I was making macaroni yesterday, and after the shells were boiling, I realized we were completely out of butter. “We have cream,” said Laurie. “You could put a little of that in instead.”
But I had another idea. “Are you whipping the cream?” asked Laurie when she heard the whir of the hand mixer.
“Not exactly.”
“Are you making butter?”
“Yes.” I’d never done it before. The cream turned into beautiful whipped cream, then grainy overwhipped cream, and then a yellowish sludge. It stayed in the sludge stage for several minutes, when suddenly the beaters began splattering me with whey. I strained off the whey and squeezed the butter in a paper towel.
The homemade butter is good, a little better than supermarket butter and certainly more expensive. But it saved our macaroni, and there’s a small log of it left for other experiments today. I might even run out of butter again in the future, on purpose.
wow.
I am curious, how much cream did you use and how much butter did it yield?
Dana, it was about a cup and a half of cream and it yielded less than a stick of butter.
did you do that thing that they do in “little house on the prairie” where you press the butter into a mold with a strawberry shape in the top? man, i always wanted to do that.
what did you do with the whey?
I discarded the whey. I guess technically it was buttermilk and I should have kept it, but it wasn’t much. I did not make any cute molds. Next time!
When I was a camp counselor, the kids poured cream into small jars and then shook the jars until the cream turned into butter. Most kids lost interest after 30 seconds, but the persistent ones made real butter. They didn’t understand, though, why it didn’t taste like their (salted) butter from home.
I’ve made butter often. It’s fun, and fabulous. I’ve not yet been able to try it with soured, unpasteurized milk, since that is nearly impossible to get here in Michigan.
To get it to keep better, after the butter separates from the whey you have to mix it with water, and then press the water out (I use a bamboo rice paddle). Do this a couple of times to get all the whey out. It’s a bit of a pain since I think you have to do it by hand (at least I always have–I’ve never experimented with doing it by machine).
And add a pince of salt–no really, even “unsalted” butter has salt in it. Otherwise it tastes, well, a bit flat.
By the way, in this case the food processor works much better than the mixer.
The homemade butter is certainly more expensive than the commercial butter from the market, but it’s oodles fresher, and not more expensive than the expensive butters at the market.
One last thing–the homemade butter is–I believe, I’ve never tested it–much higher in fat than the commercial butter from the market. That’s why, I assume, it gets really rock hard in the fridge–as hard as regular butter gets in the freezer.
The buttermilk leftover makes the worlds best biscuits. It’s almost worth making just for the buttermilk.
And did you use grated carrot to color the butter? Heather and mamster, if either of you ever molds butter, I want to see pictures! (On behalf of all nitpickers, I’d like to point out that the memorable butter-making scene took place in Little House in the Big Woods, not Little House on the Prairie.)
That is totally funny!
completely awesome.
I’ve been told it’s not actually buttermilk unless you’ve allowed the cream to sit out and culture before making the (cultured) butter. There’s a good recipe for cultured butter at The Traveler’s Lunchbox:
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/2007/6/21/getting-some-culture.html
Try it. It’s easy and delicious, though a bit expensive to make at home. And yes, it does become as hard as frozen butter in the fridge, and because it has no preservatives it will eventually mold. If you don’t use much butter (as I don’t) put some in the freezer when you make it, or your expensive homemade butter will mold before you can use it all.
I did it as a science experiment with my 5th graders last year. They really enjoyed it – both the process and the flavor.
What did Iris think of it?
Nicole, Iris was mildly impressed, but today I offered her toast with homemade butter, and she said, “We should go to the store and get some regular butter.”
Did you salt your homemade butter? I can imagine it being a pretty fun project to make your own butter and add a smoked salt to use on corn on the cob or baked sweet potatoes.
Gawd – I think I better go make dinner! I’m starved.