Making Butter

Butter-making was one of those things that I knew was supposed to be pretty easy, but I never bothered trying it, because, well....why should I?

But then I started getting raw milk and cream directly from the farm I bought herd-shares from. All of a sudden, I actually had a REASON to learn this supposedly simple process, because whatever I made was going to be better than whatever I could buy.

So, I learned. I looked stuff up online, got the general idea, then dove in. And by golly, it WAS simple. I'm not saying it's not work, because it is. And I'm not saying that I didn't have difficulties, because I did. But I figured it out, and I'll pass on what I learned to you.


I'll be showing you by using a quart of cream, and my Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the wire whisk attachment. If you don't have one, you can use anything else that you would use to make whipped cream. I've heard of people using their blender or food processor to make their butter, or even shaking in a large jar with a marble plunked in for agitation.


I like to leave the cream out for a few hours to bring it to room temperature. It takes a lot longer to come to butter if the cream is cold, so the forethought is worth it.
Dump the cream into the bowl, put it in the mixer, and start whipping it. I don't have a splatter guard for my mixer, so I drape a towel over the top to keep the splashy cream contained.


Basically, you're going to make whipped cream, and then keep going. First it will get all fluffy and white.


Then it will start to turn yellow.


Then it will start to look thick and buttery. DO NOT BE FOOLED. This is not yet butter! Turn the mixer to a lower speed now, but keep going!


You'll know that you have reached the butter stage when it separates into two distinct parts: clumps of butter, and liquid buttermilk that the butter will be sloshing around in. This is why you turn the speed down - if you keep it going on cream-whipping speed, you'll end up sloshing everything all over the place!


Line a mesh strainer with a clean cloth (mine are just flour sack towels from Walmart) and place over a bowl. Pour the butter/buttermilk glop into the strainer and let the buttermilk drain from it. You don't have to collect the buttermilk, but I like to use it for the liquid in my breadmaking, so I do.


Once it's all drained, I take it to the sink and run COLD water over it to rinse.
Use your hand to move the butter clumps around. The object is to rinse off as much trapped buttermilk as you can, as buttermilk remaining will cause your butter to sour or taste cheesy faster.


Once satisfactorily rinsed (or once your hand is so dang cold you can't think straight,) gather up the cloth around the butter and use it to squeeze it all together, squeezing out as much of the remaining buttermilk and rinse water in the process.


Plunk your ball of butter on a wooden board.


While I was waiting for the buttermilk to drain out of my butter earlier, I washed out the mixer bowl, and then set my "butter pats" (a bamboo spoon and a bamboo rice paddle, which is what I had in my kitchen that I figured would work) in to soak in some cold water. Soaking them keeps the butter from sticking to them once you start working the butter.


Take a soaked spoon, and smash the butter out kind of flat. It will be curdy and SEEM dry. Don't believe it, it is not. At this point, I add salt, because if I wait longer, I forget, and then get mad because I have to work the butter around AGAIN to distribute it evenly. So I sprinkle about 1/2 - 3/4 tsp of sea salt (I use Redmond's Real Salt) over the top, and then jam all the butter back into a pile on the board with the spoons.


Keep squishing the butter out into a flat layer, and then glopping it back into the middle of the board again.
You will notice, as you are squooshing the butter out flat, that liquid will get forced out of it and will pool on the board and in low spots in the surface of the butter.


So, after you get it flattened out good, tip the board to let the liquid run off. I keep a dish towel under my board to collect the runoff.


Keep doing this until the output of buttermilk/rinse water slows down considerably. Now you're ready to shape your butter.

Use your spoons to work the butter into whatever shape you want for storage. You can pack it into a container, or scooch it into a rectangle, or roll it into a cylinder.


Now all you need to do is plunk your block of butter onto a piece of waxed paper, cut it into portions if you like, and then wrap and store in the fridge or freezer.
I usually get about 3/4 lb. of butter from a quart of cream, so I cut my rectangle of butter into three equal-ish pieces to make quarter-pound sticks.


And there you have it. Butter from start to finish. If you give it a try, I'd love to hear about it.


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