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Thursday, May 12, 2011

How To Make Butter (using raw cream or not)

Start with about 1 - 1 1/2qts of raw cream. (I have heard that heavy whipping cream from the store can be used, though I have never tried it.) Put the cream in a large mixing bowl and beat it with an electric mixer on high till you see some butter forming. It will look like whipped cream at first (because that is what it is!!) but if you keep beating it, it will soon start to separate ... it will no longer be fluffy.

Here it looks fluffy like whipped cream.



Right when you see it start to change (see picture below - it will no longer be so fluffy like whipped cream), turn the beater speed down to the lowest speed it has. Scrape the sides of the bowl periodically.


As the milk separates out, it will splash up more and more. If you do not have a protection shield for your beater/mixer, hold up a towel or something else to protect you and your surroundings from having a shower of milk.


Here are a few more pictures as it progresses along.





After a while you'll notice it is not changing much. Dump the milk into a jar to save it (this is buttermilk ... great in pancakes, cakes, or whatever). Continue beating on low a little longer to get more milk out; pour off the milk and save.


Now you must wash the butter. Add about as much cold water to the butter as was buttermilk. Beat on low for a bit. Drain. Repeat.


All washed and ready to go. Next beat in some salt. Start with 1t and add more if desired.


The final step is pressing as much water out of it as you can. It works good to kept the butter in the mixing bowl and smash it over and over again against the side of the bowl while tipping the bowl at an angle so the water can drain down. Every so often you'll want to dump the water out so you can see how much new water is pooling.

Press the finished butter into a form or bowl of some kind, cover well and refrigerate. It can also be frozen for long-term storage. 1qt of cream will yield about 1 pound of butter and a pint of buttermilk. Enjoy!

12 comments:

  1. We love homemade butter. with it being just us 3 we do not make alot, but Son loves doing the ole jar routine lol

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  2. I was intrigued by the thought of using heavy whipping cream so I decided me and the children would try it. Well I was pleasantly surprised. It worked! And rather well, and I'm pretty sure it works out cheaper than buying butter, so until we have a source of raw milk we will probably be buying heavy whipping cream instead. The children loved doing this. Thanks.

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  3. So glad to have found your site! I just made butter today for the first time ever! And then, I found your site.......I am always surprised at these "God-incidences" and I don't know why? I look forward to going through your posts.
    God Bless!

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  4. So sorry Raedene - I never answered your question. Yes, I think this can be done in a blender but you must be careful about speed. You might have to do a little 'trial and error'.

    Thank you all for your comments. I would really like to have more posts for this blog but this summer has been really busy!! We have a post in the making but it's slow. :)

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  5. How long does the butter keep in the fridge? Thanks.

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  6. How long does it keep? Well ... I'm not sure! It does not last long enough for me to know. But a quick internet search might reveal the answer?

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  7. If you beat it in the sink it doesn't make suck a mess. Anytime I am mixing batters of any kind I plop the entire thing in the sink and rinse it out when it is done.

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  8. Well, er, this didn't work out for me. I think I used the wrong milk/cream? I thought that I could use "raw milk" which was unprocessed/unpastuerized/unhomogenized etc. We get our milk directly from a farm and not a store. So I used the cake mixer on it for 2 hours and I didn't get butter (well, 1.25 hours, then switched to a blender).

    Your post did not say how long the process takes, so I thought it just takes patience and I kept going. I probably would have stopped after 30 or 45 minutes but I DID see the raw milk changing into what looked like whipped cream. The top of it looked like whipped cream but the bottom never changed, although it did get a little thicker - into the consistency of "light whipping cream" that you can buy in a little carton at the supermarket.

    So after about an hour and 15 minutes I did switch to a blender. 10 minutes in the blender on low got me about 3-4 tablespoons of actual butter off the top, which I rinsed and salted. It was delicious. But the rest of the liquid - nothing happened. I then was exhausted so I threw the liquid away because I didn't know what it was at that point - cream? buttermilk? still milk? I didn't know. And besides, it was out at room temp for 2 hours while I worked on it so I didn't think it was too safe to drink anymore.

    Sometime throughout my process, my boyfriend gets home. I explain what is going on and ask him what to do. He didn't have any answer so I got mad. Not mad at him. But mad at the milk/liquid stuff.

    So he takes 2 of our 2qt mason jars with the raw milk in them and says he is going to show me a trick he learned while living on his parents' farm. He skimmed the thick liquid from the tops of the 2 jars, put it in a nice clean plastic protein shaker bottle and let it set about 20 min to room temp. He then picks up the shaker bottle and patiently shakes it for 30 minutes. He got about a cup or a cup and a half of butter, and he got 2 cups of buttermilk. Of course I scowled at him. LOL!

    So I guess I will use his method in the future. (Or make sure I am using actual CREAM)

    -The End

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  9. :) Maybe I should not have assumed everyone knew how to skim cream off of fresh milk?! Sorry about that!! But the experiences you went through will probably never be lost in your mind!

    We get raw milk from some amish people a few miles away. They are very generous and leave the cream. We let the jugs of milk sit in the fridge over night to make sure all the cream has settled to the top. The more fat in the milk, the bigger the layer of cream at the top. Skim the cream off, trying not to get any milk with it. This is what you use to make the butter.

    Glad you endured through it! Now you'll know what to do (and what not to do) next time. Thanks for sharing!

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  10. Hehe, that's ok, I should have looked it up before I started. In my house growing up, my mom and dad always bought store-bought pasteurized/homogenized milk. So there was never any layer of cream on top of that. Only this year have we started getting milk from a farm, so I am just now understanding the difference!

    But I hope that readers can learn from my error! That is the good that comes out of this. The learning experience for me and for others.

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