How to Make Fresh Butter
ByIf you recall, last week when I showed you how to make mozzarella cheese, I mentioned that if you’re making it from raw milk, you skim off the cream and save it to make butter. HERE is one way to make butter!
Fill your food processor 1/3 full of heavy cream. Be sure not to fill it more than 1/3 full…it will probably not turn into butter if there’s too much in the container.
Turn your food processor on high…and then flee the room. (It’s really loud and annoying!) The food processor will whip and whip and whip the cream until it turns it into butter. It should take somewhere between 8-15 minutes.
Once the fat has been “pulled out” of the cream, it should look something like this…and you can turn off the food processor.
Pull all the solid pieces and squish them together.
Place the solids in to a clean bowl.
Run some clean COLD water into it.
Clean the butter with the cold water by squishing it with a wooden spoon until all the liquid comes out of it. Repace the cold water 2-3 times as you clean it.
Squeeze the excess water out of the butter and shape it with your hands.
Ah, look…a lovely little butter ball.
You can add salt to the cream if you want salted butter…this will also be a preservative, making the butter last longer.
OR…if you don’t have a food processor and want to have a little family fun…put your cream into a jar and shake it like crazy. Pass the jar around, and take turns shaking it. (I’ve tried shaking it all by myself once when no one was around to help…and I thought my head and arms would fall off from shaking the jar so much all by myself. I don’t think I ever got butter out of that jar.)
Have you ever made butter before? Isn’t it COOL to see the butter form out of the cream!?
I LOVE how with just one little gift from a cow (or goat or whatever) you can make SO MANY great yummy things!
P.S. Even if you don’t have fresh cream…go buy some heavy whipping cream at the store and try making butter. It’s just…cool.
Next week…RICOTTA CHEESE! :)
(Join us Saturday for the little Green Project!)
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This post is linked to Frugal Fridays.
we want to make large qty butter from cows milk your advise please
regards
s.krishnamurthy, BANGALOR, INDIA
[Reply]
I have been doing this a couple time now, and wondered what on earth to do with the lovely left over liquid, so I did some research… it is buttermilk! Did you know this?? :)
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Laura Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
I’m a little unsure on this myself. It is buttermilk, but it is much thinner than what I use as regular buttermilk. I use it in baking in place of milk after I have made butter.
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Katelyn, I used the ‘shake in a jar’ method and was taken by the appearance of the leftover liquid when the ball-o-butter had formed. It looked like whole milk, so I tasted it. It had so much more flavor than store-bought Vit D whole milk, I drank the whole thing. I’ve heard the liquid can be used to make pancakes, biscuits and more.
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Katelyn Reply:
January 13th, 2012 at 12:42 am
After I found out what it was, I started saving it in a bottle in the fridge and make biscuits with it when I have enough saved up. I love the “use the whole cow” mentality, or in this case, all the cream :)
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I read the salt preserves it longer but do you know how long the unsalted butter would last? maybe as long as the cream would last?
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Laura Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 7:58 am
I would say unsalted would probably last about two weeks.
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Katelyn Reply:
January 13th, 2012 at 12:44 am
I’ve also noticed when I do remember to add salt to the food processor, it seems to make the butter form up a bit faster, and when I don’t add salt (because I forget) the process takes longer and my food processor actually quits on me! Has this happened to anyone else?
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