We’ve never made butter before but after reading about how easy it is, we thought we’d give it a try. It really was as fast and easy as everyone says. Even more ridiculously easy than making yogurt. We made it this morning, had some on toast with breakfast, and I still had time to write this blog post before work. Here’s how we did it. (Sorry for the blurry pictures. We did this first thing in the morning and our eyes were still too blurry to notice the lack of focus.)
1. Gather ingredients (cream) and equipment (quart canning jar and lid). We used cream from Kilgus farm (63 miles away) bought at the food co-op.
2. Let milk sit until warm. We put it out right before bed and made the butter first thing in the morning.
3. Put milk in canning jar.
3. Shake jar until butter forms.
4. Pour off buttermilk (the liquid). You can use this in any recipe that calls for buttermilk. Buttermilk biscuits anyone?
5. Add some cold water and use the back of a spoon to press out more buttermilk.
6. Pour off liquid. We didn’t keep this since it’s watered down.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until the liquid remains clear.
8. Add salt if desired.
9. Chill and eat. (Or spread some on toast immediately – which is what we did.)
Expect to get half the original cream volume in butter and half in buttermilk. We had a pint of cream and got about a cup of butter and a cup of buttermilk. Making butter really was as easy as everyone promised which is nice since we don’t currently have a source of local butter but we can get local cream.