Home-Made Butter! (Dairy Odyssey: Part 1)
Posted on Feb 6, 2011 in Bread, Dairy, Food | 2 comments
Home-made butter
I can’t believe it’s butter! There’s nothing better than home-made butter, squished between your own hands. I keep asking my dad if I’m channeling some long-forgotten farmer ancestor, but all we can find in the family tree so far are military/engineers/professor/entrepreneurs/manufacturers (city folk mainly). No farmers in sight, so far.
Last week, I took a cheese making class taught by Linda Conroy of Moonwise Herbs. I first learned of this class from Sofya, but couldn’t fit it into my schedule to take this class at the Driftless Folk School. So I was really excited when I learned that this class is being offered a mere 10 minutes away from where I live, at Kanyakumari Ayurveda Center and I promptly signed up. Linda taught us to make butter, buttermilk (which is actually a byproduct of making butter), kefir, yogurt, mozzarella, and feta. It was a wonderful class and I was itching to make my own dairy products. But being home-bound for much of last week with an empty fridge prevented any DIY projects.
And today…. Finally! I got all the necessary supplies. Glass jars (turns out I had none), low-heat pasteurized cream (not ultra-pasteurized and somewhat harder to find), and some starter culture. Linda provided us with some of the culture during the class (piima culture) and that’s what I used.
*NOTE: There are more tips Linda provides in her class, so I highly recommend you take it. 
Or another class which supports your local community.
Ingredients:
1 pint heavy whipping cream (pasteurized, not “ultra-pasteurized”)
2TB culture
Steps:
1. In a glass jar (I used a wide-mouth quart jar) combine cream with the culture.
2. Let sit on your counter for about 24-48 hours. You want the consistency to be that of thicker sour cream.
3. Shake until you see the solids and liquids separate. This step took me about 5 minutes or so and I didn’t have to shake the jar very vigorously. (Just pretend it’s that shakeweight thing on TV, only more useful.) The solid is the butter and the liquid is the buttermilk.
4. Drain the buttermilk (and reserve for use where ever you use buttermilk) and rinse the butter in cold water. You might need to use a spatula or a spoon to squeeze more buttermilk out of the butter.
At this point, you’re done. If you’d like you can add herbs or salt or anything else to the butter. It looks like only a little bit of butter and a little bit of buttermilk, but I spilled some buttermilk on the counter (I’m a klutz sometimes) and lost some butter to transfer from containers and squishing and such).
Cultured Cream - consistency you're looking for
Solids and Liquids starting to separate for butter
Liquid separating into Butter and Buttermilk after about 5 minutes of shaking
Butter!
Butter and Buttermilk
Home-made butter on home-made whole wheat bread. I feel very domestic.
Poor baby, home -bound with no food in the fridge.
)))) Is it happening in United States?????
We need to change our president damn it.
Speaking of making butter, may be it was your military ancestor who liked to make butter and passed this gene to You.
Nah, my military ancestors passed on discipline and ability to make (sometimes difficult) decisions and they certainly didn’t make butter. LOL. Doubt their wives made butter too.
That’s all remedied now.
And no matter how you plan, sometimes plans don’t work out. See, I planned on going shopping on Sunday, but that’s the day I got sick and spent most of the following week home. It’s wonderful that I have family so close to where I live ’cause I got fresh, home-made food delivered to me. So I certainly wasn’t hungry. Just didn’t have as many options in my own kitchen.