Photo essay / tutorial on how to make butter

My family eats a mostly traditional food diet. Mostly organic, but not 100%. Mostly meat grown by a friend of ours who has a wonderful grass fed meat CSA www.chestnutfarms.org – and we are raising our own poultry this year, but still strive for 100% “healthy” meat. I have begun roasting my own meats for the kids to slice for sandwiches at school, and have found some recipes for homemade salami, so we are getting there. And mostly raw milk, but not 100% as I am still learning cheese making. I have made some great cheeses, and cheddar is next. My stepkid’s Mom has been very tolerant of this weirdness and I’m grateful that she’s been so understanding in this regard. I hope she knows I am going to these extreme efforts for the health of her children as well as the health and longevity of everyone who eats under our roof. We are strong Weston A. Price followers and believe this is how the Lord has designed our bodies to function at their best.

In any case, this is my first informational blog. I hope it is a clear picture tutorial on how I make butter. I culture my butter, but you can leave this step out and just make sweet cream butter instead. Please forgive the format, I am still learning how to use this blog format and when I enter it, it is formatted in an easy to follow manner. When I post it, the pictures move around. I will try again when I am not so tired to get this right.

Materials needed:

-Crème fraiche to inoculate the cream

-Cream

-Food processor

-Cheesecloth

-Colander

-Large bowls (3)

-Very clean kitchen counters and sink

First step is to culture the cream. I put in a heaping tablespoon of crème fraiche (found in health food stores, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, etc) into a half gallon of cream. Stir it up good and get it all mixed up. Then just leave the cream on your counter. We use raw cream, but this can be done even with pasteurized cream. About 2-3 times a day, shake the jar and then loosen the lid to release any gas buildup. The cream is cultured when it is thick and you need a spoon to remove it. There is no set time for it to be done, if it’s very warm, it can happen in a half a day, if it’s cool, it may be 2-3 days before it’s finished. I know that in my house at 70 degrees, it takes 1 ½ days to be fully done.

You are now ready to make butter. First, put a colander over a large bowl, and line it with cheesecloth. Take out a rubber spatula, and have another large bowl ready in your clean sink with very cold water. Ice is not a bad thing to have in your water, but I don’t use it.

Now, empty the cream into your food processor so that it’s half filled. For my Kitchenaid, it takes a quart of cream at a time. I can process a half gallon at once, but it seems not to clump up the way I like and is harder to wash, so I just do a quart.

Turn your food processor on and wait. In my machine, it takes approximately 1-2 minutes from cream to butter. If you do it often enough, you’ll actually become good enough to hear when it changes to butter. It starts off sounding normal and then swishes (for lack of a better descriptor) and finally becomes a high pitched swish. If you’re watching it, you’ll first see the sides of the processor bowl showing little tapioca sized pieces of butter rubbing against the sides. This is the first sound change. Then you’ll notice the entire bowl seems to be moving as one big lump, this is the second sound change. At either of these stages, you can stop it and proceed to step 2. I prefer to let it go all the way to the end as it’s easier to pour off the buttermilk and to wash it if the butter is more clumpy. If you let it go too long, it will become more like cream again, only greasier, so stop it once it’s clumped up well.

Put the butter into the cheesecloth lined colander, and if you are impatient like I am, you can gently squeeze the butter to drain the buttermilk. You can move on to your second batch now if you are making more, or move on to washing.

Next come the washing step. When you have squeezed all of the buttermilk into the bowl, you put the lump of butter into the very cold wash water. Simply squeeze the butter in the water until it looks very cloudy and nothing else seems to come out. I save this first wash water and call it “dog water,” although the chickens also really enjoy it. Either way, it’s healthy and full of active cultures.

Then I simply wash the butter under running water until it runs clear. It’s important to wash out all of the buttermilk or else your butter won’t last as long, and can mold if left out on the counter. When you think the buttermilk is all gone, wash it once more for good measure.

What I do from here is I package it up into 4 oz packages each, which is equivalent to a stick of butter from the store. I put four of these into a freezer bag, which is a pound of butter, and freeze it. We do all of our spring butter this way to last throughout the year. It’s the early spring cream from the cows eating the quick growing grass that has the most color and vitamins, so yes, butter can be a health food.

The buttermilk can also be frozen and is wonderful not only in cooking, but in smoothies. Mix some strawberries, bananas, a little maple syrup and the buttermilk – umm, yummy!