If you haven’t already, you should learn how to make butter. It’s so simple that I believe everyone needs to do it at least once.
To experience the best of what homemade butter can be, I only bother making it if I’ve got some extra raw cream from grass-fed cows on hand. Otherwise, I buy Kerrygold Irish Butter or Organic Valley’s Pasture Butter. Both are rich, yellow butters from grass-fed cows. They’re just not raw. (For online sources of butter from grass-fed cows, check out the listings on Resources Page.)
I also like to experiment with my butter. You can make butter from sour or sweet cream, with or without salt, and with or without various herbs and spices. However you do it, the same general method is used.
The Players
- Any amount of cream
- sea salt (optional)
The How-To
Begin by pouring your cream into a blender or food processor. Here I’m using slightly soured raw cream. It’s too far gone to be happy in coffee, but it’s not quite solid enough to be served up as sour cream.
Blend your cream, and be sure to have someone do the all-important job of keeping the lid on. (My four year old was eager to volunteer.)
After five or more minutes, the butter will start to separate into butter and buttermilk. When you notice that happening, stop the blender and let the cream sit for a minute or two as the butter rises to the top.
Pour the buttermilk into another container, using a spoon to press as much buttermilk out of the butter as possible.
You could call your butter done at this point, but if you want it to last for more than a few days you need to wash the butter. Pour ice cold water into the blender and blend for another thirty seconds.
After you’ve washed the butter, pour off the water. Use a spoon or a spatula to squeeze out the last dregs of the buttermilk. What’s left is butter. I mix in sea salt with a spoon.
Now it’s ready to spread on a delicious slice of sourdough bread made with sprouted grains, or melt over steamed vegetables!
And — wonder of wonders — you know how to make butter!
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I do this in a stand mixer. It takes longer because I can’t put the speed up too much or it splatters despite the shield. But it runs unattended. I buy a pint of cream every two weeks and this is where most of it goes. I should buy more cream so I don’t have to be so stingy with it.
Here in Vermont, we’re fortunate to have great, local butter by Cabots and also by Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. Their lightly salted, cultured butter is simply outstanding. The first time I had it in a restaurant, I couldn’t stop eating it. When our server told the chef that I was oohing and aahing over the butter, he came out to say hello because he, too, loved it.
What a great, practical post. Looks so easy and delicious, and you haven’t steered me wrong yet. I’ll try this with my kids soon. Thanks.
These is interesting. I always like to make common foods like this from scratch. I bet a lot of people don’t even realize that butter is “made,” because we’re so used to buying it as a finished product. But I bet you can feel a heck of a lot better eating this than the stuff from the stores, especially knowing you’re using whole, organic, grass-fed ingredients.
Matt (No Meat Athlete)
Aight, ima try this out. If I can do this in my blender then how hard can it be right (and then i get products out of one, buttermillk and butter!)?
Betsy — I made it in my stand mixer once, but I decided the blender was easier.
Michael — Us butter lovers have to stick together. Quality butter from grass-fed cows is one thing that is absolutely worth paying for.
Lee — If you do it with your kids, they can have even more fun churning the butter by hand. Just put the cream in a lidded jar and let them take turns shaking the jar by hand or rolling it back and forth to each other on the floor.
Matt — I do feel better eating good butter!
Tamara — It is easy! And, yes, you can save the buttermilk (called “old-fashioned” buttermilk to keep people from confusing it with cultured buttermilk) and use it for all sorts of goodies. You can even culture it with a little cultured buttermilk and use it instead of cultured buttermilk in all your recipes. (I’ve got directions on how to make cultured buttermilk here on this site.)
Did you allow to cream to sour on purpose, or did you use it because it’s what you happened to have on hand? If on purpose, how to sour it? Leave it out overnight? Are there health benefits?
I’ve been making butter lately from pasteurized milk that’s organic, cream top and grass fed. It doesn’t turn yellow like that, it’s white, but it’s quite yummy, and healthier than regular butter from the store. I now have access to raw grass-fed milk, just starting this last week, so I hope to make raw butter soon. Will mine get yellow like yours?
I make mine in the food processor. I love using the leftover buttermilk in breads and such!
Katie
Katie — In this particular case, my cream soured in my fridge b/c my husband has stopped drinking coffee. So, we had extra and it just wasn’t getting used up as quickly. You can sour it more quickly by stirring in a teaspoon of cultured buttermilk and leaving it on the counter over night.
I don’t know of any additional health benefits from souring your cream first, assuming that you’re using raw cream. If you’re using pasteurized cream, then you get the benefit of the added probiotics from the sour culture.
What I do know is that this is how most Europeans make their butter, and the biggest difference is in the type of butter flavor you’ll taste.
The yellow color comes from the cow’s diet. They have to be eating tall, shooting green grasses for the butter to be yellow. In most of the country, that type of grass doesn’t grow until May – September.
Yum! I love butter. I have never tried making it so I appreciate your post. Stumbled! Thanks for participating in Real Food Wednesday.
CHEESESLAVE
This looks so cool! I must try this one day.
Jendeis
Oh I love homemade butter, it is simply the best! I have made it in my food processor before, but the blender is a great idea.
Jenna @ Newlyweds
I use my stand mixer because I always make about 2 quarts worth at a time. But I am going to try this out very soon. Nothing like homemade butter! My family prefers homemade butter to store-bought. They say the store-bought tastes waxy.
Amanda@BetterisLittle
I don’t make it myself – too lazy and the cream goes way to fast in our home. I do buy it from the same people who do our cow share. They also offer fresh raw butter for $10/lb. It’s worth every penny and I usually by a 1/2 lb a week. We use kerrygold and OV pastured butter for cooking.
Jenny @ NourishedKitchen
Wow! Thanks for making this look so easy. If I can 1) get more milk from our goats and 2) figure out how to separate the cream, then 3) I’ll be making butter!
~Wardeh
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS
Wardeh –
Separating cream from milk is EASY. Check this out:
http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-to-separate-cream-from-milk/
Hahaha ‘how to make butter!’
That looks so delicious. I’ve bought Organic Valley butter, but I thought it was all grass fed…? I read that from here: http://www.organicvalley.coop/resources/reading-room/grass-is-greener/page-1/
I’ll have to watch out for that pastured kind.
Did you buy the cream, or did you drink skim milk for a while?
And is cultured, or salted butter better? Thanks!!!!
Kyle
Hmmm. I can’t seem to find any natural small-farmed butter here in Calgary. Problem may be solved!
Ryan
*grin* My daughter and I made butter the other night, but it was a mistake. We had intended to make whipped cream, she got a little carried away with the whipping and I got distracted. Delicious though, just not whipped cream!
Today we picked up 800 lbs of butter from a local butter maker on the other side of the mountain. We’ll be feeding that to our herds of pastured pigs. Every once in a while the dairy has a batch of butter or cheese that doesn’t work out quite right. They give us or another farmer a call rather than sending it to the landfill. These pigs are living high on the hog as this is very high end butter! It goes well with pasture which is the vast majority of their diet – adding calories and lysine.
Cheers,
-Walter
in Vermont
Thanks much for this post, I’ve been looking forward to it as I’ve voted for it on your site more than once.
I want to make this with the cream I get off of our raw milk, BUT I’m not able to separate the cream from the milk. It separates well but I can’t seem to get just the cream off the top through the quarter sized hole of the gallon milk jug. Any suggestions?
Muffin Dad — YES! Go read the post I linked to in my comment to Wardeh. It’s an EASY way to separate cream from milk.
Your post is very timely – I recently found a source of fresh raw milk from pastured cows (my 4 year-old son’s assessment: “It’s so sweet!”) and I can’t wait to make butter from it – thanks for posts on separating the cream from the milk and the butter making.
My husband is a butter fanatic and at more than $6 for a pound of the good stuff I am very excited to have an even more local, inexpensive option! Thanks so much!
Stacey
So timely.
I’ve been looking into sources for raw milk in our area. Looks like we might have to travel a few miles to get it, but it’s accessible. And I’m stoked.
Homemade butter is a beautiful thing. Totally worth the effort in my book. And who can beat that flavor?? Give me some warm homemade bread and a nice slab of that yellow heaven!
lo
Thanks for the post.
One question – how long will this kind of butter last in the fridge? It’s just me and my hubby so I don’t want to make more than we can eat.
Butter making… the post caught my eye because I really enjoy homemade butter and the process of making it… when everything goes right!
I have a Jersey cow who is on a grass-based diet. Have been milking her or her mamma for several years now and making butter off and on. When everything goes right, we end up with delicious beautiful butter. I use butter for all our fat needs for cooking etc. except if an oil is absolutely necessary for the purpose – then it’s usually olive oil.
Occasionally – and sometimes this happens a few times in a row which can be discouraging – the butter just won’t form. The cream gets thick, then grainy buttery solids form – but too tiny to gather into butter. This has happened both when making butter in a blender and with my hand churn. I’ve continued churning – once for three hours (had help) with the hand churn to see if it would eventually gather – added ice to see if cooling it would help… still didn’t work. If anyone has any idea why this happens and how to prevent it, I’d be delighted to know.
Maria — If you’re very good at washing the buttermilk completely out, it will last at least as long as store bought butter. To do that, you may want to do the cold water rinse until it comes out clear and not milky looking at all. The more buttermilk left behind in your butter, the more quickly it will spoil.
Deanna — I wish I knew the answer to your question. I’ve never had butter not form for me (but then, I don’t make it as frequently as you do). The only thing I’ve heard about temperature is that you want to use WARM cream in a COOL bowl. Perhaps some of our other, more experienced readers have some ideas?
How much raw milk do you have to buy to make a pound of butter?
Michelle @ Find Your Balance
Michelle — That depends on how much cream is in the raw milk, and how much fat is in the cream! (I know! It’s not the answer you were hoping for…) Basically, the more fat/cream you’ve got, the more butter you’ll be making.
Michelle – from my experience it takes approximately two quarts of cream to make a pound of butter
~deanna
Awesome article thanks!
Will you be writing one on how to make cheese? That would be cool!
Thanks again,
Titus
I made butter by accident once when I overbeat the cream, I think we’ve all done that once, right? It was delicious. I didn’t know about washing the butter, thanks for the tip!
Annie – Hip Organic Mama
Totally agree about Kerrygold and Organic Valley! Great stuff. So cool you made butter yourself. I’m totally trying this when I can get some local raw cream.
Great blog!
Thank you for the recipe! I just finished making my first batch and it’s firming up in the fridge. I can’t get raw cream but I can get some from pasture cows that are also fed some grain. Sadly it didn’t turn out nearly as yellow as I hoped! Starting to wonder if it’s grain fed cows with some pasture instead. I’ll try again in a few weeks in case it’s still too early in the season.
the kitchenaid mixer with the whip attachment makes great butter too. no need to hold the lid on.
Carrie
remember folks, that lovely bright yellow is dependent on what the cow eats- green grass. It scares me a little that the store-bought stuff is always yellow…
I can’t wait to do this! Can this be done with raw WHOLE milk? or only raw cream?
Meagan
Meagan — Butter can only be made from cream. The cream doesn’t even have to be raw, although that’s what I used.
If you want to use raw whole milk, simply separate off the cream from the milk & use the cream to make butter.
Great post. I been on a huge butter kick lately, so I really liked it.
Grok
Thanks for this! I made butter today with cow’s milk cream that had been given me. It is/was awesome!
And, to Meagan – you CAN make butter from whole milk; I’ve done it. But, IMO, it is not worth the effort. You go through almost all the same motions as above (churning/washing, etc.) but the yield is very low. If the milk is 4% butterfat, then ONLY 4% of its quantity becomes butter. See what I mean? A quart of whole milk for me yields 4 T of butter, after all that work! The reason I tried this is because we have goat’s milk which is naturally homogenized (the cream doesn’t separate too much). I did get butter and it tasted awesome, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the work.
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS
I make butter pretty regularly. Never buy it at all. It’s just fun to do.
In answer to Deanna’s question, sometimes that has happened to me too (my butter won’t set up). What I do is just put it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes and then I take it out and start churning it in my food processor. Works perfectly everytime.
This doesn’t happen often but when it does, this has helped me.
Thanks for the photos! How long does raw cream butter keep in the fridge? I would expect REALLY long but just want to be sure.
Great tutorial! I have just recently found a good source for raw milk, and have been dying to make butter. I knew it was easy, but you showed me it was! I have just finished and it is setting up in the fridge–can’t wait to try it tonight on fresh baked/ground spelt bread!
Lovin’ your blog btw.
.-= Phoebe @Cents to Get Debt Free
Okay, so I’m ready to scream. I just tried this, poured the cream off the top of my raw milk, put it in the mixer, and started whipping. Guess I got some milk in there too because it isn’t whipping up. It didn’t even turn to whipped cream, and I’ve made enough whipped cream in my life to know that it just ain’t happenin’. Sigh… Guess I”ll put it in the fridge and use it in my coffee?? Any advice? Sigh…
Musings of a Housewife´s last blog ..Marinade Recipes
We go through a LOT of butter at my house (so far, so good… no one is fat or unhealthy YET). I’m hoping to save a little money by making it myself. Also, from what I gathered from the information about butter on Wikepedia, homemade butter may be a little better for you than store-bought. Apparently, store-bought butter is made up of roughly 80% butterfat while homemade is about 65%.
Thanks for this post. I was shaking 2 week old raw cream in a jar and I wore myself out! I found this post just in time.
I have just finished searching for two hours to no avail for some outlet where I could buy “sour cream butter.” I was born in Canada, and when I was a little girl I LOVED butter, but it was rationed in Canada. So I used to ride my tricycle down to the corner store and check things out. One day I saw them onloading a shipment of my precious butter so I roared home on that trike as fast as a five-year old could go to tell my Mum so she could hurry down and get some before it got all gone. She just laughed at me and told me it wouldn’t get gone all that quickly because the war was over. And that is my memory of the ending of World War II. But as time went on, I noticed that butter just didn’t seem to taste as good as I remembered it when I was little. First we went through that crazy stage of margerine that was shipped in a big plastic bag with a little tablet of dye in it. The margerine was shipped uncolored…it looked like a big bag of Crisco…and you had to knead it so that the bubble of color burst and then you had to sit there and knead it and knead it until it turned yellow. That was because the dairy industry didn’t want margerine to take over their market so they got laws passed that made it illegal to put artificial coloring in the margerine. I guess they figured no one would want to eat that pure white greasy looking mess, but it was cheap, so the food manufacturers got around that obstacle by having the consumer color it themselves. But I digress. So butter never tasted right after that. Untill…one day my mother brought home a package of butter she had found at a local super market in Atlanta that said it was made from sour cream. And Eureka!! That was the butter taste I remembered! But I was never able to find that kind of butter again. So I am very thankful to find this simple way of reconstructing that memory. Thanks!
Jean — FYI, these days sour cream butter is marketed in the U.S. as European Style butter. So, that might be worth trying anyway.
I’ve always been a “butter is better” advocate, I got that opinion from my grandfather who stubbornly refused to eat margarine until the day he died (of a ripe old age) despite doctors telling him for decades that margarine was healthier, well when research fainally came out about trans fats and he was finally vindicated we both did a collective “Hah! I knew it!” But the truth it was we just hate the vegetable shortening like mouth feel of margarine, of course my Grandpa remembered back in his childhood when it was illegal to sell margarine with yellow food die, so he knew the grayish glop that is margarine nefarious true form.
On a different note butter is so easy to make, I’ve once made it by accident. I was whipping some cream for a dessert and forgot it while rushing about the kitchen, when I discovered my “mistake” I improvised a compound herb butter with it, delicious!
to Deanna – that happened to me the other day. It got so think the blender siezed up and still no butter. I added about 1/4 cup milk and then it finished right away.