I was not one of those first grader’s who got to make butter in their class with the nice teacher. Lucky bastards. I only found out how easy it was to make butter about a year and a half ago when I read Oishi Eats’ post about her lil students making it in class. I was like whoa, that’s so cool. Who knew making butter was so easy? When I was in first grade I was still going to elementary school in Korea and let me tell you, there was no butter making projects involved.
butter fat
buttermilk
So I did it finally. Made my own butter. I was motivated by the chance to use Organic Pastures’ raw cream. I’ve had their da bomb raw milk before so I knew the cream would be bomb too. The thought of having homemade raw butter was very exciting. I picked up the $10 (yes $10 per pint!) bottle of raw cream and got to work at home. Butter is formed when fat globules are agitated and break allowing the liquid fat to combine together into a mass (On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee). You can agitate the cream by bottle and hand, the manual way. I used my standing mixer with the paddle attachment. I just let the machine keep rolling a moderate speed while I watched on the side doing double duty washing dishes. And to my amazement the fat and the buttermilk were starting to separate.
After the butter mass formed I drained out the buttermilk and rinsed the butter with cold water to rinse off any additional buttermilk on the surface. Then kneaded the mass a bit to squeeze out the trapped buttermilk. After that was done I folded in some fleur de sel. Of course I had to test out the butter right away. I toasted up a slice of Milton’s classic white bread and spread some of the freshly made salted raw butter. Oh my goodness, the flavor of the butter was mind-blowing. Rich, sweet, buttery. Buttery butter. It had so much flavor, not having had that pasteurization thing done. What a simple pleasure with immense satisfaction.
i have made butter many, many times in my youth, mostly when i was in boarding school and bored to pieces and trying to make whipped cream with the chipped melamine bowl and a bent tin fork in the sorry excuse of a kitchen in our dorm. arrrgh! even though the cream was pasteurized, it was still pretty good. but not so good on an ice cream sundae as a filling for profiteroles (which were surprisingly dorm kitchen hardy)
Ahhhh, butter my favorite! When I was a kid at school we made it Laura Ingalls prairie style and colored it orange using grated carrots.
Probably these days making butter at school is a no-no….
Ok, now I have to bake bread and make butter. And I was supposed to be writing a paper. THANKS.
hi santos,
you’ve had your youth butter-making moment too! i always wondered about why whipped cream involved recipes said not to overwhip. had no idea butter was the result though.
hi lily,
i really missed out!
you too with your youth butter-making.
hi sarvi,
wow freshly made bread and freshly made butter? that would be taking it to the next level. i don’t bake much so i usually get my fresh bread fill at bay cities. on saturday i drove home with a loaf in one hand cracklin the crust all over myself. good luck with your paper!
May I ask where you bought the cream? I have settled for Lucerne heavy cream, hopefully that will work. I guess at worst I will have some very well-mixed cream, and I’ll still eat that.
i got it at the saturday santa monica farmer’s market – the one on the promenade. not sure where else they go. i’m sure the lucerne one will be good, as butter or whipped cream.
Hi Sarvi
They will be at the farmers market in hollywood on Selma ave
tomorrow and each Sunday thereafter 8 am – noonish
Beso
Bach
lifes like a bucket of butter, you never know when you’ll get an heart attack!
yum!
YUM! I hear you… wish I had a first grade teacher like Jeni! I’ve never made butter before and am ready to try! Thanks for the inspiration!
whoah….
youre pretty good
!!!WANT!!!
I must do this soon!
Hi there, what did you do with your leftover buttermilk? I made the same with the organic pastures raw cream. So good…but now I don’t know what to do with the liquid, I thought I could use it to make more buttermilk, but now I’m not so sure. Any ideas?
hi sage,
i ended up freezing it planning to use it in a recipe but i ended up throwing it away when i moved out of my apt. :/ did you taste the fresh buttermilk? it’s so delicious? one of the ideas i had was to use it as a light pasta sauce. maybe you can use it for baking or a custard?