Is it worth it to make butter at home?
I have been recently re-evaluating my relationship fat. Particularly animal fats. America is so on a craze that we can’t have fat in our lives or it makes us fat. Nobody wants to eat full fat yogurt or milk etc. Of course that’s not true because humans have lived off of animal fats for centuries with better health than we’ve been experiencing. Since I’m a control freak, I wanted to see if I could take on the challenge of creating good quality butter without paying exorbitant prices. The question is if it’s actually worth it. Is it cheaper to do at home, is the flavor better, and is it worth the time?
You’ll need:
A sieve (next time I’ll use cheese cloth)
Cream
Some bowls
350 mL cold water
A mixer or stand mixer (can be done by shaking but I’m not sure how long that takes have a party and do it with a bunch of people)
To start you need good cream that hasn’t been ultra-pasteurized or you won’t end up with a good product. One pint of cream should yield about 8 oz or two sticks of butter. I ended up with a bit less but I think it was caught in my sieve as you’ll see.
There are a ton of methods to make butter, you can do it in a mason jar, using a stand or hand mixer like I did or some use a food processor. I’m not too fond of the idea of the last method simply because I think it would yield a product with a weaker structure if you’re using blades to try and get the fat to coalesce. As for the cream, I went with this brand by Natural by Nature. It’s certified organic and from grass fed cows.
I suggest that you start by putting whatever butter receptacle you choose to use in the freezer. Cold will help it come together faster. I left the bowl of my mixer in the freezer long enough to take a shower. I’d say 10 minutes is enough.
For a little info on cream: what we consider to be cream exists naturally in cow’s milk. What happens is that in un-homogenous milk the extra fat or cream sits on the top and can be skimmed off. So, this portion which is about 32%+ fat is skimmed off and the rest is what we consume as milk. I calculated this cream by Nature by Nature to be 34% fat which is great for making butter.
Simple quick steps:
Take your bowl from the freezer
Pour in the cream
Start shaking getting the kids and friends involved or turn the mixer fitted with a whisk attachment to a low speed 2-4. You may need to drape a kitchen towel over the bowl to prevent splashing everywhere (after about 3 minutes in the mixer you’ll see whip cream form)
Once it starts to look like whip cream increase the mixer’s speed to medium 4-6 it will take about 2 more minutes to start seeing butter form.
It took a total of 7 minutes to get from cream to butter with buttermilk. This is traditional buttermilk, the reserve liquid from making butter. This is not the buttermilk which is typically cultured that you buy from the store. It’s great to drink or use in place of water when baking.
Now, you wash your butter with cold water to get out as much of that buttermilk because it will cause the butter to spoil quicker.
With your sieve over a clean bowl, pour the butter and butter milk into it. Most of the butter milk will go straight through but you’ll need to use the 350 mL of cold water to continue washing it. Do at least 3 washes. So pour then press the butter to get the liquid out and that’s one wash. Use all the water. The butter will start to take shape in a beautiful way. You’re done.
In total I achieved 6 ¼ oz or 186 g of butter and about 631 g of buttermilk or 2 ¾ cups. I had to keep scraping the bottom of these sieves they’re pretty flimsy so next time I’ll use a cheese cloth because I think it would give me a higher yield. I’m really disappointed about that 1 and ¾ oz.
Overall, the product is great. In terms of costs, the cream costs $3.99 and uncultured, unsalted butter of the same caliber ranges 3.99-4.99 in the store. There might not be that much benefit of doing it at home if you’re hoping to save money. However, if you just want to have a great product that you can say you did or at least something for your kids to do, you should definitely give it a go. Also, if you find that there is monetary value in the buttermilk that you produced then maybe it does increase the value. That’s up for you to decide. It only took me maybe 20 minutes total with my method. I say do it at least once to see what works for you. I might but I’m not particularly sold. I have a lot of other home diy’s that yield a higher value that I might just consider buying my butter unless I plan to show off or give it as a gift. It is super fresh so that’s cool, right?
UPDATE:
So I went back after not being too impressed with this DIY and thought, "Hey, I'd like to see if I can make butter from the cheap cream in the store and save a ton of money". I was sure that the results would be the same as that of Natural by Nature's cream. I have to admit I was wrong. Of course with all the saturation of organic this, natural that, grass-fed this blah blah blah blah blah, I am unapologetically numb to it. However, there's a culinary scientist inside of me that has to admit when I'm wrong and this time I was W-R-O-N-G. I used the cheap stuff and wound up with this pale looking butter that mostly resembles margarine! It doesn't have the same strong scent of the natural butter, it doesn't have the same texture or beautiful yellow hue. So as a cook, foodie, and health conscientious person I am pretty disappointed and have been convinced that in this scenario, for sure, that the labels matter.
See the comparison for yourself.
Natural butter (Left) Cheap Stuff (Right) No edits