Thought you couldn't make butter by hand without a churn or some sort of fancy equipment? Well, I'm here to tell ya that all you need is a little cream (heavy whipping cream), a Mason jar and lid and two hands. It will take you about 30 minutes (probably less if you don't stop to take pictures).
Let the shaking begin!
1. Collect all the necessary equipment. I highly recommend trying to find local, organic cream as the quality is much better, but you can use whatever you have on hand if need be. I'm using a pint of heavy whipping cream here and a quart jar.
2. Leave the cream out on the counter for a while (the longer the cream sours, the less sweet the butter will be). Once the cream is warmed up to about 60 degrees then pour it into the Mason jar.
3. Put on the lid and start shaking it. After about two minutes you'll see a nice lightly whipped cream.
4. After about four minutes it will look like thick, whipped cream. Resist the temptation to empty the entire Mason jar into you mouth at this point. But do breathe in the heavenly, sweet scent.
5. After about nine minutes of shaking, the cream will start to separate from the sides of the glass. Feel free to take a break.
6. After about fourteen minutes, the whey starts separating from the butter.
7. After about sixteen minutes, the curd is more noticeable and there's a lot more whey. 
8. At this point you can start pouring the buttermilk off. Continue shaking for a few minutes until your butter has solidified a bit more and until you aren't getting anymore buttermilk off of it.
9. Pour out the butter into a bowl. Doesn't this look like ice cream?
10. Pour cold water over the butter and start "massaging" the butter with a spatula to rinse the rest of the buttermilk out. Continue replacing the water until the water stays clear. Drain.
Mold your butter into butter molds or into ramekins. You will also end up with a scant cup of buttermilk (depending on how "juicy" your cream is).
Voila! Butter. In less than thirty minutes.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Handmade butter
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19 comments:
what a fun acivity for kids (using a plastic container, of course!)and you get to eat the results-a little kitchen science is educational and delicious!
I can't believe it's that easy to make butter. Well done! I was wondering if you know how to make yogurt without a yogurt maker or thermometer? Or the lowest-tech way possible?
thanks, I love reading your blogs -
I am so excited to try that. Just need to get some cream today and have the kids shake away... Will let you know how it turns out.
I remember trying to do this with the little half-and-half creamers at restaurants as a kid. I was always disappointed that it didn't work! Now I get to try it out as a big kid, and enjoy the results!
OK - made some and kids made me do all the shaken. Was so excited. Butter is soooo good. Tried it again when my friend came over and I shook too much and the whey went back into the solid. Now I have a thick lump of unknown. Did I make something or just ruin the butter?
Thanks for the detailed instruction! My husband and daughter helped and we used it on bread at dinner. Definitely less expensive than buying the sticks.
Crunchy Greenola, I do know how to make yogurt without a yogurt maker, but it does require a thermometer to make sure it's the right temperature for the yogurt cultures to do their thing:
http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2007/12/plastic-free-yogurt-well-almost-plus.html
Maybe some people can tell by touch how hot the milk should be. I need a thermometer.
Hey Crunchy -
Thanks SO much for posting this. Me and my hubby just made our butter (and in under 15 minutes! - but we didn't stop to take pictures :)). He was absolutely enthralled with the entire process and is very gung-ho about doing this more often. He doesn't want to buy butter anymore - just cream to make our own. I guess I better start looking for some recipes so that I can use the buttermilk.b
Crunchy greenola--
I make yogurt in a cooler, and the way I go about it doesn't use a thermometer, although you certainly could use one (and maybe should). This recipe uses 2 quarts of milk and an 8oz container of yogurt with live cultures (I use Dannon usually). I heat the milk to nearly boiling and then set it aside to cool--this is the part where, if you have a thermometer, use it. You want the milk NO HOTTER than 130F. For me, this feels a little hot on the fingertips, but nothing like scorching. I then combine the milk and starter yogurt by putting the yogurt into a bowl and whisking an equal portion of milk in to thin it, then whisking in the remainder of the milk. Pour the milk into 2 quart jars (mason jars are good), and put them into a small cooler. Run your faucet water as hot as it will go--in our house, we've got the water heater set just over 120F, which is great. Just nothing over 130F (which is too hot for a water heater to be set at anyway). Fill the cooler until it's level with the yogurt in the jars (leave jars uncovered). Close the cooler, set somewhere you won't jostle it, and ignore for about 5-8 hours. Come back and see how it's done. Lid the jars, place in fridge to chill, and enjoy!
A note about making butter:
Be sure to wash it (that water-massaging step) really really well! This is what gets the last little bits of water out of the butterfat; leftover water in the butter will cause the butter to go rancid faster. Also, at the end of the washing step you can add salt, which also extends the life of the butter. Unless, of course, you live at my house and fresh butter lasts for, oh, I dunno, 'bout 28 minutes...
thanks, jedimomma - I'll give it a try!
yay - we did it. made it a family project and everyone got a turn shaking. it took us a bit longer that way, but it still worked. thank you! :) now i need to make some fresh bread this afternoon so we can eat it up!
re: yogurt without a thermometer. My dad was Lebanese and I grew up watching him make yogurt (all my aunties did, too); I also used to make it myself as a teenager. No thermometers ever.
The Lebanese way to test the temperature: stick your (clean) index finger into the milk and count. If you have to pull it out before ten, it's still too hot. If you can keep it in much longer than a count of ten, it's too cold.
However I am not too sure about how *fast* you count. Faster than one per second, I am certain of that.
This measure seems very imprecise to me. With yogurt it's about "feel" and you also have to live with inconsistency. Sometimes it's thinner, sometimes it's sweeter or more sour.
I haven't had success making yogurt as an adult, possibly because I've used 2%, when we only used whole milk as a child. If you use 2% you probably have to add non-fat dry milk solids blah blah. Boring.
However those plastic yogurt cartons make me feel so guilty. I reuse them but they really pile up. If I were making my own yogurt the way I did as a teenager, I'd do it in a Pyrex casserole with a glass lid. This little sub-thread might inspire me to try it again - with whole milk!
Wow! I just tried the butter making and it is SO easy and delicious!
I've been enjoying your blog a great deal!
I'm the food and cooking editor at Mother Earth News magazine, and I thought your readers might enjoy checking out our home pages on REAL FOOD, SUSTAINABLE FARMING and ORGANIC GARDENING.
Thanks for all the great content!
Thank you for the inspiration. My husband and I made the butter today and used the buttermilk and butter to make delicious buttermilk pancakes.
Fun AND rewarding :)
Cool! I am going to try this....and now I know where buttermilk comes from! (How tragic is this generation!? We don't know these rudimentary things about the very food we eat. )
Thanks so much.
(I've made butter several times (not properly) before by accident when getting too carried away with whipping the cream!)
Hi Deanna,
Did you know you can also do this using two ziploc bags? I know I know, plastic... but the kids can throw the bags back and forth across the kitchen for half an hour and if it drops, no biggie.
You put the cream inside the inner bag, seal it, then seal the outer bag too.
Thanks for the post! It is always wonderful to see families working together in the kitchen to make something from scratch. I teach cooking classes to kids, and they love to make butter. With preschoolers (who have a hard time waiting to take their turn at shaking the cream), you can even do this with a hand mixer, immersion blender or traditional blender. Faster results, and they love to feel the vibration of the tools in their little hands! If the weather is nice, you can also do this in a small jar, wrapped in dish rags, stuffed inside a coffee can. Take the contraption outside and play soccer with it for awhile and voila - butter :-)
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