How to Make Butter and Buttermilk

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In truth, butter is not the enemy Americans once feared. Researchers have upset the old-fashioned “lipid hypothesis” that blamed heart disease on animal fats. Plus, we are now discovering how incredibly healthy foods from pastured animals can be. Butter from grass-fed cows is higher in many nutrients, including vitamins E and A, beta carotene, and essential fatty acids.

If you can find cream from pastured cows, your butter will also be more luscious and spreadable than you can get using cream from grain-fed cows.

So, how do you make butter so good that those who taste it always want more? Up until recent times, people — mostly mothers — had been expert butter makers. The break in this tradition is exceedingly recent. So let’s teach ourselves this ancient and elegant craft. The following are general guidelines for those of you who don’t have a mother or a friend to show you.

Making Butter

Butter is made from cream. You get the greatest yield from cream with the highest fat content. In America, that’s “heavy whipping cream,” and the commercial grades “extra-heavy” or “manufacturer’s” cream have even more butterfat. Plus, different cow breeds produce different percentages of milk fat. The most common U.S. dairy cow, the Holstein/Friesian, produces milk that has 31 percent less fat than Jersey cows. Jersey cream is widely regarded as the ideal cream for butter making. If you are lucky, you can find a source nearby. (Search for one at Local Harvest.)

Raw vs. Pasteurized Cream for Butter Making

To taste the ancient taste of butter, you have to use raw cream. Raw cream is biologically active: It comes inoculated with beneficial local bacteria. When milk fresh from a cow sits for a while, the cream rises to the top. For thousands of years, all there was to separating cream from milk was spooning it off the top. Then it was allowed to sit and ferment.

But when it comes to pasteurized cream, even the most mass-produced stuff yields yummier butter than any butter you can buy. Let taste be your guide. If possible, make butter from two different dairies, and compare the results in blind tastings. This will help you develop your palate and focus on taste, rather than labels. If you can find and afford it, test cream from the smallest local dairy that offers cream from a single herd and pasteurizes at the minimum temperature. You will then have the best chance of tasting a butter “varietal,” such as Jersey.

Pasteurized cream must either be used for sweet cream butter or be purposefully cultured. You can’t let pasteurized cream sour naturally, as you would raw cream. Pasteurization kills all bacteria, even the beneficial natives. So, if you were to let that cream sour, you would be allowing a blank slate to absorb any ambient bacteria that might be lurking, without the natural defenses to control it.

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