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.
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!
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
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.
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
[...] out how to make your own butter here. I have found that homemade butter does not last very long, because it is very difficult to squeeze [...]
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.
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!
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!