Making my own butter has long been something I’ve wanted to do but never really got around to. Now that we are getting raw milk every week, I figured I had no more excuses not to!
This was my first attempt at making raw butter, and it worked amazingly. I filled a pint mason jar halfway with cream and let it culture on the counter at room temperature for 24 hours. After 24 hours, I took the mason jar and shook it with all my might. After 5 minutes, the buttermilk came out with a big SLOSH!
I kept shaking vigorously until I thought most of the buttermilk had come out of it, and then I poured the buttermilk into a small jar to save for smoothies. I shook it again and poured out buttermilk again. I did this a few more times and then mushed it around with a spatula to get more buttermilk out.
I wasn’t sure if I got all the buttermilk out or not, and I read somewhere that butter will spoil if there is any buttermilk left in it, so I ended up freezing it for good measure. I usually buy butter in bulk and freeze what I’m not using, so freezing butter something I do normally anyway.
How do you make butter? Any suggestions for getting out the buttermilk?
I just wanted to share that I use a mixer for my butter. I beat it (5-10 mins) until it’s a big chunk of butter splashing around in buttermilk. I pour out the buttermilk and press the butter down to squeeze more out. (Some people use a cheesecloth for this.) Then I pour off more buttermilk. After that I rinse the butter with water and squeeze and pour just like I did with the buttermilk. I’ve been told that makes it last longer!
Love your blog! I had no idea I could let the cream sit for 24 hours before beating it for butter. I bet that makes it form faster!
Thanks for the tips and for stopping by! :)
Where did you get your raw milk?
You can visit http://www.realmilk.com/real-milk-finder/ to find raw milk near you.
I was asked to do a demonstration once on churning butter, but honestly, I throw my fresh cream in the blender and sit down to sip tea. Whew! all that hard work and in about 5 minutes, I have fresh butter!! Sometimes I stick it in a double (or triple) folded cheese cloth and squeeze it real hard to get the whey out.
Great tip! I’ve been thinking of trying it the blender way!
i am amazed! seeing you young women going back to the way things were ie healthy! just fills me with great joy!
when my daughters were little and we lived on an extremely tight budget i used to bake all our own bread and make butter; over the years with full time jobs and the daily hectic … well i am back!
i used to shake my cream in a jar (it became a family thing, every one got t turn) but it bothered me the most to get all the buttermilk out, the washing seemed endless (may be i made too big a portion) but the buttermilk was a nice side benefit; i grew up on cultured butter and the butter in the stores with all the salt just are not my thing; i just watched Sara Pope on youtube making it with an electric hand blender and it seems so easy! will try that next and am looking forward to my own butter again!
Back to basics is best! It is definitely more time consuming, but I feel that I appreciate my food a lot more when it takes time and patience. It takes time for the farmers to grow and time for the livestock to mature. Then it takes time to culture and ferment and slow cook. All those good things. :) I read a story about a family with seven children and a dairy cow. They made butter every night and the children would compete to make the best flavored/herbed/spiced butters, and they sold the extra to families in the community. Lovely story. I dream about doing things like that one day. Cultured butter is SO different than store butter. I can eat cultured raw butter by itself, and it is so yummy. But I couldn’t even imagine doing that with store-bought! The buttermilk is great, too. I love that will raw milk, nothing goes to waste. If we make butter, there’s buttermilk. If we make cheese, there’s whey. If it clabbers, it’s still good! :)
I just saw a butter-making demonstration this past weekend, and the lady giving the demonstration said to “wash” the butter with cold water. She put the butter and the water into a bowl and used a fork to press the butter into the water. Once the water turned cloudy with buttermilk, she drained the water out and replaced it with fresh water. She used the fork again to press out the buttermilk and repeated the process until the water stayed clear with no cloudy buttermilk.
I tried this method and I think I got all the butter milk out, but my butter tasted more like raw milk/cream than butter. Maybe it’s because I didn’t let the cream sit out to culture first?
I actually did this more than once and used really cold water out of the fridge to try to get the buttermilk out. Still wasn’t sure if I got all of it! I also have made it cultured and non-cultured. The flavor of the cultured butter is definitely deeper. :)