After all the Christmas palavalava, I thought you might be ready for something simple and old fashioned. Nothing is simpler to make than butter. There is only one ingredient… CREAM! (And a touch of salt at the end if you want it to keep a bit longer.)
Butter – my favourite! My cream came straight from the cow. Yours can come from the supermarket. Try to avoid anything that says Ultra Pasteurised. You want Heavy cream, Whipping cream or Double cream or just plain CREAM. Depends which country you are living in.
Bring your cream up to room temperature first. This is important.
You can make butter in your Kitchen Aid or Food processor. I have done both with success, the only thing to watch for in the Mixer is that when the butter coagulates, the left over Buttermilk will fly all over your kitchen walls. So pay attention. The Food Processer works very well too, however do not overfill. Small amounts at a time. I will use my new Butter Churn. Here are the blades hanging to dry.
You can also make butter by half filling a jar with the cream. Put a tight lid on it and give it to someone else to shake. Some shakers add a marble to help beat it up! Kids in Kitchens love this!
You need to beat that cream until it begins to seperate, then beat a wee bit more. Here are the stages to watch out for. 
Whipped cream. Keep beating or shaking. Get your finger out of there!
Not quite.
There. You can see that the butter is very seperate from the buttermilk. Now, strain through a cheese cloth. Keep the buttermilk for pancakes. 
Wrap the butter in the cheese cloth and wring it out, then while it is still in your cheesecloth rinse it in icy cold water, wringing it out as you go. 
Empty the butter into a small bowl, add a little running ice cold water and work with a fork, then pour the liquid out. Do this a few times. You are separating the butter from the liquid. The water helps you wash it out. This is why the water needs to be icy cold. If you want the butter to keep for more than a few days make sure you wash all the whey out of the butter. Add a few pinches of salt or none if you choose. (Though the salt also increases it’s shelf life.) Refrigerate.
Make sure you have a little freshly baked, home made bread and Voila!
This is a great way to introduce kids to fresh food and fun in the kitchen. They do especially like the shaking method, they just pass the jar on when their arms get tired!
Simple is good.
I will wish you Happy New Year tomorrow! We are not quite finished with this year yet. One more 2011 Farmy Day! Daisy is writing her New Years Resolutions. Hmm.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
95 responses to “Back to work you lot! How to make Butter at Home!”
I’m always a bit scared of butter but now I know how to make my own… and it’s so simple!! Happy New Year C have a fab one!! x
It is always a bonus to know what is on your food.. c
What a smooth way to end the year!
Well done Frank. c
Happy New Year to you Cecilia and please give my best to Daisy! 😉
All the best to you and yours Jed, Take care, see you soon on the interwebs.. c
I just LOOOOVE the photos! (How’d you know I’d be trying to sneak a finger full of whipped cream?)
I remember doing the ‘shake-butter’ with my kids…they thought it was so much fun!
I had to force myself not to take a quick taste until after the shot!!! c
I always remember we used the jam jar method one day, some years back, in primary school. Great fun!
Yum! Ready to give this a try 🙂
Brilliant butter tutorial…yum indeed! Bring on the hot bread!
absolutely!! c
I will definitely be trying this butter recipe!!! Thanks so much! And My John makes the most fabulous homemade bread! My only worry about it is putting on the pounds!!! Have a fabulous New Year Cecilia!!! Sure hope we see you and Our John on our farm in the new year!!! xoxoxo
I truly believe that if you eat some good food and run around the farm all day after all those animals you have you won’t put on the pounds.. it is when you eat TOO MUCH that you put on the pounds.. Have a great big New Year,, I will find you sometime in 2012 .. i really hope so.. c
Ooh another gorgeous bowl C!
Loved reading about making butter – I would never have thought to bring the cream to room temperature first though.
Have a fantastic 2012!
🙂 Mandy
The room temp tip is from the old people, and it seems to me I get more butter when I follow that rule..thanks mandy.. c
yummy! (and i’m making homemade from scratch breads now – we should collaborate!)
Home made bread is the best, I never eat store bought.. good for you! c
Your butter just looks delicious! What goodness to spread on bread!
it is, Next i am going to try making pastry with home made butter.. c
[…] out for me on this subject. The first being my friend, Celi, at her down-home-on-the-farmy blog The Kitchen’s Garden. The second is the Barker Brothers on Channel 4. They made butter last week, and managed to look […]
[…] making butter at home but Celi did such a good job with it that I’ll just send you to her kitchen’s garden for a look-see. So, having already shared the ricotta recipe and with the butter instructions […]
I remember over beating the whipping cream as a child, resulting in butter! I haven’t made it intentionally in years, but may have to do the math on it. Butter is generally quite expensive in Canada, often costing cost to $7.00 for a pound. How much cream did you use and how much butter does that make?
Seven dollars a pound. Oh dear. I will make butter again soon and measure it and get back to you. I usually just use whatever I have saved. It depends on the milking how much cream/butter I get. At the moment the cow whose milk I use is not making a lot of cream so I am not making a lot of butter. When I start milking Daisy in May she will be on good pasture and her milk will be creamier I hope! Lovely to see you Eva! c
I just returned from Denmark, where they’ve slapped a Fat Tax on butter, thereby making it so expensive that a lot of people can’t afford to buy it anymore. So now they buy that weird-plastic-chemical-margarine stuff instead, which is about 1/4 the price of butter.
And then they all wonder why there is a rise in autism and diabetes! Butter is not bad! Why would they do that?.. Who has decided that chemicals are better for the body that pure food! so sad.. so sad.. butter is very expensive in NZ too.. c
It’s not just butter. It’s also milk, cream, cheese, sausages, crisps, chips, beef, bacon, sweets, cakes, biccies, sugary drinks (and Coke, etc) etc., etc., …. anything high in saturated fat or sugar now has a new tax levied on it to make people think twice about whether its price is worth the cost. Is it a bad thing? I admit to having mixed feelings about it, Celi, particularly when I see toddlers with their little hands and faces sticky with sugar.
In that case it is probably a sensible tax if it is also hitting the plastic foods, like taxing cigarettes and alcohol, but how did milk and cheese and beef get mixed up with sweets, coke, sugary drinks and crisps and the like. Surely one lot are real old fashioned foods and another lot contain chemical created pretend foods designed since the 50’s .. What are these people eating? presumably the vegetables are safe? We need to find out who are the lobbies behind these taxes. there is always money involved.. c
The Danes are eating what they’ve always eaten (very healthy!), and they bicycle everywhere just as they’ve always done. This is Denmark; this is about tax and revenue, not lobbies, not corporations. Most Danes suspect that diary and beef and processed meat products were included to inch up revenue … although good Danish cheese has a fat% content of between 35-53%, and it’s often eaten daily. Give it a few years, and I suspect that most of Europe will have a similar tax – it’s a great revenue churner. Pun intended. 😉
All about the money then.. (sigh) .. good to have this conversation with you misky, i learnt stuff, i love to learn stuff! but sometimes it is sad to know it.. if only people could grow their own food.. c