How to Make Butter and Buttermilk

Here is a general response to posts regarding raw milk and commercial cream.

1. Yes, in some states raw milk is sold legally. I live in such a state, California, so I am sometimes guilty of forgetting that most of us are not so lucky.

2. I get raw goat milk from local farms. I find them through the Local Harvest web site --http://www.localharvest.org/.

3. You can also ask about raw milk from farmers at farmers markets. Ask around enough and you may find someone willing to sell to you.

4. You can also get political. I note that we are permitted to drive (tens of thousands of deaths a year from driving), smoke, drink alcohol, ski, and, etc. So, one could argue that we could take on the risk, if any, from raw milk.

5. Regarding commecial cream. Again, I live in Northern California where we have a good selection of cream in normal markets, including, at least in my city, raw cream. I would say that as a rule the more expensive the grocery store, the more "upscale" the customers, the better selection of cream you will find.

6. Cream that is just marked "pasteurized" is pasteurized at a lower temperature than "ultra pasteurized." There are many ways to pasteurize as it is partly a matter of time and temperature. But always avoid the ultra-pasteurized if you can. But, again, it won't hurt you and you should use what you can easily get. The butter will still taste wonderful.

Jan --

I have not worked with goat milk. Certainly, if something looks and tastes like butter, then, it is butter! Butter is fat and it is not water soluble. So, when you do this again, and if you get the same results, take that clump, or a spoonful of it, and drop it in a bowl of cool water. Work it a bit with your fingers. If it doesn't dissolve then it is butter and you should wash the rest of the clump.

But, if it turns out that that clump is not yet butter, then I think you should do the experimenting and post your results here.

I'd be careful not to add too much water. I think the amount of water is whatever is the minimal amount that lets your machines do their work. If your butter was already butter when you add the water then the worst that will happen is you'll get a granular mess that will come together again when you put it in a bowl of cool water and begin to work it.

If what you are getting isn't yet butter, then if you add too much water then you'll never be able to get the butter fat to separate out.

I do recall once working with some cream in a food processor that seemed to turn to whipping cream, but wouldn't break into butter and buttermilk. I thought I had a disaster on my hands. But what had happened is that the butter just looked like whipping cream. But when I washed it it turned out that it had turned to butter -- in water the clump divided into butter and buttermilk and the fine bits of butter came together with handling in the water.

I just had an interesting experience with my first attempt at butter.

The cream we're getting from our Nubian goats via a Novo cream separator (http://www.novocreamseparators.com) is incredibly thick. It sets up solid when refrigerated, and I have to heat it to get it out of the jar. So I'm thinking it has very high butterfat content.

Even after heating to about 30C (86F), it was still too thick to shake up in a jar. So I used a little hand mixer in the jar. It quickly became too thick to continue, without noticeably passing through a "whipped cream" phase.

I then thought, "Something's wrong," and transferred it to a VitaMix, which wasn't able to beat it any further, because it just sat like a lump on top of the blades. Through all this, I was getting NO buttermilk out. So I tried adding some cold water. That allowed the VitaMix to work a little (from the sound it made), but it soon started sitting on top of the blades again -- too hard and thick to blend. It ended up taking in almost all the water I added, and I poured off the small amount remaining.

The result looks and tastes like butter, but my experience is so unlike everything I've read about making butter that I thought I'd see if there were any ideas here. Should I try diluting my super-heavy cream with milk before beating? Should I try to adjust the cream separator to get thinner cream? (Although this super-heavy stuff makes the BEST ice cream!)

Thanks for any ideas and thoughts you may have!

Alexa Fleckenstein wrote: "... we usually don't use dairy anymore - not so much because of the fat but because of the inflammatory milk protein. And our health is so much better."

Are you able to get raw goat milk where you live? (It's legal in 37 states and all of Europe, check http://www.RealMilk.com to see if you can get it where you live.)

Many people who think they are lactose-intolerant or allergic to milk are really having problems with either pasteurization or homogenization, or the large, less digestible globules of fat found in cow milk. So raw goat milk is the least likely dairy product to exhibit side-effects.

Some goat milk tastes "goaty." This can be due to letting a buck run with the does, poor handling practices, age of the milk, diet of the goat, or simply flavour from individual goats. There is no reason one should put up with "goaty" milk if you don't like it!

Give raw goat milk a try!

So in the article, it fails to mention that it is illegal to sell raw cream, or it is in Colorado anyway. You can only get it if you have your own cow. I found this a bit bothersome after a long search trying to find raw cream at local dairies...

But at any rate, the article mentions you should get cream that has been pasteurized at the minimum temp. Does anybody know what that might be? I can't find it on the web.

So in the article, it fails to mention that it is illegal to sell raw cream, or it is in Colorado anyway. You can only get it if you have your own cow. I found this a bit bothersome after a long search trying to find raw cream at local dairies...

But at any rate, the article mentions you should get cream that has been pasteurized at the minimum temp. Does anybody know what that might be? I can't find it on the web.

In factories, of course, butter is made with stainless steel. As a practical matter, cleanliness is the invariable requirement of the dairy worker. One can be a bit less scrupulous with butter than one is going to consume soon after making it, but otherwise, if using wooden equipment one ought, in fact, scald them first with boiling water before using them. In my own life I am always torn between the poetry of using beautiful things and the practicality of, for example, stainless steel. It is too bad that the most cleanable surfaces are usually the least sympathetic in the French sense of warm and imbued with romance.

I think what is most important about making butter is that you actually do it. The Kitchen-aid mixer is one of the few truly wonderful small kitchen appliances. Use it. Making butter in it can be a bit splashy, so you may feel the need to cover the bowl with plastic wrap, or something.

I cannot comment on the paddle part of your query as I actually don't have a mixer. In my own probably insane quest for mechanical silence in my kitchen I do most everything by hand. I was, though, once given a little food processor and when I need to make butter in a hurry I take it out of the pantry where it lives use that. I can assure you, there is no poetry whatsoever in the screech of its motor and whirling blade.

When only making a little bit of butter I use a small wooden plunge churn I bough in China. I sterilize it with boiling water between uses.

Can I use the stainless steel bowl and cast aluminum paddle on my Kitchen-Aid mixer? Or should I stick with glass, plastic or wood?

Butter cultures are, by tradition, mesophilic, meaning that the culture thrives at room temperature. This tradition is based on the history of cultured butter -- cream from the cow soured at the temperature of the dairy -- and butter was made from that soured cream. The cream was never heated. Kefer cultures are usually applied to milk -- not cream -- and the milk is heated to a fairly high temperature - enough to pasteurize it before it is cooled to warm and at which point it the kefir culture is added.

Kefir is thus a thermophilic culture intended for milk rather than a mesophilic culture intended for cream. It is thus not traditionally used for culturing butter.

All this said, cooking is a living art. You might as well try using a kefir culture if you'd like and see what happens. The most you have to lose is a cup of cream. I'd probably not heat the cream much past the temperature that is right for adding the culture -- warm but not hot.

In the end, there is no right and wrong. There is only what works, and what you personally like. Never shy away from experimenting. If you do try this let us know how it works.

Thanks for the clarifications! I'm looking forward to trying this.
Another question about the culturing: would a kefir culture work?

I apologize for not having given an indication of yield in the article. You can expect at least 3 to 4 ounces of butter per cup of cream, thus 6 to 8 ounces per pint. One stick of butter is 4 ounces, thus, roughly you get one stick of butter per cup (1/2 pint) of cream.

Different grades of cream contain different percentages of butterfat. "Heavy whipping cream" will contain (in the US) at least 36% butterfat. "Manufacturer's cream" should have at least 40%, but that cream is generally not sold direct to consumes, so the best we can do is heavy whipping cream.

American butter must, by law, be 80% butterfat. Unfortunately, most dairies take that to be their target amount, rather than, say, 82% or 84%. The minimum butterfat content required by law in Europe is higher than it is in the US, so that German butter was, literally, butterier.

Your homemade butter will probably have more fat in it than commercial European butters and thus be even better.

Where I live in California it would be a search to find cream that isn't just cream. Any market that caters to people interested in good food, and organic food, will have cream that contains nothing but cream. This said, creams come with varying percentages of butter fat. "Light cream," for example, has less fat in it than "heavy cream." You want the heaviest cream -- the fattiest cream -- as the fat is the butter part.

Culturing butter has no effect on its keeping qualities. It is residual buttermilk that makes homemade butter quickly go bad. The residual buttermilk sours.

This said, if we washed our butter free of buttermilk as well as commercial operators do, then homemade butter would keep the same amount of time. I suggested a week as the limit for keeping the butter we make at home just to be safe, and on the assumption that few of us are going to wash it sufficiently to make long-term storage of sweet butter out of the freezer a reasonable option. I also think that as the home butter maker is making small batches of butter that it makes most sense to make it for a special use -- and then to just use it up.

What is the yield? The first comment says "2 pints" but then says "quarts." And the article doesn't give any indication at all!

When my son was little, I wanted to show him how to make butter.

I bought two pints of heavy cream, thinking that using just one would yield barely a teaspoon. My - was I wrong! The two quarts yielded A LOT of butter! It was fun doing and teaching it. But never again did I underestimate the calorie count of whipped cream...

Now, we usually don't use dairy anymore - not so much because of the fat but because of the inflammatory milk protein. And our health is so much better.

Alexa Fleckenstein M.D., physician, author.

your article is great - but where do I get real cream, not added carrageen, which is even in bio cream. I live at the Oregon coast where some thing are not easily available.

I have made butter in Europe, which was OK. The German butter is so much better than the US butter, I do not know why, but you can get sour cream butter and sweet cream butter, it is easily spreadable and very good, like most of their milk products. Yoghurt doesn't contain thickeners, Kefir is very good, also without any artificial additions. Milk products do not keep for weeks or months,they spoil after about a week, so my question is if the American milk products are radiated?

May be someone knows a source for unaltered cream.

Thanks

Why doesn't the butter last longer than a week? Especially if it's cultured already?

Even the European-style and small batch domestic butters last longer...

Why can't this butter be kept as long as commercial butters? Even specialty butters (European style, small batch domestic) don't have that caveat.