Homemade Butter (and Buttermilk)
The perfect compliment to home baked goodness? Butter, of course. Why not make that homemade too?! (Especially when it’s this easy)
Recipe
(produces about 1 cup of butter, and 1 cup of buttermilk)
*Approx. a 15 minute process
Ingredients:
1 pint (2 cups) heavy cream/whipping cream (even ultra-pasteurized will work)
Fine sea salt, to taste (about a ¼ tsp, optional)
1. In a stand mixer, fitted with the wire/whip attachment, pour in the cream and start the mixer on medium-high speed.
2. Mix the cream at medium-high until you see ‘whipped cream’ peaks form, then turn the speed to high as it will go.
3. Monitoring the progress, watch for the stage when chunks/curds start to form. At this point, you’ll want to cover the stand mixer with a kitchen towel as the next stage is when the liquid (buttermilk) starts to separate.
4. Keep peeking under the towel to monitor, but you’ll know it's done when you see a bowl full of buttermilk and big light yellow chunks of butter (you can also hear when it’s done, the stand mixer will sound like it’s straining to whip anymore).
5. With a bowl and a fine mesh strainer strain off the buttermilk and put it in a container to use later.
6. With the curds still sitting in the strainer, rinse the butter chunks under very cold water. Continue by kneading, trying to gently squeeze out/rinse off any excess buttermilk (the more buttermilk you extract the longer your butter will last before souring). Don’t overthink this part, just do your best to get the most liquid out you can.
7. Once that’s done, add fine sea salt (or not) to your taste preferences, and knead it in or mix in with a fork. I recommend about a ¼ tsp.
Voilà—homemade butter.
Storage: store in your refrigerator in an airtight container for 1-3 weeks (this depends on how much liquid you extracted from your butter curds in the rinsing/kneading process)
Additions: You can mix in all sorts of yummy things to your butter—honey, sugar-cinnamon, herbs…get creative!
