I decided to put aside my negative preconceptions and learn more about homemade butter. It turns out that homemade butter is easy to make, regardless of whether you have a hand mixer, a blender or a food processor. In just 10 minutes, you can transform cream into solid butter.
Why would you do that? What makes homemade butter different from store-bought butter?
Make your butter
Flavor: Homemade butter tastes amazing: It is unbelievably fresh. My first batch of homemade butter was compared to my favorite supermarket brand. The difference was obvious: Freshly made butter tastes FRESH.
Season (and salt) to taste: Do your butter like salted or not? Unsalted butter is my preferred choice for baking (to control the salt content in the recipe), and salted butter can be used as a condiment on toast, biscuits, and cakes. You can adjust the amount of salt you use to make your butter. You can make your butter with just 1/4 teaspoon of table salt for 4 ounces (113g).
Homemade butter can also be made into compound butter by adding garlic, cheese powder, cinnamon sugar, or any other sweet or savory ingredient. You can also make this with store-bought butter. It’s possible, but it’s less convenient because you need first to soften the butter.
Baking: Can I use homemade butter to make my cakes and pie crusts? Here’s the qualified answer: Yes.
This water level is controlled, and all recipes are written keeping this in mind. However, homemade butter may have a slightly different water level (about 12% in my tests) depending on how meticulously you separate buttermilk from butter. Is this a problem? This is not true if your results or process may differ from the others. For example, if you make pie crust, you may need to adjust the amount you use of water by about a teaspoon. You might find that homemade butter with a lot of liquid buttermilk is more likely to spread and settle when used in cookies. Butter in baking: More information on how butter types affect baking
However, homemade butter is a great spread or topping. When butter is important in a recipe, I save it. Pie crust, biscuits or shortbread are examples of where this butter can make a difference. It seems wasteful to add 3 tablespoons of homemade butter to your banana bread recipe when in reality, it will lose its flavor and be replaced by store-bought.
Making homemade butter, heavy cream, whipping crème, and heavy whipping cream all work well. The highest butterfat percentage in heavy cream will produce the most butter. Lower-fat whipping cream will yield less butter.
How much does butter making at home cost? It all depends on how you view it. Butter will cost less at the supermarket than homemade butter unless you are milking your cows. If you can get a good price on a quarter of a quart heavy or whipping cream (4.79 at my club store), and you don’t wring as much buttermilk out during the finishing process, then you can make close enough to a pound of butter with a quarter quart cream.
A pound of butter costs $4.79. This is a reasonable price, and it’s much less than the premium butter you can buy at the supermarket. That’s what homemade butter should be compared with.
How do you make homemade butter?
The bottom line is that butter is just heavy or whipping cream, which has been whipped beyond its normal range and reduced into butter and buttermilk. Make whipped cream however you like, and don’t stop until it separates.
The first step in making homemade butter is to whip up a bowl full of cream.
After the separation is complete, pour the mixture into a strainer and drain the buttermilk. Next, press down on the butter to extract the liquid (buttermilk). The resulting buttermilk cannot be substituted for store-bought buttermilk. Instead, use it like skim milk.
Rinse them in cold water after draining as much buttermilk out as possible.
After buttermilk and butter have been separated, rinse the butter with cold water until it runs clear. You can wash more buttermilk out of homemade buttermilk, but it will last longer.
Finish by adding salt or seasonings according to your taste.
There are many ways to make butter at home. Based on the efficiency and effectiveness of the particular appliance, I have listed the following homemade butter recipes.
The butter-making process will be significantly faster if you use your mixer’s flat beater instead of a whisk.
Butter making in a stand mixer
The steps to make it happen:
- Add 16 ounces (454g) heavy or whipping cream to the bowl of your stand mixer.
- Use the flat beater, not the whisk, to beat the cream on medium speed for about 1 minute.
- Increase the speed to medium-high. The cream will lose its smoothness after about two minutes and become rougher.
It will begin to separate between 4 and 5 minutes. If you notice this, immediately place a dishtowel on the mixer. Otherwise, you risk getting a buttermilk bath. Stop the mixer once the buttermilk and butter have separated and settled into the bowl.
Time remaining:4 to 5.
Final product This is the purest homemade butter, virtually devoid of buttermilk.
Tip This is the messiest way to make butter. If you don’t have a bowl cover, the buttermilk will splash out from the bowl onto your work surface, walls and face.
Although the butter-making process can take several minutes, the final separation between butter solids and buttermilk occurs quite quickly at the end. Prepare for some splashing!
Butter making with an electric mixer handheld
How to do it: Pour cream into a large mixing bowl. Use the beaters, not the whisk, to beat the cream at medium-high speeds. Slowly, the cream will go from soft whipped and stiffly whipped to separated. Place a large dish towel between your hands and the bowl to protect yourself and your surroundings from buttermilk splashes. Continue beating until buttermilk and butter are fully separated.
Time elapsed: This can vary depending on how powerful your mixer is and whether you have old-fashioned flat blade beaters or whisk-type beaters. Flat-blade beaters can produce butter in 6-8 minutes. Whisk-type beaters take 10-12 minutes.
Final product: Pure. It’s like butter made with a stand mixer.
Tip If your goal is to make small amounts of butter, your handheld mixer can handle the smaller creams your stand mixer or processor cannot handle. My handheld mixer has made butter with as little as 1/3 cup (5 ounces or 142g) heavy cream.
Blend butter
How it’s done: Pour cream into a blender. Blend on high speed until the cream separates into buttermilk and buttermilk.
Time elapsed: This can vary depending on which blender you use. My Ninja took 6 minutes.
Final product: retains more buttermilk, making it creamier and softer than butter made with a mixer.
Tip: The cream tends to splash up the sides and stays there. To ensure that all cream reaches the bottom of the jar, stop the blender and scrape the sides as often as possible.
Although a food processor is efficient and clean, its butter is lower in fat and contains more buttermilk.
Butter making in a food processor
Use the metal blade to pour cream into the bowl of your food processor. You will hear the liquid splashing around the bowl. You can stop the processor if there are two distinct entities, butter and buttermilk. Continue to process if cream remains on the sides of your bowl or the mixture is still a little creamy.
Time remaining: 4 minutes
Final product: Butter is slightly creamier due to some buttermilk retention.
Tip You can remove most of the buttermilk by thoroughly rinsing it under cold running water. You can choose a creamier, softer butter by not washing as well.
If you don’t have the right appliances, you can still make butter by stirring heavy cream in a mason container.
Make butter in a Mason Jar
To do it, put the cream in a Mason Jar (or any other container with a tight-fitting cover) and fill the Mason jar to about half full. Then shake, shake, shake! After the cream thickens, it will turn into whipped cream. At this point, you might not be able to hear anything in the jar. It’s okay to keep going. Continue shaking the whipped cream until it “breaks”, and you will have separated solids from liquids.
Elapsed Time: 20-ish Minutes
Final product: Hand-shaken butter will retain more buttermilk and be softer than butter made by a machine.
Tip: Eight minutes of steady shaking while I stared longingly at the stand mixer and food process was enough to make the cream thicken. You can make butter with a Mason jar if you want to have fun.
