Making Butter

This post on how to make butter is part of the Pantry Revamp series here on Little Homesteaders.  To read more about it, check out the first post here.  To read all the posts in the series, click the “pantry revamp” label to the right.

If you’ve been reading this blog at all for the past few months, you know that I’m trying to make more things at home, from scratch.  And when I learned where butter REALLY comes from, I decided to give homemade butter a try in my little kitchen. Here’s how it went down.

Pretty Simple.  You just need two ingredients – kosher salt and heavy cream.
We started with the mason jar and shaking technique.  Pour your cream into the mason jar and add a pinch of kosher salt.
Then shake it…and shake it… and shake it.  Then shake it some more.
Then, when not a whole lot is happening and everyone gets bored with shaking – pour it into a mixing bowl and get out the beaters (even better if you have a Kitchen Aid).
Eventually (and we’re talking like 5 minutes or more), your solids (the butter) will start to separate from your liquids (the buttermilk).
Pour the liquid off and what you’re left with is the butter.  Try and squeeze as much of the buttermilk out the butter as you can, so that it will keep longer.  Use the buttermilk in baking (pancakes!) and use the butter on everything else. :)

 

Will I do this again?  Probably not.  It was quite a bit of effort and doesn’t save money.  It was fun to show the kids (and myself) where butter comes from and if I had my own cow, I suppose I would do this on the regular.  But until then, I think I’ll just keep buying the butter.