Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Homemade Butter



                                                                              
While we're on the subject of homemade cornbread, then we will want a delicious homemade butter made from raw cow's milk. I belong to a herdshare and get 2 gallons of raw milk each week. The rich cream from my Jersey cow rises to the top and I am then able to skim it off. When I want to make butter, I put the milk in wide-mouth Mason jars for ease of skimming the cream. Jerseys give good, rich milk, with yellowish milk in the early spring/summer. The rich butter fat is very good for you. The girls hate it when I make butter because they like the richness of the milk with the cream left intact.

Homemade Butter

Wait a few days after milking to skim your cream. The older the cream, the easier it is to make into butter. Because I like sweet cream butter, I use the cream two to three days after the cow has been milked.
Skim all the cream you can from the top of your milk. With two gallons of milk I easily get around a half pound of butter. I cheat and use my Kitchen-Aid mixer, which does all the work for me.
Place the cream in the mixing bowl and place the beater in the bowl. Turn on to medium and allow to whip the cream. This process takes about 1 hour or so before butter appears. About a half hour into beating, you will end up with whipped cream. If you want the whipped cream, add some powdered sugar, to taste, and some vanilla, then remove and use with your desserts. If you want butter, keep beating. You will see small butter pieces start to form on sides of bowl, with a rubber spatula, push these back into the bowl. You will still have another 10-20 minutes before you have butter. The butter will form all at once and then the buttermilk will begin to slosh out of the bowl, so watch carefully.
Once the butter is formed, turn off the mixer and scrape all butter out of the beater into a small glass bowl like you see above. Once all butter is formed and into bowl, pat together and begin to run under cold water so you can get all the milk out of the butter. If you don't get this out your butter will go rancid much faster.
The butter actually gets similar to putty under the water and I am able to use my hands to squeeze all the remaining milk from my butter. Place back in bowl, add some real sea salt, mix in well, and wrap well with plastic wrap. You can make it into a ball, a long cigar shape as I did above, or in a mold. Use like you would any other butter. There are special containers you can buy where the butter stays in water which extends the life of the butter. Because I use raw cream to make my butter, I keep it in the refrigerator.
The color is naturally very golden as grass-fed cow's milk is high in beta-carotene, as well as other vitamins and minerals.


3 comments:

  1. I have, but not for a couple of years or so. This butter was made from raw cream from raw butter.

    ReplyDelete