Old Fashioned Homemade Butter
Butter the old fashioned way
Butter is a surprisingly simple thing to make using ordinary kitchen tools. You can make butter with any organic double, whipping or luxury cream, I use our local organic unpasteurised (raw) cream from The Old fashioned Dairy.
Butter is old school. People have been making butter for centuries around Europe and Asia, like many traditional food processes it started as a way of preserving milk fat and the stored nutrients. For more on the tradition of butter making see History Kitchen Homemade Butter.
Whip in your kitchen blender
Making butter relies on agitation to separate the fat from the milk. This can be achieved using a blender, mixer or hand mixer or just shake by hand, a particularly good method when working with your energetic children!
YOU WILL NEED
- 1 pint heavy organic cream
- Large bowl of ice water
- Salt to taste (optional)
- Stand mixer, hand mixer or blender, or a jar with a tight fitting lid
Total Time: 15 Minutes
Servings: About 8 oz butter
Steps:
- Pour a pint of heavy organic cream into your device or into a jar with a tight fitting lid. If using a machine, turn on low speed, then raise to medium speed. If you’re using a jar, start shaking (you’ll need some serious elbow grease if doing it by hand). First, the cream will turn into whipped cream with soft, then stiff peaks. Keep going until the cream breaks. If you’re shaking the cream by hand, you’ll hear a sloshing, then you’ll begin to feel something more solid hit the sides of the jar. If you’re using a stand mixer, you’ll see the butter clinging to the beater. This usually takes anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes by hand may take longer. In this process, you are separating the butter fat from the liquid.
- Once the butter has solidified, pour off the buttermilk and save it for baking or drink it (old fashioned butter milk). Scoop the butter into a bowl. Rinse the butter by pouring ice water over it and pressing the remaining buttermilk out with a small spatula or a spoon. Pour off the water and repeat the process. Keep rinsing and squishing the butter with the ice water until the water runs clear.
- Add mineral salt (celtic salt or other) and work that through the butter or leave unseasoned depending on your test preference.
- There you have it– old fashioned butter!
- Spread on your sour dough or flax meal toast, roasted vegetables or whatever you have to hand and enjoy!
