How to Make Butter Without a Separator, Without a Churn, and Without Difficulty

Image Gallery Twelve-year-old Tiffany Martin skims cream from one gallon of fresh milk and places the cream in a container with a tight fitting lid to let it "ripen," or become cultured cream. This step is necessary if you want to make cultured butter.

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Who says butter-making has to be an exercise in tedium (or in the use of expensive gadgetry)? "It doesn't," says Linda Martin of Imber, Ore. "Not if you do it my way!"

Forget about buying an expensive cream separator or butter churn. Forget anything anyone ever told you about butter being hard to make. Because if you want to produce your own flavorful, creamy "high-priced spread" from fresh cow's milk, you can do it — quickly, easily, and without any expensive equipment — in just four easy steps. Here's how to make butter:

MAKING BUTTER STEP 1: SKIM, THEN CULTURE CREAM

Start by pouring one gallon of milk (fresh from the cow) into a clean container. Chill the milk quickly and keep it in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours. Then skim the cream off the top of the fluid with a spoon. When you begin to see watery skim milk in the spoon, stop skimming.

Next pour the cream into a jar, cap the container tightly, and let it sit on the kitchen drainboard for approximately 12 hours (or until the cream is about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and smells slightly sour). This is called ripening or culturing, which is developing the acid content of the cream. (Only cultured cream will produce butter with a good "butter flavor".) Experience will teach you when your cream smells too sour or too ripe, and when it's just perfect. I usually set the cream on the drainboard after breakfast and make butter after supper the same day.

MAKING BUTTER STEP 2: WHIP CREAM

For this step, it's imperative that you use a jar which is only 1/3 full. (If you need to pour your cream into a larger container at this point, do so.) The "empty" two-thirds of the jar allows the cream to expand as you shake it ... and also allows the thick fluid to splash against the walls of the container more violently when the jar is shaken. (This splashing — technically known as concussion — is what turns cream into butter. It is the same action of churning, but without a butter churn.)

OK. Now sit down in your favorite chair and start shaking the 1/3-full jar of ripened cream, keeping in mind that concussion is what makes the butter form. Practice agitating the jar so that a heavy impact occurs between the cream and the walls of the container.

The length of time you'll have to shake the liquid before you'll begin to see butter depends on [a] the cream's temperature, [b] the enthusiasm with which you agitate the jar, and [c] the amount of cream in the container. Hence, it's better to look for butter rather than to try to make it "by the clock." (In case you're wondering, though, you'll usually have to continue shaking for 15 to 30 minutes.) What do you look for? Just before you get butter, you'll notice that the churned cream is becoming "heavy." Then you'll begin to see a definite separation between the buttermilk and a heavy mass of butter.

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