How To Make Butter

Delicious delicious butter.  A month or so ago friends of ours made butter.  The old fashioned way, they put it in a jar and took turns shaking the sucker until their arms were going to fall off.  Which is fun if there are two or three adults participating or several children that don’t want to quit after 5 minutes of shaking.

Finn & I decided that between the two of us, we are decidedly in the latter group.

So we made it the ‘easy’ way.  In a stand mixer the way nature intended.  It still took us close to 45 minutes, but we made quite a bit of butter.  You can certainly do this in whatever increments you’d like.

First, outfit your Kitchen Aid with the whisk attachment.  Next, pour in your heavy cream.  {Incidentally, if you have a Costco membership and are going to be using quite a bit of heavy cream, it is the deal of the century to buy cartons of Horizon Organic there.}  We used just shy of three cups.  You will want to use the splash guard if you have one.  Trust me.

  

Whisk on medium {I think we had it set on 6-8 most of the time.}  It will start looking like whipped cream first.

Then, if you are three, you wait patiently-ish as it keeps churning and churning and churning some more and ask 500 times if it’s done yet.

Then it will start looking like yellowed, curdly nasty whipped cream.  You’re still on the right track!

And then you will suddenly see the NEED for the splash guard as the butter starts to separate from the buttermilk.  If you didn’t heed my warning, you’re likely swearing right now.

When you start to see a bit of buttermilk in the bottom, you’re going to want to stop the machine and pour it off.

We saved the buttermilk in a jar so I can con Dave into sweetly ask Dave if he’ll make pancakes this weekend.  Then, pop the butter back into the Kitchen Aid and continue to whip for just a bit longer… you’ll see more buttermilk escaping and the butter will come together.

  

Next comes the rinsing.  With water so cold you feel like your hands are frostbitten, soak the butter for a minute and squish it around.  The water will look terrible.  Drain it off and repeat until the water stays mostly clear.  Then drain the butter completely and pick a good salt to add.  Sprinkle the salt over the top of the butter and mix in using a wooden spoon until incorporated.  You can skip the salting if you want or you can also add other herbs and whatnot if you’re feeling like it.

  

Enjoy.

Finn thought it was really cool to watch.  He told me it was “like GOOD butter.”  You know, that kid just might be a food critic one of these days.  Make some with your kiddos soon!