How To Make Butter

November 6, 2013 - 63 Comments

Okay, seriously. Not to brag or anything, but I just have to say it: I have the best danged dairy cow in the history of the world.

She's so good to me! Not only does she provide me with fresh, raw milk to drink twice daily, but she gives me so much that I'm able to utilize the milk for a variety of dairy goods, such as cheese, yogurt, sour cream, kefir, butter, and fresh cream. She taught me how to make butter.

Sally girl. I love ya.

And because I'm such a stubborn, jump-in-the-deep-end type of person, I've decided to quite buying all of our dairy products and make them instead. Because, seriously, who has a need for store bought butter when their cow is giving 30% cream? Add in a bit of elbow grease, a few minutes of time, and the possibilities are endless.

So, here we are. Just me. A bunch of cream. And dreams.

Dreams of luxurious, velvety, smooth butter.

That's what I think of when I'm hunched up next to Sal's flank at five ‘o clock in the morning. *Squirt, squirt, squirt.* Butter. Lots and lots of butter. *Squirt, squirt, squirt*. Visions of butter dance through my head while Sal and I finish our morning routine of listening to Christmas music on my phone and having a morning chat with God. I must admit, I've grown quite fond of our morning time together. The earth is still quiet. And dark. And cold. It's kind of a beautiful thing.

But that is not the point of this post.

This post is all about the butter. Cultured or uncultured. Salted or unsalted. Just as you'd like it.

How To Make Butter

You will need:
– Fresh cream (raw is best), preferably from your dairy cow named Sal
*If using store-bought cream try and find organic, grass-fed cream (NEVER ultra pasteurized)
– 1 tablespoon buttermilk (reserved from previous batches of butter OR organic, cultured buttermilk from the store)

1. If you're using farm fresh cream from your cow, you've got to separate the cream from the milk – this is easy enough to do as the milk naturally settles and the cream floats after just a few hours of refrigeration. I use a turkey-baster and simply suck up the cream off the top, usually leaving about 1″ of cream on each gallon of milk for flavor (ain't no need to be greedy, man).

(Georgia's drinking the cream… stinker…)

2. Combine the cream and buttermilk together in a bowl. Let sit at room temperature for eight hours. This is the “culturing” part of cultured butter and is a process of fermentation. During the culturing, bacteria converts the milk sugars into lactic acid. The result is a much more flavored butter. It makes it… well… more “buttery”.

3. Pour in your stand mixer, food processor, or blender. Turn it on medium and allow the cream to whip. It'll start to look just like whipped cream – that's just what we're looking for! But then just keep it going!

Here's a breakdown:

Cream.

Whipped cream.

Thick whipped cream.

Lumpy whipped cream that will start to flick drops all over your counter.

Weird, funky, chunky looking whipped cream.

Liquid with bigger chunks that no longer resembles whipped cream.

Large chunks of butter floating in milky liquid.

Shazzam. Fat from heaven has been created.

4. Remove the butter chunks from the bowl and knead together to combine. Run under cold water and massage and knead the butter for three minutes, or until buttermilk is no longer running out of the butter. You'll notice that the buttermilk has a milk-like-color and it's important to get as much buttermilk out of the butter as possible, as this will cause it to spoil quickly. Often times, I'll stick my entire slab of butter in a bowl of cold water and just massage it gently. Then, I'll dump the water out, refill the bowl back up with fresh water, and continue to massage until the water stays clear.

5. At this point, the butter can be eaten, salted, or frozen. I simply wrap my butter ball up in a small piece of parchment and tuck it into a bag in the freezer for preservation. I'm stocking up! Girlfriend can't ever have enough butter stored up. Especially with the holidays approaching!

In all fairness, the first time that I made my butter, I thought I'd done something wrong. It took longer than I originally anticipated and I totally thought I'd messed it up somehow. But fear not, my friend. If you're starting with cream, you really can't mess this up. Just be patient! It'll get there.

And please note (seriously. go grab a pen. write this down.) I've found that the cultured cream turns in to butter much faster than if I'm starting with uncultured cream. It still takes me about fifteen minutes to mix up but thankfully I've got my handy mixer to do all the work for me! So active participation on my part only involves pouring the cream into the mixer, turning it on, covering it with a towel (to avoid it splashing all over my counters), and peeking in on it every couple of minutes to see if it's ready.

Normally, I'll just mix it up while I'm washing up lunch dishes or something. I'm already in the kitchen anyway. Always. In. The. Kitchen.

But if butter is what comes out of my time spent in there, than I certainly don't mind it.

It's butter, baby! Cultured. Flavorful. The fat of heaven.

Here's my video on how to make butter, for those visual-learners out there:

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