I love good butter. Turns out it is so easy to make it's completely trivial. Seriously, it's harder to make Kraft mac&cheese.
1). Get some good heavy cream. Pasteurized is better than UltraPasteurized. (The ultra has a cooked flavor to my taste.)
2). Pour it in the food processor and whiz for about a minute. It will progress from whipped cream to way-too-thick whipped cream to butterfat separating out very quickly! I've read you can use a hand-held mixer, but it takes longer.
3). Pour into a strainer over a bowl (to catch the (REAL!) buttermilk.
4). Knead the butter into a ball, and pour ice water over it a few times and knead some more to get the last of the buttermilk out. It will spoil faster if you don't do this, supposedly, not that I've had it hanging around long enough to find out.
5). add some salt if you want
6) mmmmmmm, butter
I paid $3.50 for a quart of cream and it makes about a pound of butter, so it's about the same price as Land-O-Lakes. Plus a few cups of buttermilk which I used to make some challah bread.
I did it once with the cream right out of the bottle and it was very good. The next time I cultured the cream by leaving it on the counter overnight with a big spoonful of plain yoghurt stirred into it (it thickens and ferments a little into kind of creme fraiche), which makes "cultured" rather than "sweet" butter which is really good.
Seriously, yum.
1). Get some good heavy cream. Pasteurized is better than UltraPasteurized. (The ultra has a cooked flavor to my taste.)
2). Pour it in the food processor and whiz for about a minute. It will progress from whipped cream to way-too-thick whipped cream to butterfat separating out very quickly! I've read you can use a hand-held mixer, but it takes longer.
3). Pour into a strainer over a bowl (to catch the (REAL!) buttermilk.
4). Knead the butter into a ball, and pour ice water over it a few times and knead some more to get the last of the buttermilk out. It will spoil faster if you don't do this, supposedly, not that I've had it hanging around long enough to find out.
5). add some salt if you want
6) mmmmmmm, butter
I paid $3.50 for a quart of cream and it makes about a pound of butter, so it's about the same price as Land-O-Lakes. Plus a few cups of buttermilk which I used to make some challah bread.
I did it once with the cream right out of the bottle and it was very good. The next time I cultured the cream by leaving it on the counter overnight with a big spoonful of plain yoghurt stirred into it (it thickens and ferments a little into kind of creme fraiche), which makes "cultured" rather than "sweet" butter which is really good.
Seriously, yum.