Homemade Butter

Homemade butter. It sounds old fashioned, hard and like it needs special equipment doesn’t it? Like how does one make their own butter? Isn’t that for specially trained butter making people? Doesn’t it take ages to do?

Nope! It’s so easy ( I feel almost silly writing a post on it) and it’s actually pretty quick.

I love this process, I find it so satisfying and you actually end up with two products at the end of it. You get gorgeous, soft, fresh butter and you get buttermilk which is great for baking.

This butter isn’t cultured (I’ll do a post on that another time) so you can make it right away.

Butter is a great natural fat to cook with and let’s face it, everything tastes better with butter. Right? Especially when it’s freshly made.

This isn’t really a recipe as you only need one ingredient and it’s so simple. It’s more of a how to.

 

Ingredients –

Cream – organic or pasture raised. I used about 700ml which resulted in approximately 370gm of butter.

 

Method –

Pour your cream into a stand mixer and start mixing on low. Once it begins to thicken you can turn the speed up.

Keep mixing until the butter separates from the milk. This is such an easy recipe, you turn the mixer on and let it do its thing.

It’s very obvious when it’s ready. The fat will split and you will be left with a clump of butter and the liquid remaining will be buttermilk.

Pour out the buttermilk and put it aside. You can use this for so many things like in pancakes or pretty much any baking.

Now it’s time to wash your butter. Yep, it needs a nice cold bath.

Pour cold water over the butter – I live in a pretty cold part of Australia and it’s winter here so I can use water straight from the tap. If you live somewhere warmer then it’s a good idea to chill your water.

Start kneading the butter in the cold water. You’ll notice the water start to discolour. This is the remaining buttermilk. It’s very important to get as much out as possible as it’ll help your butter keep longer.

Drain the water and top up with fresh cold water and knead again. Continue this process until the water no longer becomes discoloured.

Now your butter is ready! Store in an airtight container and you’re good to go.

You can add salt if you like but I like to keep mine unsalted as it is so much more versatile.

This is the best on warm bread, like THE BEST. Dangerously so. You can sprinkle with some sea salt or mix with herbs.

Trust me, this won’t last long.