Butter, what a wonderful gift! Do you know how to make butter? If not, I will walk you through the process step by step and link a video below. Butter truly is a gift. You take some cream from milk and turn it into something completely different. The result is smooth, creamy deliciousness that literally melts in your mouth.
How to Make Butter: Pitstop
Before we actually get started learning how to make butter, allow me to take just a moment and offer you some resources to learn about healthy butter. There is SO much I could say about butter. Sadly, butter, real true butter, seems to be controversial. I don’t want to get off on that debate, so again please refer to the links and know that I have firsthand experience watching my husband’s lab work only improve with each passing year of eating how God intended, which includes unlimited raw milk, unlimited REAL butter, unlimited backyard farm eggs, organic free-range pork, pastured grass-fed beef, and so on. The doctors are truly impressed and confused as to how his numbers are abnormally perfect when he eats like that and high cholesterol runs in his family as does heart problems. I think the difference is not in what exactly we eat, but HOW what we eat was raised. The organic, free-range pork we eat is different than what you buy in the store. Ours is full of omega 3s while the store’s has higher levels of omega 6s. The raw milk we buy is full of life and vitamins as it is not pasteurized. We have been buying raw milk for 13+ years now. Looks like I’ve said enough, here are the links to learn more if you’re interested.
The Raw Milk Institute is a wealth of information. Just look through the first page on that link before clicking any link of that page. It’s fascinating.
I did find this article on why humans drink milk interesting.
Some might enjoy this article on two types of milk where it compares raw and pasteurized milk.
If you’re interested in reading more articles about raw milk, see what Bartlett Farms has written on the topic.
One last fascinating thing I want to add is that RAW milk (uncontaminated) does NOT go bad! Isn’t that incredible? It does not go bad, it only turns…into something else. It will sour yes, but it’s still beneficial to your gut health. It only turns into something else. What a wonderful creator God is!
All right, let’s make butter!
How to Make Butter: Step 1 Gather Your Supplies
The first step to make butter is to get some cream and gather your supplies. Yes, you can make butter with store bought pasteurized cream, but I only use cream from raw cow’s milk and no, I have never made butter from goat’s milk.
You will need:
cream
clean ladle
*clean food processor
clean large bowl
clean strainer
salt, optional
fresh cold water
clean hands
*You can make this by simply shaking the cream in a jar by hand, and while you can use a mixer such as a stand mixer, I highly recommend a food processor. In my stand mixer, cream and milk was thrown everywhere even when covered by a towel. My Ninja blender is too powerful, I guess, as it doesn’t seem to work too well at turning the cream into butter, plus my Ninja is SOOO loud! I have found the food processor to be the absolute less messy, less noisy, easiest, and fastest way to make butter. I have a cheaper Oster brand food processor, nothing fancy.
How to Make Butter: Step 2 Prepare
Now that you have all your supplies clean and ready to go, use your ladle to gently scoop out the cream from the jar and place into your food processor bowl and only fill half full. If you don’t see a cream line on your raw milk, let the milk sit for a while to allow the cream to rise to the top. You may be able to pour the cream off slowly instead of using a ladle. Either way, just try to get only the cream and as little milk as possible. Be sure and ask your local raw milk supplier to leave the cream for you as some will remove the cream. Allow the cream to flow into the ladle on its own. Once you get towards the end of the cream, take your ladle, at an angle, and gently move the ladle around the jar against the glass wall to allow any extra cream to fill the ladle.
Something to note, now this is a personal preference, but in case you’re like us, I wanted to put this out there. We love cream mixed in with our drinking milk. We shake the jar up to incorporate the cream into the milk each and every time before pouring us a glass of cold deliciousness. However, if we remove ALL the cream, then the milk is…obviously not as creamy. So, we tend to remove half of the cream from each jar and leave the other half to shake into the milk. If I do remove all of the cream from a jar then we will go ahead and drink the milk, but I will also use that jar to make our homemade yogurt or allow it to separate into curds and whey. Those are articles for another time.
How to Make Butter: Step 3 Start Churning
To make butter, after getting your cream into the bowl of your food processor, place the lid on then turn the processor on; I use the low-speed setting on my processor. Depending on the temperature of your cream, to turn this cream into butter may take 5-20 minutes. Please note that depending on what appliance you use will also affect the amount of time it takes. Shaking by hand will take much longer than a food processor. A hand mixer will take much longer than a food processor but less time that shaking by hand and so on.
During the butter making process, the cream will change in texture. The first stage is it may begin to get frothy and then thicken and turn into whipped cream. Notice the different textures in the pictures below. The third picture is where the milk fat (soon to be finished butter) and the buttermilk has separated and is ready to strain.
How to Make Butter: Step 4 Straining
Once the buttermilk has separated from the milk fat to where the milk fat collects together into yellow chunks like is pictured above, it is time to strain off the liquid.
Now pay attention here. See the picture where I am using a strainer to strain off the liquid? I am NOT discarding that liquid, it is being caught in a bowl below the strainer. KEEP this liquid. This liquid is buttermilk also known as a sweet buttermilk (no sugar taste though) however it is NOT cultured or fermented buttermilk; it is not sour and it cannot be used as a leavening in baking. You can use it as a type of skim milk. You can drink it although it’s not very flavorful in my opinion, you can bake with it just not as cultured buttermilk, you can add it in smoothies or whatever you wish to do or try. Now that you have removed the liquid, place your butter into a large bowl and fill with cold fresh water. I just use tap water from our well. Immediately, you’ll see the water will be milky colored. Once the butter is covered with water, begin washing the butter. I’m sorry but I have to say it, no soap…please. I love Amelia Bedelia don’t you?
How to Make Butter: Step 5 Washing the Butter
Step 5 when you make butter is to wash your butter. You will only use fresh cold water to wash your butter, and it may take 3-5 washings, I find 4 times sometimes 5 is just right. The goal of washing the butter is to remove all the buttermilk until the water is clear. Leaving buttermilk in the butter can cause the butter to go rancid.
Notice in the photos above how I grab and squeeze the butter, and I also fold it and somewhat knead it like when I knead bread. Speaking of which, here’s an article on bread making. We want to do this squeezing and kneading procedure a few times then we will strain off the milky colored water and repeat the process with fresh cold water.
As you can see from the photos above the water is now clear. It took 4 washings. This entire process of washing the butter only takes about 5 minutes…maybe. Remember, cold water, squeeze, knead, repeat, strain, and repeat until the water is clear. Once my washing water is clear, I then like to use a paper towel and pat off the excess water from the butter.
How to Make Butter: Step 6 Flavor Your Butter
When you make butter, you are free to customize it to suit your tastes. While you can add salt to the cream prior to churning, I prefer to save the salt until after I’ve washed it. You can salt or leave the salt out if you wish. Salt it to suit your taste, start off with 1/4 tsp., knead it in, taste, and add more if needed. About 3/4 tsp. for 4 cups of cream may be just fine, I just eyeball it. You may also choose to add some honey or garlic or herbs and spices to customize your butter. The sky is the limit. Have fun and experiment to see what you and your family likes.
How to Make Butter: Step 7 Shaping
Now that you have flavored your butter, if you chose to, it is time to place it into a container to shape it. However, you can just leave it in a ball in a bowl if you want. There is no right or wrong way to do this step. I have a butter dish that I want my homemade butter to fit into, so I found a Tupperware container just the right size. I lined the container with wax or parchment paper and pressed my finished butter into the container. Then I simply placed the container in the freezer for a couple hours until the butter is firm enough to cut into sticks, but not frozen solid. Once I have cut my butter into the right size sticks then I wrap each stick up in parchment paper and store in a freezer bag back in the freezer until needed.
How to Make Butter: Step 8 Storage
Once you make butter, your final step will be storing that butter properly. When I buy store bought REAL butter, I actually store it, one stick at a time, on the counter. The rest is in the freezer or fridge until needed. Here’s what I found about leaving real butter out on the counter, which is what I have been doing for 13+ years now. I have also converted several others to not only switching over to real butter but also leaving it out and everyone loves it and no one has gotten sick yet. Here’s the details on how to do that without it going bad.
- Do NOT place your butter container in direct sunlight. If moisture gets on the butter such as through condensation, it can mold.
- ALWAYS use a CLEAN, DRY knife when getting butter from your butter dish. Do NOT use the same knife and go between butter and jelly or something else.
- Keep the butter dish closed when not in use.
- The bottom line is to keep out moisture, sunlight, food crumbs, and use only clean hands and tools when accessing the butter.
Now that is for store bought butter, but what about homemade butter. Here’s the thing with that. The same rules apply; however, I have noticed that when left sitting on the counter, the taste does change subtly. This is most likely due to the homemade butter still containing more moisture or buttermilk inside than the store-bought stuff. We just don’t have the equipment to measure moisture content and everything like they do commercially. It’s ok though, either follow the principles above or simply store a stick or two of your homemade butter in the fridge and leave the rest in the freezer until you’re ready to use. I do recommend to store your homemade butter in the fridge or only for short times on the counter just to deter it from going rancid especially if you don’t go through butter quickly.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
-If your cream doesn’t want to turn into butter perhaps the cream is too cold. It can take longer for cold cream to turn to butter than room temp cream. So consider setting your cream on the counter and allowing it to come to room temp.
-Even though the cream can turn into butter faster if it’s closer to room temperature, also know that if it’s too warm especially if the kitchen is overly warm like you’re baking bread in the summer and the food processor has been going for some time, it is possible the cream will simply be too warm and will not break or separate from the liquid.
-Another cause could be perhaps the fat content in the cream isn’t quite high enough.
-Also make sure you’re not filling the food processor too full. I find about half full is just right.
DIFFERENT BUTTERMILKS:
Cultured Buttermilk vs. Sweet Buttermilk
Cultured or fermented buttermilk is made by one of two ways. 1) if using raw cream, you can leave the cream out on the counter for a day or two until it naturally cultures or ferments and becomes a bit sour or tangy. Then you use this fermented cream to make cultured butter and the strained off liquid will be naturally cultured buttermilk that you can use as a leavening agent in baking. Please note, you cannot allow pasteurized cream to naturally culture on the counter. It will only rot or spoil since all the good bacteria in it that would cause it to naturally culture has been killed through the pasteurization process. You MUST inoculate pasteurized cream with a cultured product.
2) you can use just a bit of store-bought cultured buttermilk to culture your raw cream or store bought cream then turn the cultured cream into cultured butter and the strained off liquid will be cultured buttermilk, which again can be used a leavening agent in baking.
Cultured buttermilk just means it has probiotics in it and is good for gut health.
Sweet Buttermilk is not sweet, like sugar, by any means. Sweet simply means the opposite of sour or cultured. It just means the cream was not cultured or fermented whether naturally or by adding bacteria in before the butter making process began. This is what store bought real butter is when the package says sweet cream butter. The strained off liquid of sweet buttermilk will be somewhat like skim milk and can be used as regular skim milk.
NOTES:
-The varying shades of yellow to almost orange in cow’s milk and cream is dependent upon what they eat. The brighter yellow color shows they consumed more plants such as fresh grass that contained beta-carotene. Just know that you won’t get the beautiful yellow golden color from store bought cream.
-Also when it comes to the color of the milk and cream and ultimately the butter, it is said that not only does it depend on what the cow ate but also the breed of cow. They say that Holsteins produce more white cream while Jersey and others produce more yellow cream.
-You’ll see in this post that I did not include an amount of cream to use. Simply use however much cream you have, but I suggest especially if you’re new to making butter, to start with 2-4 cups of cream to learn the process before possibly wasting more cream if for some reason, it doesn’t work for you.
-A quart of cream will give just about 3/4 – 1 lb. of butter. My last batch gave me 13.3 oz. of finished butter from 4 c. cream.
-I use the metal blade in my food processor, you can use the plastic dough blade if it will stay down and not float up the shaft.
What I Use:
SALT: I use Redmond Real Salt simply because that’s what I use for most everything. I like that it has minerals in it as well. However, when making butter, you can use regular table salt.
FOOD PROCESSOR: I have the more affordable Oster brand of food processor, and that’s what I use. I haven’t had it for very long, and I have never had a need for it as I’m more of a hands-on person in that I actually enjoy chopping and dicing produce, but my husband got me this processor thinking it’d make my job easier on some things, we’ll see. I have found that when it comes to making butter, it definitely is the way to go.
CREAM: We use raw cream from raw milk produced by local grass fed and pastured cows. When it comes to health, it has been shown that grass fed and pastured cattle just like hogs have higher omega 3s and less omega 6s than their CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) counterparts. I did write a bit on this topic in my How to Render Lard article. The bottom line is naturally raised animals are healthier, and in turn healthier for us to consume, than commercially raised animals. What we eat matters, like the old saying goes, you are what you eat.
