If you’ve followed me for any period of time, you’d certainly know my deep love for all things butter. It’s by far my favorite dairy-made product. Today you’ll learn the process of making your own butter at home and the incredible advantages it provides over store bought butter. To be honest, you’ll be shocked at how easy this really is to do. I hope this inspires you to start making butter of your own today!
Some highlights from the episode:
If you're ready to start your home dairy journey, head to http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/cheese to access the guide mentioned in the episode.
If you’ve followed me for any period of time, you’d certainly know my deep love for all things butter. It’s by far my favorite dairy-made product. Today you’ll learn the process of making your own butter at home and the incredible advantages it provides over store bought butter. To be honest, you’ll be shocked at how easy this really is to do. I hope this inspires you to start making butter of your own today!
Some highlights from the episode:
If you're ready to start your home dairy journey, head to http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/cheese to access the guide mentioned in the episode.
Welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. So as you might know, I kind of have an obsession with turning raw milk into all sorts of amazing things. And when it comes to miracles, I would say that a jar of white liquid AKA milk turning into this delicious golden yellow solid AKA butter is pretty darn close, as you're going to get to being miraculous in your very own kitchen. Now as you probably know, I ditched margarine several years ago, like well over a decade and I haven't bought it in a very long time. I don't miss it one bit. And if you listen to a previous episode where we talked about good fats and bad fats, you know that real butter is actually really, really good for you. It has a lot of health benefits beyond just making your bread taste better. Um, now here's the thing that some of the cheap store bought butters. They don't have the quality that you're going to get with a more premium butter or a homemade butter. And sometimes commercial butter makers even add a little bit of water just to dilute it to the minimum legal fat content. And I find it interesting because sometimes when I buy the store bought butter, it's a lot softer. Even when it's refrigerated, it's much, much softer than refrigerated homemade butter. And I always wonder why that was until I realized that they're legally allowed to add a little bit of water to kind of stretch it out. So interesting little fact there. But all that to say, if you are making your own butter, you get to control what type of cream you're using, how much salt you're adding, and you can even add some awesome mix ins that really elevate the flavor. So in today's episode, I'm going to take you through the process of making your own butter. This is something you can totally do. I don't care if you don't have a milk cow or you don't have a dairy goat. It's very, very simple. And with the holidays coming up, you add a little dish of homemade butter to the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas spread. Pretty sure everybody is going to think you are a kitchen rockstar. So here we go. I'm your host Jill Winger and for the last 10 years I've been helping people just like you who felt uninspired by modern life. I'll show you how to leave the rat race and create the life you really want by learning how to grow your own food and master old fashioned skills. I just want to start off this episode by saying I have my butter technique in a very easy to access and download PDF for you. So I'm just going to kind of walk you through the process. I want you to understand the ins and outs of butter, so when you go to make it, you know where you're headed, you know what you're doing, but you don't have to take these crazy notes or write down exact measurements as you're listening because I have that all in this PDF for you along with a little discount code that you might find interesting. So you can grab this PDF at theprairiehomestead.com/cheese and I called it cheese instead of butter because there's some cheese recipes in there too. It's just four of the recipes that are my favorite. Um, but I'll put that link in the show notes as well. The Prairie homes, the.com/cheese. Okay, let's talk all things butter. So the first thing you need to know is there are two main varieties of butter. You can make both of these at home, just depends on your preference. So there are, there is sweet cream butter and there is cultured butter. So sweet cream butter is simply butter made from fresh cream, a K a cream that has not been allowed to sour. It's a little bit of an easier option. Maybe not even easier as the word cause the the other option is not hard. This maybe this one takes a little bit less time. So this is a great option if you are in a hurry to make the butter, you just use your cream as is and it doesn't have as much of a Tang. Now on the flip side, cultured butter is made from cream that has been allowed to ripen or culture first. Now, this is way more fancy than it sounds. You can literally do this by just ignoring the rock cream in your fridge for a little while until it starts to sour. Or you can speed up the process by inoculating the cream with a bit of good beneficial bacteria and allowing it to ferment at room temperature. Now this is applicable only if you are using raw cream cream that has not been pasteurized. Now you can absolutely inoculate pasteurized cream, but if you leave your pasteurized cream in your fridge to see if it's ours, excuse me, or you leave it on your counter to see if it sours, it will sour, but not in a pleasant way. So if you really want to go after the cultured, uh, cream, then you're probably gonna want to stick with rock cream. Therefore, all that to say, if all you have in your availability is pasteurized cream from the grocery store, I would just stick with the sweet cream butter. Just going to be simpler. Now both options yield delicious results. You're not gonna have any complaints, but many butter Conda sewers prefer that little tangy depth of flavor that cultured butter brings to the table and you get the extra benefit of the good bacteria and the good enzymes. It's kind of like probiotic butters, so it's pretty cool, but it's not a requirement. All right, so let's talk about butter making equipment. We talked about the cream you can use pretty much any cream you have available, even if it's Starbuck cream. I would recommend if you can avoid it to not get ultra heat treated cream, you HT it's been heated to the point where it's sterile. It's not going to give you as good of results. So just get regular pasteurized cream. If pasteurized milk, pasteurized milk is all you have access to, that should work just fine. Now as far as butter making equipment goes, you do not have to have any sort of special equipment to make butter. You don't have to get the big churn. You don't have to have anything expensive or fancy. Technically, and maybe you have done this when you were a child. Cream can be transformed by basically just putting it in a Mason jar with a lid and shaking the Dickens out of it. And that's not really the method I recommend unless you have a lot of spare time or a lot of energetic children. But it could be that easy if you wanted it to be. Now that being said, if you plan on making butter on a regular basis and you also would like to maintain your sanity, then I do recommend using some sort of kitchen appliance to help you out. So my weapon of choice when it comes to making butter is actually a food processor. Um, people are like, you're making butter in a piece of electrical equipment. And I'm like, yes, because it makes it so easy. The downfall to food processors and butter making is most of them have a pretty small capacity. So you can add like a cup or two of cream into the bowl and then that's all that you're allowed to add. Otherwise it spills out the sides. That's okay if you're just making butter as a novelty once in awhile. If you have a milk cow and you're going to have gallons of cream, it's going to take you all day long to add a cup of cream, turn it into butter, scrape it out, repeat over and over, like that's going to be a little bit tedious. So if that's the case, I would, if you have a milk cow, meaning a, I would get a different option. But for a lot of us with smaller amounts of cream, food processors are fantastic. Another option, if you have a stand mixer, use a stand mixer. I'm my biggest beef with those are, is that they have a tendency to fleeing the cream all over the kitchen. So that's easy to fix though. You just put a towel over the top of the mixer, uh, just to keep everything contained. But they do a great job of making butter as well. There are also different styles of butter churns. There's some electric ones, there's some cool crank ones if you really want to go old school, um, if you want to go that route, invest in one of those. That can be really fun. That can be an a heritage tool that you have in your kitchen, but it's not an absolute necessity, at least not at the beginning. Okay. So we're talking about cream, we talked about equipment. Let's talk about butter making. Let's get into this process. So, um, we're going to talk sweet cream butter cause I feel like that's going to be the simplest for most of you guys to do and you can go into cultured butter later. We'll talk about that a little bit at the end. But right now we're just going to go simple sweet cream butter if you're wanting butter for your holiday meal to put on those Crescent rolls that you're making out of the Prairie homestead cookbook or anything else. Um, this is a simple, very impressive recipe. I even a recipe, it's so easy. I would just call it more of a technique that you can try. So the first thing you want to do is to pull the cream out of the fridge for an hour or two before you plan on making butter. Now if you forget to do this, it's okay. You don't have to to freak out. But I have found that slightly warmer cream turns into butter faster, just a little bit faster. So it's, it's worth it if you remember. So you're going to place this cream, um, into your food processor or your blender, whatever you're using. Uh, well that reminds me, I didn't mention that earlier. You could do this in a blender as well. Um, food processor blender or a stand mixer. It's important though that if you're using a processor or a blender, you don't fill it past the full line, like obey the rules when it comes to the butter equipment because otherwise you will slush it all over your kitchen and have a huge mess. Ask me how I know whatever. I have pushed the limits of the full line. The full line always wins. Funding how that works. Anyway, you're going to turn on the machine usually on high speed and now you get to watch, and this is the fun part. The cream is going to go through several different stages before it finally turns into butter. So first off, it's gonna thicken, then it's going to turn into whipped cream. Then you keep going with that whip cream. It kind of gets chunky and you're like, Hmm, this is isn't quite as appetizing as I was when it was regular whipped cream. And finally it'll go from chunky whipped cream and it will break. And when we say it breaks, what we're referring to is when the yellow butterfat separates itself out from the buttermilk. So you're going to see little clumps of yellow fat and you're going to see this clear, not clear, maybe more of an opaque white thin liquid. And that's the buttermilk. So we're going to, when we get to that point, we're going to pull out as much of that buttermilk as we can. Put a nit jar, save it for later. You can use it to make pancakes or biscuits or waffles. Don't throw it away. But now we have these little butter curd things, these little clouds of butterfat, and we need to wash them. We're going to actually try to get out as much of the buttermilk as possible, and this is going to help the butter be more firm. And it's also gonna help it not spoil as quickly. So here's how I like to do this. It's really low tech. It takes a little clumps of butterfat. They're kind of separated at this point. I get out as much a buttermilk as possible, strain it out and stick the butterfat clumps into a bowl and then I add a cup or two of very cold water, usually just run it under my faucet. Then I take a wooden spoon or a butter paddle, which is a little wooden tool designed specifically for this purpose. And I'm just going to press it and just kind of need it. Press it with that butter paddle in that cold water. As you do this, you're going to see the water get cloudy, which is just it. The butter is releasing more buttermilk and so you're, you're press the little while. Can I get that butter to stick together, strain off the cloudy water and add fresh water, more cold water, and do this, uh, I dunno three or four times until you're pressing that butter, see that Butterball and it's staying clear. The water's pretty much clear. Now at this point, you can mix in some salt to taste. I just use a fine sea salt and I just think salted butter it, it lasts a little bit longer and it just tastes better because everything tastes better with salt. Just brings out the flavor more and that's it. It's literally that easy. Once you have all the buttermilk out, you can wrap it up tightly in an airtight container or in a little bit of plastic wrap. You can form it into a wog or a ball or put it in a butter bell. You have one of those and you can either use it right away. You can store it in your fridge for a couple of days or you can stick it in the freezer for a couple months in the last a really long time. Now at this point, before you refrigerate it, it's really fun to add in some herbs, so if you were making some special butter for a holiday meal, you can add in some, some dried or fresh herbs, massage, or need those in, not massage on me. I say no. Need them in to that to the freshly made butter and then roll it into a log in and refrigerate it. It's fantastic. You could also add a little bit of cinnamon sugar if you want to do the cinnamon sugar butter thing and super simple, super impressive. Now if you did want to take the cultured butter route, the process is basically identical to the sweet queen cream process, but all you do is culture the cream first. So you just add a little bit of starter culture into your cream. It can be raw or pasteurized. The starter culture I use is mesophilic culture and you let it sour for 24 to 48 hours until it's thickened and it has that really pleasant sour smell and it's ready to go. You just turn it into butter and that's it. Super simple and you have a little bit of probiotic goodness in there as well. So all that to say butter is so easy and so rewarding. And if there's one homemade dairy product that you try first, I would say this is the one, this is the one that is not only going to get the most oohs and aahs from your family, it tastes so dang good. You're going to be wanting to do a bash at least every week and you don't even have to have a milk cow to make it happen. So as you saw, it doesn't take much special equipment at all to do this. You just get a culture if you'd like, you can get some butter paddles just to make it a little easier. And that is it. Now I have partnered up with my favorite dairy supply company. They're called new England cheese making supply and I have put my butter recipe along with a couple of my other very, very simple home dairy recipes in a principle PDF for you. So if you go to the Prairie homestead.com/cheese you get the recipe, you get info on my favorite cultures and I threw a little discount code in there for you as well. And that is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you hanging out with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be so grateful if you'd take just a second and pop over to your favorite podcast player and leave a little review, and that's it for now. I can't wait to hang out with you on the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast.