I had such a blast making my own butter yesterday! Yes, that is right! I made my own homemade butter. At first I thought it must be so difficult and time consuming to do it, but boy was I vastly mistaken. It was so easy and well worth it for the wonderful taste! It is cheaper and fresher this route!
INGREDIENTS:
4 cups of heavy cream (raw is preferred, but pasteurized is okay, not ultra-pasteurized) – I skimmed the raw cream off the top of my raw milk I get from a local farm (Read more about the benefits of raw milk here). From 1 1/2 gallons of milk I got 2 1/2 cups of raw cream, I could then just make it out of this, but I went ahead and added some pasteurized cream.
1/2 tsp. salt
Makes 1/2-3/4 lb. of butter and 1/2 quart of buttermilk
I used by Bosch Mixer (my favorite appliance!), but I am sure you could use a KitchenAid or other mixer.
1. Fit your mixer with the plastic beater, or whisk. Blend. The cream will go through the following stages: Sloshy, frothy, soft whipped cream, firm whipped cream, coarse whipped cream. Then, suddenly, the cream will seize, its smooth shape will collapse, and the whirring will change to sloshing. The butter is now fine grained bits of butter in buttermilk, and a few seconds later, a glob of yellowish butter will separate from milky buttermilk. It took about 15 minutes in my machine (I let it do it’s thing while I fed Karis). See the pictures below.
2. Drain the buttermilk. Keep for other uses as it is perfectly good raw buttermilk.
3. Add 1/2 cup of ice-cold water, and blend further. Discard wash water and repeat until the wash water is clear (it took me 3-4 times).
4. Add 1/2 tsp of salt, to taste, if desired.
5. Squeeze out excess water. Take the butter out of the mixer and place on paper towels (or put on a clean towel as I did, since I do not have paper towels) and squeeze out any excess water. You can also place it in another bowl and use two forks or a potato masher to work out the excess water, pour out the water. Another option: put in large covered jar, and shake or tumble. Continue working, pouring out the water occasionally, until most of the water is removed.
6. Store. The butter is complete! Wrap up in wax paper, or place in a butter plate, or some other container. I froze mine in small glass jars to preserve it longer.
ENJOY! TASTES FABULOUS!
UPDATE 4/7/08 -After much experimenting, I have discovered that homemade butter doesn’t last long at all before spoiling, due to the difficulty it is to remove all the butter fat. It does work well to freeze in portions.
Hi, I’ve been considering purchasing a Bosch mixer. When you pour in your cream and run the machine at high speed, will the cream leak through the lid or center post or anywhere. If I can figure out if the Bosch Universal is “sealed” it would make my decision a lock. I just don’t want the mess when I try to work with large batches of cream or thin liquids. Have you tried to see how much cream you can place in the bowl without getting leaks or splatters?
Unfortunately it is not sealed and can certainly leak on occasion. You would have to work with smaller quantities of cream to prevent this.
when we make butter I divide the cream into 4 quart jars and my 4 boys love to shake the jars until butter forms! usually takes about 5- 10 minutes. then I dump the butter into a wire strainer and strain off the buttermilk and then hold the butter (in strainer) under running cold water and using a spoon work out buttermilk until water is completely clear. I throw a couple ice cubes into strainer while running water through to keep the butter from getting too soft.
In regards to using raw milk, I wanted to put out a warning. My husband’s family has a dairy farm that has been in the family for generations! My husband grew up on raw milk. When raising our boys, we would let the boys drink the raw milk at grandma and grandpas because we know the benefits of drinking the raw milk. However, when my oldest was 3 and my middle child was 1 they both came down with horrible diarrhea, vomiting, and very high fevers. The diarrhea happened every hour for two days before we took them to the doctor and got a stool sample. It came back as Campylobacter… a bacteria that can be found in raw milk. The boys were put on antibiotics and now they are fine! But when speaking with the public health nurse she told me that some children get hospitalized for this, and in rare cases some children can have paralysis. I am not sharing this story to scare or cast a negative outlook on raw milk, I simply want parents to be aware of the serious affects of it. God bless.
Anyone who purchases and drinks raw milk likely knows the risks. You failed to mention the risks taken by those who drink pasteurized milk, however. The risks of drinking that junk is far more deadly than that of drinking raw milk and it happens much more often, too. People just don’t hear about it because the corporate dairy industry is huge, whereas small farms are, well, small. For me the whole idea of drinking raw milk is because it comes from a small operation where the farmers look after the health of their cattle and have clean conditions.
There is risk in everything these days. To learn more about raw milk check out the link here:
http://www.realmilk.com
I grew up with Mom making her own butter from the earliest time I can remember. We usually had one cow to milk, and being a Jersey or a Guernsey, the butterfat content was quite high. We had two “antique” butter churns—the kind with the large squarish jar and the paddles inside. My job was to turn the crank until it got too thick to turn, and the Mom would take out the lumps, strain them, salt them, and pat them with a large wooden paddle into a large glob. Sometimes she would add a few drops of food coloring to make it prettier. She would then freeze the sweet cream butter in one-pound containers. Though I got tired of the weekly chore, when I moved out and got married, homemade butter was one of the things I missed the most. Thank you for bringing back so many fond memories and inspiring me to once again, make my own butter!
I just made my first batch of butter! It turned out GREAT! I have not found a local source of fresh milk yet, so I had to use store bought cream. I am so inspired by your site. You have been a blessing to my family.
Lindsay,
I am so excited to try this!
Have you ever made butter with goats milk? That is the only raw milk we have at the moment…
Thanks so much for all your wisdom! What a God-send =)
I have never tried making goats milk butter. Does goats milk provide such quantities of cream?
Hi,
Great directions btw.
Re the goat milk, it doesn’t separate as easily as cow’s milk since it is naturally homogenized.
You can let it sit for a week in the fridge and skim cream off the top but it would a LOT of milk to get enough cream to make enough butter to make it worth it.
You can get a cream separator for goat milk though, but I think it’s a little expensive.
Sorry :/
We used to have a goat dairy so I know this first hand.
Try chevre from your goat cheese. It’s so easy and wonderful.
How long can raw butter be left at room temperature before spoiling? Does it get soft? One other thing…mine has a chese smell to it…is that normal?
I am not really sure on that one. I keep it in the fridge because it spoils pretty fast. Yes, it will get soft. I have never experienced a cheese smell…so I don’t think that is normal.
Raw butter doesn’t spoil, but can become like bleu cheese. It’s very good. I avoid room temps over 85 because that hurts the fat. Soft and room temp digests better. Freezing butter damages the health qualities of it.
@ Bess: Freezing butter does not damage the “health qualities” of it. Neither does freezing milk, although the texture changes if it’s thawed too fast. But the health benefits are still there, believe me I’ve been freezing milk and butter for ages.
Help! I made butter last week for the first time with store bought cream to test it out. This week I used cream I skimmed off of my raw milk and it isn’t changing to butter this time! I still have liquid after almost 20 min. of mixing. I used a sun tea pitcher to drain off the milk while leaving the cream on top to ladle out. I must have gotten too much milk in with my cream somehow. Any ideas on how to best separate the cream?
Hello,
The first time I tried to make butter I hadn’t waited long enough for the cream to separate. The second time I made sure that the cream had separated well and there was no milk in the cream and the butter turned out well. I hope this helps.
hi – i have a gallon of raw milk that i never used and it’s been in my refrigerator for 6 months. it’s in a gallon glass jar so i can see the layer of cream at the top and the liquid below. i am afraid to open it. i’m hoping someone can tell me the most efficient way to use this – should i use the layer of cream for something special – it doesn’t sound like there’s enough to make butter? what do i do with the liquid, i heard soak steel cut oats, anything else? if i can be successful at overcoming the fear of opening it and making something out of it, i’ll be more confident to buy more raw milk, knowing it won’t go to waste if we don’t drink it all. thanks in advance for any response
stacy
That milk will be truly sour and will definitely affect the taste of your butter or soaking. I would try the recipes here for sour milk.
hi lindsay, what do you mean – affect the taste of butter or soaking in a negative way? i looked at the recipes on that page and there’s several that suggest soaking – when is milk too old to use? thanks,
stacy
If I used sour milk in the past to make kefir, it would get extremely sour and make for sour smoothies…it is very difficult to cover up sour kefir!
Butter goes sour pretty quickly so it is best made with fresh milk, that is, unless you like the taste of sour butter. Personally, I like mine a sweet cream! I don’t know if there is an exact timeframe of when best to consume by. I always eat all our milk before it goes sour because I don’t like sour milk…even though raw sour milk is perfectly safe to eat.
Typically, raw milk lasts between 7-10 days in the fridge before it starts to change.
pour the stuff out,down the drain or wherever.Raw milk does not keep for long periods of time.Drinkable for about 5 or 6 days,cook with it for another 4 or 5 days and then get rid of it.
I am appalled that you would suggest throwing it out. Sour milk can be used for other things if one is not willing to drink/use it. You can feed animals (dogs, chickens, pigs, etc) the sour milk. They love it and will benefit from the proteins and enzymes. I’ve even heard of using sour milk to fertilize gardens. The only stuff that should be poured down the drain is the pasturized stuff from the store. Raw milk sours – pasturized milk rots.
I rarely have any raw milk left over as I make yogurt and kefir every week. But occasionally, if we have been away and I have a little left when the next delivery comes I just pour it on my roses or tomatoes. It is fabulous fertilizer!!
That link didn’t work for me. Took me to a WAPF page, but no content. Maybe try posting the whole link instead of parsing it??
Lindsay, I tried clicking on your ‘here’ to check out possibilities for using my raw milk that has gone sour. It sickens me to think I’d have to waste it [when it was so expensive]!! Your link unfortunately goes to a 404 page … May I ask for another reference? I really want to use my sour raw milk!!
As this is an old post, I’m not sure where I was linking to in this original post, but I can say that making homemade yogurt is the best way to use sour milk!
That is interesting to hear about the yogurt. I had been reading that it was best to use fresh raw milk. I have half a gallon left in my fridge from the last batch (about 2 weeks old, not sour yet, but starting to have a bit of an off taste) and will be getting more tomorrow. Maybe I will go ahead and use that for yogurt. Thanks!
We made butter for a homeschool project years ago but we put the cream in a glass jar and my siblings and I all got to take turns shaking it up until it turned to butter. It was so fun!
And on another note, it is SIMPLY AMAZING, that people do not know what all comes from milk!!! I was explaining to my cousin who rode with me and she could not believe from 1 gallon of Raw Milk you could get Butter, Milk, Cream, & Buttermilk!! I was like well where did you think that stuff came from,lol!! I am now exploring recipes for Cream Cheese, Yogurt, and other cheeses. I feel like such a dunce, I am almost 29 years old and should have done this much much sooner. I am just glad my toddler can now have pure milk and other milk products from here on out.
THANK YOU so much for posting these wonderful instructions!! They were SPOT ON and perfect!! It did take my small sized Kitchen Aid mixer about double the time and I could only put 3 cups in it (and really that was too much because I had a lot of sloushing,lol) and let it go!! If I hadn’t read these instructions I would have thought I did it wrong and probably trashed it..LOL, but it did the very things you described, sloshy, then together, then sloshy again and so forth, then the BUTTER clumped up and I was like YIPPPIE!!! I didn’t have to wash mine out as much and just used another tip from here and had 2 bowls with ice and water ready, but only needed one. I may have goofed that up and it may spoil fast but I guess its Trial & Error. Today was my first trip to a local meeting place in SC (raw milk is illegal in NC-booooo) to buy Raw Milk and Cream. I know now I will definitely be going every other week to get my milk and cream.
Can I ask some questions about prices?? I paid $6/gallon for the milk and $10/half gallon for cream. Does this sound about right? I know its more economical because by the time I buy a gallon of milk, a quart of cream, a box of butter, and a 1/2 gallon of buttermilk its way more than that price I paid for raw, but I was just curious about prices in other states…
Again, THANK YOU so much!!!!
Sounds like good prices to me…as it really depends upon where you live. Prices change drastically from state to state. We pay $7.50 per gallon here. Glad you are enjoying it!
just bought raw milk for $3.75
I am in Tennessee and pay $8-$9 per gallon. But for the health benefits and because I make a quart of yogurt and 2 quarts kefir every week it is worth it to us. We buy from a local farm.
WOW – We are really blessed here in Indiana as we only pay $3.00 per gallon for raw milk and $4.50 per quart of raw goats milk. Cream is $6.00 per 1/2 gallon (I think – it;s been awhile since I purchased cream only). We buy from a local farmer who has been in business for 30 years. I go once a week and drive 64 miles round trip but it is definitely worth it.
Sorry that your price is so high – check around – good luck
We pay 1.75 a gallon for raw milk! I was stunned to see what some of you have to pay.
I just started making butter from raw milk… how do you make sure you just get the heavy cream and not the milk part? I used a fat separator, let the cream separate and then poured off the milk, but it didn’t seem to be a great separation. It didn’t even form whipped cream so I know it had too much milk and too low concentration of cream (I know this because I mistakenly once used light cream to make whip cream and beat and beat and beat until I realized that the cream needs to be a higher percentage of fat to form whipped cream… Any tips on ‘skimming the cream’? This appears to be an acquired skill or an art easily missed on the first try….
I simply skim it off the top. I think the key is not to try to get all the cream. I scoop the thickest portion of the cream off the top, but still leave about a 1/2-1 inch of visable cream. The cream is important for drinking the rest of the milk too as it helps our bodies digest the nutrients.
I would like to know how does home made butter gets the sunset yellow colour during the process.
We raise and milk our own cows. Our Dexters give us excellent pure white milk with plenty of cream. Our “Beef” cow gives us a deeper colored milk also with a lot of cream, that when made into butter is a beautiful “sunshine” yellow.(also of excellent taste and quality)
Another thing to keep in mind is the animals food source, when on fresh green pasture their milk is different. Again quality in their pasture makes a big difference.
Hope this helped
A helpful tip for your update on spoilage.
I’ve been making my own butter for about a year. I actually don’t use a mixer but throw the cream in a jar & shake for 10-15 min (great arm workout!).
Anyway…. Once you have your butter, gather 2 bowls of ice water, this keeps the butter from melting as you work with it.
Begin working the remaining buttermilk out of the butter by squeezing it. Do this until your bowl becomes fairly cloudy, then proceed to do the same in the next bowl.
Keep changing out the water, making sure to keep it ice cold (I stick ice cubes in mine) & keep repeating the process until the water remains clear after working the butter. Now all the buttermilk is removed, which is what causes it to spoil.
It will keep for a month or more in your fridge!
I’d like to throw my 2 cents in here too:o) I have made homemade butter twice now, once with pasteurized whipping cream, and last time with raw. Both times, I did not know to do the ice water thing and pressing to get the excess buttermilk, but the 2nd time, I put the lump of butter into a coffee filter inserted into the mason jar I am storing the buttermilk in, and it seems to have gotten it out- used it twice now and there is a little liquid, but not much!!
It it necessary to do the cold bath with the shaking method??
You still have to drain off the “buttermilk” no matter how you make it. And butter must always be rinsed or it will have a funky smell and taste in short order.
Could you use an ice cream maker (minus the ice of course) to mix the cream into butter?
I really don’t know. DO you have any handheld mixer or stick blender? Those would work as well…it would simply take a bit longer.
I remember making butter in my grandma’s churn! What a chore! When she passed a couple years ago I got her churn. It sits in a little display by the treadle sewing machine. But, you’ve inspired me to make butter in it again sometime soon!
I’ve been borrowing my MIL’s electric butter churn to use up the cream from our milk cow. I’m so excited to try it in my Bosch esp so I don’t have to stand at the sink forever rinsing it! Thanks for the tip!
Lindsay,
I’ve been making butter from my raw milk for a few months now. This time I decide to try “cultured” butter, which I’ve heard has a much better flavor. I siphoned off the cream and placed it in a covered jard in my cupboard for 24 hours. I took it out today and tried to proceed as usual, but the cream never seized! It stayed all liquidy and sloshy and never even thickened no matter how long I blended it. Have you ever experienced this before? What do you suggest I do with my “cultured” cream. It’s perfectly good cream, just a bit “soured.”
Thanks!
The cultured cream might not have seized because it was too warm. I know when I make whipped cream everything must be chilled before whipping, otherwise the cream will never fluff up.
I recently had a similar experience. I had 2 quarts of cream that had “aged” a little too long. Not willing to give it to the animals, and knowing I could put it to some use, I found info about cultured butter.
As I whipped the cream, it went through all the stages (sloshy, frothy, whipped) but never seized. I tried whipping it for over 30 minutes – I’m sure my mixer hated me by the end of it! What I found I had to do was strain the mixture through the butter muslin (aka fine cheesecloth). Once all the liquid had drained out, I proceeded to “wash” the butter in ice cold water, then packed the butter into containers and put into the fridge. Seems to have worked for me…..
2 questions: when you said 15 minutes, was that from start to finish or from the little grains of butter to the big clump of butter? also, what speed did you use? i tried making it and my raw cream never seemed to glob together, so it was hard to “recover” all the bits of butter. maybe i just didn’t do it long enough? thank you so much for your informative post!!
15 minutes is from start to finish. It doesn’t totally become a ball, but the majority of it starts clumping together when it is done. I just mix it at speed 1 on my bosch mixer. It starts to form small bits of butter and then starts clumping more together, so you probably didn’t mix it long enough. Hope that helps!
Hi,
I stumbled onto your blog via google, while looking up tips on homemade butter. You have the most detailed steps of anyone else I’ve come across, and I’m really looking forward to getting started.
Thanks and God bless you and your family!
Melody
I was wondering how you skimmed the cream off of the raw milk. Did you have to leave the milk sitting out a while for the cream to rise to the top? I love, love your website and it has really helped me get my family on a healthy diet.
The raw milk cream will naturally come to the top of the jar as it sits in the fridge. I just skim it off with a measuring cup. Hope that works for you!
I am not sure why, but I think my tops are too narrow to skim with a measuring cup. I feel like I don’t recall the cream- is there ever NOT any? Also, I may have mixed it in though, by shaking the milk first- but would it separate again?? I just bought raw heavy cream.
If you already mixed it up, you will just want to let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours until the cream rises to the top again. You also might want to transfer to a wide mouth container for more effective removal of the cream. All in all, buying raw cream is your best bet, as removing the cream from the raw milk will deplete the nutrients and digestibility in it.
Amy, If your containers are plastic (as ours from Dungeness Valley Creamery are), then you might like this method:
Very carefully hold the bottle without shaking or blending the cream and milk. Hold the bottle over a wide bowl. Puncture bottom of jug with an ice pick or other pointy instrument. Carefully open the cap and remove it. This will allow the milk to start draining from the bottom. If you are careful not to disturb the contents, the flow will naturally slow as it reaches the cream line. As the milk is drained out, replace the cap and tighten. Then, turn the bottle upside down and open the container over a second bowl to receive the cream.
You’re ready to make your butter!
Personally, I’ve been satisfied to use a wide mouth mason jar and manually shake the cream while I watch TV or read (or search the internet for soured raw milk uses).
Heather:
Regarding skimming cream – I saved a plastic milk jug from my last gallon of milk and let my new gallon sit overnight until the cream had risen to the top. Then I poked a hole in the bottom of the gallon of milk and let the milk drain out through a funnel into the reserved empty milk jug. I let all the milk drain until there was nothing but cream left. Then I put my finger over the hole and poured the cream into another bowl. It sounds complicated, but it works great!
I don’t have a big mixer like that so I just shake mine! I also buy raw milk from a local farm and she sells just the cream separate which is nice. I just put 2 quarts of cream into a half gallon container and shake for about 25-30 minutes. Although I have had the same problem with keeping it. I’ll have to try freezing it, that never crossed my mind. Now I just tend to make it when I know I’ll be doing a lot of baking and buy organic butter to keep around.
Thank you for posting this… I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making my own butter! We recently purchased a milk goat and have been enjoying the raw milk… I just need something to do with all the cream!
~Kristy @ Homemaker’s Cottage
Oh, now I’m even more inspired to try this! I’ve been wanting to ever since we started getting our raw milk, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. It looks easier than I thought! I believe I can also do it using my Vita-Mix blender (although I need to double check that).
I was wondering- is the cream from Costco organic (and is it a good deal)? I know they carry organic milk at Costco in Washington, but I hadn’t noticed cream. Organic cream is crazy expensive up here in Canada, and I just can’t afford to buy enough raw milk to really get the cream to make it worth doing.
The cream at Costco is not organic, it is just pasteurized, so it would not be as healthy as raw cream, but still better! Anything homemade is going to taste better, I say!. Nourishing Traditions says to use pasteurized if you don’t have raw. They say nothing about organic cream, because it is still homogenized and pasteurized anyway.
Yeah, it seems to generally be either you can get Organic, Pasturized, Homogenized, or you can get the Costco which at least does not seem to be either homogenized or ultra-pasturized. Although here in Washington we can buy, from Noris Dairy (sold at some retail stores), organic pasturized cream.
I have the same problem with not buying enough raw milk to make much butter with. Plus, for 4.79 a lb., Trader Joe’s sells organic butter that has been grass-fed (or so I hear)…which is a pretty good deal.
I buy one or two gallons of raw milk each week. I take the cream off the top of the milk and put it into ice cube trays and freeze it. When it is frozen, I put the frozen cubes into a sandwich bag and return them to the freezer. This allows me to save up my cream until I have enough of it to make it worth making butter. Also, allows me to have raw cream on hand for things like homemade whipped cream (awesome with a little vanilla extract and a little agave nectar).
Does cream need to be a room temp before making butter?
Hey Stephanie – did you figure out if you can make butter in a Vita-Mix? I’ve got one of those, but not a stand mixer. We buy raw milk too, and I’ve been wanting to try my hand at butter making!
Blessings,
Christine
Christine, I did a post on making butter in a Vita-Mix if you would like to see. It was so easy! It’s here…
http://wholefoodkids.blogspot.com/search/label/~Butter%20in%20a%20Blender
Stephanie, I did a post on making butter in a Vita-Mix if you would like to see. It was so easy! It’s here…
http://wholefoodkids.blogspot.com/search/label/~Butter%20in%20a%20Blender
I could not respond to you on yo ur blog – there is no “contact” and I have no “profile” and no “url.” It would not take an email address.
I don’t “blog” – I will never see any response if it is not emailed to me. I work – have little time – only Googled this site (which is wonderful BTW) – but there is no contact link.
I also tried to make butter in Vita mix – carefully stored the cream for nearly a week till it really separated – all it did in the vita mix was blend around forever and get really HOT – that is *not* good for the bacteria and health qualities of the milk. Just churned and churned – and seemed thinner of course when I poured it out than when it went in, save for a frothy scum about 1/2″ thick on top (did NOT look like butter) – the cream never even whipped – in the past (years ago) when I made butter, it would whip first, then get dry, then “crash” and turn to butter.
Also – I never heard before in all the recipe blogs and sites for butter about letting it sit at room temperature for HALF A DAY – I do not want to do that – where did that come from?
THANK YOU!!!!
oh – my email address is bonitaf@rcn.com – thanks
Don’t use a Vita-Mix to try to make butter. It gets too hot at the base and the cream will not separate.
I use my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the whip attachment but it still takes about 30 minutes to make butter, and I learned long ago to start with a cold mixer bowl, and cold ingredients. Always use icy cold water to rinse. Use a wooden spoon or a potato masher to squeeze out excess water and then dab with a white napkin. I roll my butter into a log and put it right into the fridge after I get the excess water out as much as possible. If I’m not going to be using it within a couple of days, I freeze it wrapped in natural parchment paper inside a freezer bag. This method has been working for me for quite a few years.
Anyone who has MORE questions could check out this site. They have misspelled a few words but the information is pretty decent. http://gnowfglins.com/2010/07/07/cultured-butter/
that is wonderful. I really do love the tase of natural butter. Every year I have my students make butter after reading Little House books. We just but the cream in small baby food jars and they shake them. I make johnny cake and they eat their cake with the butter they just made, it is alot of fun.
By the way thanks so much for your posts on natural living I had no idea that raw milk was still sold in the US. Since I live in an urban setting I thought it would be difficult but with a little searching I found a farm that sells their raw milk to a Whole Foods store about 1hr away. Now I just have to find the time to drive there
Wow! And buttermilk, too. Did you figure out a price estimate?
You’ve inspired me!
In regards to price, since I just use the raw milk I get each week, there is no additional cost for me. If I buy heavy cream, I usually buy the 1/2 gallon size at Costco (which costs just around $5, I believe), which would make 2 batches of this recipe, which would be about $2.50 roughly per 1/2-3/4 lb butter & 1 quart of buttermilk. Pretty good price! If you were to buy organic butter alone it is around $4.50 per lb. Hope that gives you some idea!