Homemade Butter
All you need to made delicious homemade butter is ONE ingredient! Heavy cream, whipping cream, heavy whipping cream – whatever you call it, that is all you need. Well that and a food processor or stand mixer (you can use a hand mixer but it’s pretty labor intensive). If you want salted butter than of course that would be a second ingredient.
What you end up with is soft, creamy and delicious homemade butter. It’s so much better than store bought for the same or less money, depending on the cost of cream and butter in your area. I know that where I live butter has gotten pretty pricey, nearly $6/lb for store brands. Anything high end is over $8/Lb. That’s just crazy to me.
I have both a stand mixer and a food processor. I prefer the food processor for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it contains the “mess” and secondly it’s pretty fast. By mess what I mean is that during the process of separating the butter from the milk, the buttermilk that is produced starts splashing out of the bowl and it can get pretty messy. By using a food processor with a lid, the mess is contained.
Once the butter has separated from the buttermilk, you simply strain off the buttermilk, gather the butter and rinse it very well under or in cold water (I like to use ice water) to remove any residual buttermilk by pressing and squeezing until the liquid is clear or there is no liquid coming out of the butter, then pat dry with paper towel to ensure there is no extra moisture. Too much buttermilk left in the butter will cause the butter to spoil faster. Then season your butter if you like and wrap it up and place it in your refrigerator until you want to use it. Put the buttermilk in a jar in your fridge as well.
The bottom line is homemade butter is simply heavy cream that has been whipped until it breaks down into two components, butter and buttermilk. It really doesn’t get much simpler than that. The buttermilk that you get can be used for baking or in place of skim milk, however it is not the cultured buttermilk that you get in the store. If you want to substitute it in recipes that call for buttermilk, you will have to add a bit of vinegar to sour it.
Homemade Butter
Equipment
- 1 food processor or mixer with whisk attachment
Ingredients
- 1 L Heavy cream You can also use heavy whipping cream or whipping cream
- ½ tsp salt (or to taste) Optional
Instructions
- Pour 1 L Heavy cream into the bowl of your food processor with the blade inside and put the lid on.
- Turn the processor on high and process until the cream separates and you see butter and buttermilk. If cream spatters along the sides you can stop and push it all down into the processor then return to processing it.
- Once you have butter and buttermilk you will need to rinse the butter in cold water to remove any remaining milk. To do this prepare a medium bowl with cold water (I like to add a few ice cubes to keep it cold while i rinse the butter).
- Strain the contents of the processor bowl with a sieve. Reserve the buttermilk in a bowl or jar and place in your refrigerator for another use. Take the butter solid and put it in the cold water and begin to squeeze it to remove any buttermilk. The water will become cloudy, change the water if necessary.
- Once you feel you have removed as much buttermilk from the butter as you can you can remove it to a paper towel and dry it, pressing down.
- If you want salted butter add it in at this time and knead it through the butter.
- Form the butter into a log or whatever desired shape you like, wrap in parchment paper and clear plastic and refrigerate or freeze for later use.
- if you want to make a flavored or compound butter, add whatever herbs etc. you want when you add the salt then proceed as before.
- You should end up with a slightly softer and creamier butter than store bought.