthy fat — eating lots of butter, I achieved better lab results on such things as cholesterol than I have had in YEARS! Anecdotal, I know, but still …I think good science will back me up.
Grain fed/grass fed was a mistaken typo on my part. Our cows are free ranged and get plenty of grass.
As for unhealthy fats, when this was written I knew much less about unprocessed whole fats. The more I read, the more I am convinced that butter is a far superior fat source than most on the market today.
Oh, and raw cream in the coffee….mmm…can’t be beat!
Love the easy technique for making butter, really dislike the comments on butter being full of saturated fat that is NOT healthy for you. Girl, you need to check out the works of Dr. Weston A Price, Sally Fallon, and Dr. Mary Enig (just for a starter) on http://www.westonaprice.org. You’ll find out just how important all of that, yes, saturated fat is for you and your family. If you’ve taken a walk off the beaten path to make your own butter, continue the walk in an education beyond the mainstream regurgitated pablem! Trust me….you’ll enjoy your butter even more!
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You can make butter from any cream that isn’t homogenized.