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Homemade butter tastes noticeably better than store-bought commercial butter, and it only takes 20 minutes of work to make. To give the butter a special flavor, which it does not naturally acquire in all regions, add fermented milk bacterial cultures to the cream to make it more sour.
Ingredients
Heavy cream
Bacteria for buttermilk extraction, yoghurt or mesophilic cultures (optional)
Salt (optional)
Finely chopped herbs, garlic or honey (optional)
Steps
Part 1
Preparing the cream- Do not use cream with added sugar.
- The cream's fat percentage will tell you how much butter you can get from it. It is recommended to take cream with at least 35% fat content.
- To find local sellers of fresh natural cream, you can try looking for advertisements in local newspapers and notice boards.
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If you will be using an electric mixer, chill the large mixing bowl as well as the container of water. A cold bowl will keep the butter from melting. A second cool container of water may also be helpful at this stage, especially if the tap water comes out warm.
Pour the cream into a bowl. Do not fill the bowl to the brim as the cream will expand to include air bubbles before it turns into butter.
Add bacterial cultures to the cream to enhance the flavor and make the butter easier to whip (optional). If you skip this step, you will end up with “sweet butter,” which is sold in the vast majority of cases in stores. If you want to give the butter a more pronounced taste, which it has in continental Europe, add some lactic acid bacteria to the cream to create "sour butter". Lactic acid bacteria accelerate the breakdown of fat and liquid, which reduces the time of churning the butter.
Let the bacteria-inoculated cream sit at room temperature. If you have added fermented milk cultures to the cream, leave it at room temperature for 12-72 hours, checking its condition every few hours. Cream that has begun to sour will become a little thicker, foamier, and acquire a sour or pungent odor.
Part 2
Extracting butter from cream-
Whip the cream. If you have a butter churn, rotate the crank for about 5-10 minutes. A high-quality butter churn quite easily and effectively whips cream into butter. If you have an electric mixer, use the whisk attachment and run the mixer on low to prevent splattering. Otherwise, seal the cream in a glass jar and shake it. If a mixer usually whips cream in 3-10 minutes, then shaking in a jar produces butter in about 10-20 minutes.
- To speed up the extraction of oil by shaking, first add a small clean glass ball to the jar.
- If your mixer only has one speed, cover the bowl of cream with cling film to prevent splatters from flying around.
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Watch how the cream changes consistency. During the whipping process, the cream will go through several stages.
- At first they will become foamy or slightly thicker.
- Then the cream will begin to hold its soft peak shape. When you remove the cream from the mixer, there will be a slight rise on its surface with a sloping top. It is at this moment that you can increase the rotation speed of the mixer.
- The whipped cream will then form an elastic texture.
- Next, the cream will become grainy and take on a very pale yellowish tint. Reduce the speed of the appliance before the cream starts to separate to prevent splashing.
- Eventually, there will be a sudden splitting of the cream into butter and buttermilk.
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Drain the resulting buttermilk into a separate container and save it for use in other recipes. Continue to knead the butter and drain the liquid as it appears. Stop creaming the butter when the mixture looks and tastes like butter, or when the liquid stops coming out of it.
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Start by getting fresh heavy cream. Heavy whipping cream has the highest fat percentage, making it easier to successfully turn it into butter. To give your homemade butter a unique flavor that store-bought butter lacks, try purchasing fresh, raw cream at your local farmers market. If this is not possible, among the remaining options, the best taste will be butter from long-term pasteurization cream (for 30 minutes at a temperature of 63-65 ° C), followed by butter from short-term pasteurization cream (for 15-20 seconds at a temperature of 72-75 °C) and the last one will be butter made from ultra-pasteurized cream (instant heating to 85-90°C without holding).
Butter is not as difficult to make at home as it might seem at first glance. The quality of the oil will be no worse, or even better, than modern store-bought oil. As I already mentioned in the previous article about oil, not all oil that is sold in modern stores is like this. This time I will tell you how easy it is to make homemade butter from whole milk or cream.
Many years ago, when we kept goats, one of the products we made for ourselves was butter. From goat's milk it was pure white, tasty and aromatic.
The recipe for making butter is simple, but the success and amount of butter at the end depends to a large extent on the quality of the raw materials - cream or milk from which the cream will be collected. Secondly, it depends on the temperature of the cream and luck.
How to collect cream correctly
There are so many people, so many opinions, I will describe the method we arrived at experimentally. In the mid-90s there was no Internet in the village yet, and there was no opportunity to search for specialized literature. We used those “tools” that were at hand and those “recipes” that worked.
In my case, the milk was poured into a glass container and placed in the refrigerator (we had three-liter bottles). Usually, after some time (about 6 hours), the fattest part of the milk - the cream - rises to the top and becomes clearly visible visually. The amount of cream directly depends on the fat content of the milk. Typically, three liters of goat milk yielded 0.5-0.7 liters of cream. The cream can be collected for several days and stores well. I collected this upper part into a separate container (another three-liter bottle). Yes, a three-liter bottle was a very popular container in households at that time.
A more professional approach is to use a separator for these purposes - a special device designed to distill milk and separate it into cream and skim milk. At that time this thing was very expensive, in short supply and not every rural family had it on their farm! Now with the availability of all sorts of “improvers” of everyday life and life, it’s a completely different matter.
Creaming butter
When the bottle is half filled with cream, you can begin the process of whipping the cream. The cream should be cooled to about 8-10 degrees. Colder cream will take longer to whip (until it warms up from the warmth of your hands).
It's easy to whip. Close the bottle with a tight, airtight lid to prevent the cream from escaping. Shake the bottle vigorously until the grains of milk fat come together into grains. The grains stick together and several large lumps gradually form, which can be collected (either with your hands or thrown into a strainer), squeezed out, and rinsed under cold well (or better yet, ice) water.
The remaining liquid from whipping cream is called buttermilk. Buttermilk is highly skimmed milk. It tastes very good, is easy to drink, can be used in making pancakes, dough, or just drink on a hot day.
Beating butter in this way is a very good physical exercise for the main muscle groups of the arms. A couple of episodes of your favorite TV series and the butter is ready! The oil output is small. About 150 grams of butter comes out from 1.5-2 liters of cream. To say that the butter was delicious is an understatement! Bright white, softens quickly in the summer temperature, sweetish in taste and with a great aroma!
Cow butter, unlike goat butter, is pale yellow in color. The yield of butter from cow's milk is slightly less due to the lower fat content of cow's milk. In general, the stiffer the cream, the greater the butter yield.
Now, to obtain butter from whole milk, it is quite possible to purchase a separator at the equivalent price of 5-6 kilograms of butter;). A food processor (about the same price) will whip butter from cream in 5-7 minutes. If you don’t have a cow or goat, but want to try real butter, it’s quite possible to whip the butter from high-fat cream of animal origin, bought in a store.
Try it! It's simple and uniquely delicious!
And here is a video of the “mechanization” of the butter churning process :)
Please advise how you can make good oil at home? Does anything need to be added to it?
At first, I also couldn’t make good homemade butter, although my cow produced very rich milk. Having studied many books describing the technology of making oil, I developed my own, which is most suitable for use at home.
After milking the cow, I filter the milk through 4 layers of gauze and leave it to settle for about two days. Occasionally I ferment the milk, and then the sour cream can be removed after five hours. If I remove the top from one bucket, I immediately put it in the churn and churn. If a couple of buckets of milk have accumulated, then I mix the sour cream removed from them and certainly let it ripen for another 3-4 hours.
I place the ripened sour cream in a bucket of warm water so that it warms up to 110 (no less!). And when I’m in a hurry, I do it even simpler: I pour a glass of warm water into the skimmed mixture and into the churn.
There is no need to churn before creating a whole piece, because in this case the oil will not be washed out and there will be impurities in it. The process must be completed when grains of fat appear. That's when I start rinsing.
Each grain of oil is perfectly rinsed and freed from whey. How do they do it? After draining the whey from the churn, I fill it with water at room temperature and again crush the grains. Subsequently, I change the water again and beat the butter again. After rinsing it in two waters, I remove the fat with a slotted spoon onto a plate and squeeze it with the lid of a butter churn. And since the oil was in grains, it is perfectly pressed and shaped, becoming hard. After these manipulations, I take it out into the cold.
Homemade butter It’s great to keep it in a dark place, in slightly salted well water. But it is important that it be completely immersed in water. The oil can sit in it for 20 days, but the water needs to be changed periodically. You can, of course, keep it in the refrigerator, but there it comes into contact with air, which is why it decomposes more quickly.
In summer, the oil comes out rich and has a beautiful yellow color. This is because summer feed contains a lot of carotene (vitamin A), which gives the oil its bright yellow color. The winter product is light, which means it has a low carotene content.
Homemade butter from cream
I also make homemade butter from cream. After removing them from the milk (I don’t have a separator), I let them stand for 3 hours and start churning. Then everything is the same. In this case, you need to churn for a longer period of time than when using sour cream, but the butter comes out sweeter.
A very fragrant butter is obtained from melted sour cream - similar to Vologda - with a nutty smell. Ordinary sour cream is placed in the oven and left until it turns brown. Subsequently, it is cooled and placed in a churn.
For longer storage, you can prepare salted butter. In this case, you need to remember a simple rule: add salt in an amount of 2% of the volume and during the churning process, and not after the oil is produced.
Butter makes wonderful ghee. I put the piece in an enamel pan without water. When boiling, I remove the foam, and in order for the non-fat impurities to settle better, I sprinkle a little salt. After about 30 minutes of light boiling, I scoop out the top part with a spoon or let it harden, and then separate the yellow part of the pure ghee from the lower whitish sediment.
You won't get good butter if you feed slop to a cow instead of grain fodder. I would like to make a warning regarding some foods. Feeding feed grains and peas to a cow will cause the butter from her milk to crumble. There is also no need to get carried away with compound feed.
Churn
And now about how to make a butter churn. This simple thing has been serving me for several years now.
To make a butter churn, you can use any significant container (not aluminum): a jar, can or tank. For example, I used a five-liter glass jar for this. The lid of my butter churn consists of two planks. The bottom board fits tightly into the neck, the top one covers the edges on top, for this reason it is 2 cm wider. The planks are connected with screws.
A hole about 8 millimeters in diameter is drilled in the middle of the lid to insert a rod - a wooden stick. A recess was made around this hole in the top board so that the sour cream removed from the jar during the churning process does not spread, but flows back into the jar. The rod penetrates freely into the hole in the cover. The diameter of this stick is one and a half millimeters smaller than the diameter of the hole.
At the bottom, the rod ends in a wooden cross with strips at both ends so that the cross is pressed tightly to the bottom of the can.
If the neck of the container is wide enough, the crosspiece can be tightly fixed to the stem, but if it is narrow, it is best to make a collapsible one and, for greater strength of connection, use a piece of fabric when assembling inside the container.
I fill the jar 1/3 full with sour cream. You can cook up to 800 grams of butter in it at one time. I knock down 20-30 minutes. After the container is filled, I lower the rod with the cross inside, press the lid tightly into the neck and, lifting the rod up and down, churn the oil. This is the technology.
How can you make butter at home without special equipment or skills or knowledge? In fact, nothing is simpler. Every home probably has an automatic mixer.
And purchasing heavy cream or thick village sour cream is also not a problem. Yes, and full-fat milk can also be found on the market - in fact, this is enough, because butter is essentially well-whipped cream from which maximum moisture has been removed.
We’ll tell you in detail right now how you can make it at home in a matter of minutes.
Making butter at home is not as difficult as it seems. To do this, it is enough to take 400-500 ml of heavy cream (from 33% and above). Actually, this is the only ingredient, because natural butter includes only cream.
You can also add a few pinches of salt or sugar - many people just like salted or slightly sweet butter. And the only equipment we need is a mixer.
Here's how to make butter using this recipe:
Step 1. Pour the cream into a fairly deep container and turn on the mixer at the highest power. Passing it in a circle, beat the mixture for 8-10 minutes.
Step 2. After this time, you will notice how the cream has noticeably thickened and has almost turned into butter. In this case, a little liquid forms on the surface - it must be drained.
Step 3. After this, turn on the mixer again and continue beating for literally 5 minutes. The resulting liquid is removed again.
Step 4. And let's work with the mixer for 1-2 minutes. We get a hard, dense lump that should sit for half an hour. A little more liquid may come out of it, which also needs to be drained.
Step 5. Actually, you can finish here, but if you like salty or slightly sweet butter, it's time to add these spices. First, the product is laid out on parchment in an even layer so that the salt is distributed evenly throughout the entire volume. At this stage you can also add herbs or a little garlic.
Step 6. Let the product rest for an hour in the refrigerator, after which it can be served. Decorate with greens.
How to make butter from milk at home
Let’s make a reservation right away that butter is prepared from cream and only cream. But cream, in turn, can be obtained from milk, but, of course, not from just any milk.
Regular store-bought milk, as a rule, does not have sufficient fat content, so it is better to purchase country milk (cow or goat). Although you can find reviews from housewives online that some brands supply the kind of milk from which you can get cream. However, experience shows that in most cases this is not possible.
First of all, we need to make a calculation based on the fact that approximately 40-50 ml of cream is obtained from a liter of milk. Accordingly, you need to stock up on 4-5 liters, or even more, of this drink. This is why butter is much more expensive than milk: the whole point is not even in the production technology, which is quite simple, but in the amount of raw materials.
Step 1. Take 1 large or 2 medium containers and pour the milk into it, put it in the refrigerator and leave it overnight (preferably 12 hours).
Step 2. If the milk has sufficient fat content, then the next morning a layer of cream will form that has a fairly thick consistency. Of course, you can use a separator to separate them, but such equipment is not found in every city apartment, so you will have to wait 1 night.
Remove this layer with a spoon into a separate container.
Step 3. The further “production” technology is exactly the same. Beat the cream with a mixer several times until the liquid is completely removed.
The resulting lump can be kept in cold water for several minutes, while kneading it, as if kneading dough. Then homemade oil will last much longer and at the same time retain its pristine freshness.
Step 4. Now let it rest in the refrigerator and serve. From 4 liters of milk you will end up with approximately 100-150 g of finished product. A little expensive, but tasty, healthy and natural.
Sour cream butter
Lovers of pleasant sourness can try making butter from sour cream, which is also possible at home. The manufacturing technology is exactly the same - the sour cream is whipped several times with a mixer, the excess liquid is constantly drained. But, of course, you need to choose the richest sour cream, ideally country style.
Homemade butter on a churn: retro recipe
Perhaps someone else still has a butter churn, and someone probably remembers such units that were kept by their grandmother in the village. In essence, a butter churn is a regular mixer, but only in larger sizes. And the technology for preparing butter at home is exactly the same - beat and remove the liquid.
You can clearly see the whole process in the video.
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