Right after college, I waited tables briefly at a little French bistro in Providence, RI. Each day the pastry cook would whip cream and store it in a plastic tub for use during service. Sometimes it would be inadvertently left overnight or for a couple of days and start to taste like butter. The cream was no longer light and fluffy and you could see the liquid beginning to separate.
Making homemade butter is that easy – you don’t even need a recipe, just a method of over-whipping heavy cream until the fat and milk solids form granules and release enough buttermilk. It can be as simple as shaking it in a jar, or whipping it in a food processor or stand mixer. There are a couple steps that follow, but if you use a mixer or food processor, the whole process takes less than a half hour and the results are worth it. You don’t get fresher than homemade butter, and you’ll taste the difference. Because it’s fresh, your butter won’t keep as long as commercial butter, so make it in small batches and keep it in the fridge for a few weeks or freeze it for up to 9 months.
Also, as a by product of making your own butter, you will have real buttermilk, which you can save for using in baked goods. This is not the same as cultured buttermilk which is sold commercially. That stuff is often made from milk to which a culture is added to thicken it, and does not have the same flavor as true buttermilk.
This method, using a food processor, is adapted from Kathy Farrell-Kingsley’s The Home Creamery. I use a Kitchen Aid 14-cup food processor. Results and processing times might vary with different machines:
1. Pour the heavy cream into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and let ‘er rip. After about 2 minutes, the cream will start to look like Cool Whip. This is the soft peak stage.
2. After another 2 minutes, the cream will already be over-whipped and start to look a little grainy.
3. After another two minutes, butter solids have formed and released a lot of buttermilk. You will end up with about equal parts solids and buttermilk. Total time only 6 minutes!
4. Drain off the buttermilk and save it for baking. At this stage, The Home Creamery recommends transferring the mass into a colander and kneading out any remaining liquid with a wooden spoon or potato masher, but I found when I did that lots of butter was being lost through the holes too. So I would recommend using a bowl instead and just pouring off the liquid as it’s released by kneading.
4. The book doesn’t mention it for this method, but after the butter has become uniform and released most of it’s buttermilk, you may want to wash it. Simply rinse it under cold water, kneading gently and taking care not to handle it too much as it will melt. This will extend the life of the butter. One antique cookbook even recommends washing as a way of restoring rancid butter.
4. Now your butter is ready. If you like, knead in some salt. This will also extend its shelf life. I like to use fine sea salt. If you are serving it as a condiment, you could try a salt with larger crystals such as Maldon, or Fleur de Sel instead to add a little texture. Pack it into a crock, or wrap it in wax paper or parchment. It will keep in the fridge for several weeks, and in the freezer for up to 9 months.
Just for fun, I tried just taking a cup of cream and shaking it in a pint container too – a second method given in the book. Of course it took longer, but the granules eventually formed. In this case I rinsed the granules by shaking water in the jar and changing it a couple of times before kneading it and forming it. This is a great activity to keep restless kids occupied for a while because the granules will take about a half hour instead of 6 minutes to form.
My friend Megan at Brooklyn Farmhouse uses a stand mixer, which will not only whip the cream, but knead it for you too. She also uses local grass fed cream, which if you can get it will of course produce a superior butter.
Farrell-Kingsley also recommends using ripened cream to add complexity to your butter. To ripen cream, just set it out at room temperature for 12-24 hours. She notes that it should be “shiny and taste acidic” but not sour. The result will taste similar to European butter which is often described as more “cheesy” tasting.
Keep churning until you have one large chunk of butter (a few small floating pieces is OK). Once you have a large chunk of butter, stop churning! If you continue to mix you can actually separate your chunks again and ruin your butter.
When using packaged cream, it is very important to use heavy cream with at least 35% to 50% milkfat. Please DO NOT USE low-fat cream, cooking cream or light cream that has less than 35% milkfat; you won't get butter no matter how much you whip these because there just isn't enough fat.
The final butter may have some lactose and milk proteins remaining in the liquid and if this is allowed to ferment, the butter may become rancid in a short time. The washing and folding is what removes most of this.
Whipped cream will turn into a heavy grainy mass.Small yellowish clumps of butter will start to appear. Keep churning until you see two distinct substances in jar: thin white buttermilk and thick clumps of yellow butter. This should take around 8-10 minutes.
This is the most important step in making butter. Excessive churning after the butter has separated will make it greasy and hard to shape. Too little churning will cause the butter spoil quickly due the trapped buttermilk it still contains.
If you don't cream for long enough, your mixture will appear gritty, yellow, and flat. If you cream for too long, the mixture will transition from smooth and voluminous to a greasy, separated, deflated puddle that sits at the bottom of the bowl. If you overmix your butter and sugar, start over.
If you wish to add salt you will need ¼ teaspoon of plain dairy salt for every 110g (4oz) of butter. Before shaping the butter, spread it out in a thin layer and sprinkle evenly with dairy salt. Mix thoroughly using the butter pats, then weigh into slabs as before.
The ideal temperature for churning butter is around 60-65 F. If the cream is too cold, it is harder for the fat globules to stick together, and if it is too warm the butter will be a little too soft and gloopy. Pour the cream into the glass jar of the churn. Screw on lid.
“Any conditions which tend to harden the butter-fat will require a comparatively high churning temperature; and any conditions tending to soften the butter-fat will require a lowering of the churning temperature.”
The best option would be fresh, raw cream from pastured Jersey cows. Milk from Jersey cows has the highest fat content, which is why they are primarily dairy cattle. In addition, the fat in their milk has larger globules in it which makes it perfect for churning butter.
Keep your craft butter in a cool, dry place: To keep your butter from spoiling, it's important to store it in a cool, dry place. Look for a spot in your kitchen away from direct sunlight, heat sources, and humidity. If you're looking for an even more precise temperature, aim for somewhere between 55–60°F.
Heavy cream, whipping cream, or heavy whipping cream are all suitable choices for making homemade butter. Heavy cream, with the highest percentage of butterfat, will yield the most butter; lower-fat whipping cream will yield less.
The first step of making butter is to let the heavy cream sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before you get started. This helps encourages the cream to separate. If you can let it sit for more like 60 minutes, that's even better!
Should You Leave Butter on the Counter? According to the USDA, butter is safe at room temperature. But if it's left out for several days at room temperature, it can turn rancid causing off flavors. The USDA does not recommend leaving it out more than one to two days.
How long does homemade butter last? Homemade butter has a shelf life of up to 2 – 3 weeks when kept in the fridge. You can also keep your homemade butter in the freezer for up to 9 months.
If you will beat the butter well it will become fluffy and the quantity also becomes double but if u will beat this for a long in the machine it will become watery and the mixture also reduces than the normal, and this texture can make a waste of your product.
To make butter from cream, the cream is shaken so that the fat particles get shaken out of position and clump together with other fat particles. The clumping first allows tiny air bubbles to be trapped in the cream, forming a light and airy product you might have had, called whipped cream.
Soon the you will feel a solid bouncing around in the jar with a sloshing liquid. That solid is the homemade butter. Stop shaking once you get to this point. If you keep shaking the liquid will be re-introduced into the butter and ruin it.
Place your cold butter in a ziplock bag or in between two pieces of parchment paper. Then, using a rolling pin, whack the butter until it begins to flatten. Flip the butter over and continue to beat it until it's completely pliable.
Introduction: My name is Mr. See Jast, I am a open, jolly, gorgeous, courageous, inexpensive, friendly, homely person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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