This past Wednesday evening my husband and I decided to try our hand at making Home made butter.
Now in the beginning, I was definitely not "all in". Chris's suggestion at making butter was met with a scrunched up nose and a impolite "no way". I mean, I'm a dietitian after all, why would I want to spend the next however many hours churning away making something like that???
But alas, I gave in. It would be fun to try something new right?
We headed to Birkdale Village a small outdoor mall/shopping area outside of Charlotte NC. The adventure really began here folks. It was the night before thanksgiving and the driving was some of the most aggressive Ive seen. But we made it.
We headed over to William and Sonoma to see what they had in the areas of butter making(we also wanted to look at some of the cheese making kits and the new Starbucks barista machine). Don't you know they were closed early for the Holiday. We were on our own.
Within minutes Chris brought up a recipe for making butter on his phone and before I knew it we were off again to the store.
Heavy Whipping Cream. That was the only thing we needed. I couldn't believe that was the only ingredient. We brought it home and pulled out the Kitchen Aid mixer. We had to let the liquid sit to room temperature (we actually only let it sit about half hour before we started the "churning".
We poured the Heavy Whipping Cream into the bowl and attached the whisk. We switched the lever to "on" and away it went.
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| Liquid |
After a few minutes the liquid became like whipped cream but a bit thicker.
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| Whipped Cream |
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| Whipped Butter |
Then it was much thicker and reminded me of the butter balls they send out with Italian bread in restaurants. I was tempted to add some garlic or herbs here but we decided against it because it was a first time recipe.
(if you can't already tell, as soon as we started the butter making I jumped on board with the butter project and my earlier inhibition was gone)
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| Butter and Butter Milk |
Then before we knew it (in actuality we did know it was going to happen but we thought it would take longer) the butter separated from the liquid and we were left with liquid butter milk on the bottom of the pan and THE REAL THING (butter duh) in the whisk! Here the recipe we used made sure to point out that you needed to keep mixing to make sure all the moisture was out of the butter before storing it or the shelf life/fridge life would be short.
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| Dry off Butter |
We took the butter out of the whisk and did a pat dry to get the rest of the liquid out. Some of the recipes we looked at called for strainers or cloths but we had neither and this worked just fine.
Speaking of recipes, we looked at many for this. Some called for a blender, some called for washing the butter off after the butter milk separation, and some called for doing the entire butter making process by hand.
We ended up using most of the recipe from organicgarden.com
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| The Finished Product BUTTER |
Finally here it is, the finished product.
After the pat dry (which only took a minute or two) we molded the butter into the dish and covered it with cling wrap to put in the fridge.
I don't know why, but I was surprised when I tasted a piece and it actually tasted like butter.
After making this at home, I definitely think its worth it once or twice to make your own butter. It was fun and surprisingly easy.
Perhaps next time we have family or friends over we will make some again and put garlic or herbs in and see how the flavor changes.
Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!
