Butter!

[telophase]

As I posted last night via email (when I forget to remove the "Posted from my iPhone" bit, you know it's been done by email), I made butter last night. Using this recipe from the Traveler's Lunchbox.

Amusingly, I haven't actually tasted it yet, because by the time I was finished with making it, I and the kitchen were covered in a thin, greasy film* and the last thing I wanted was more fatty greasiness, no matter how good it might be. So I split it into two batches, rolled it up in parchment paper, froze one, and put the other in the fridge until later.

I did forget to put salt in it, so it's unsalted butter, which means I won't like it very much on bread, but it'll still be good on popcorn and in baked goods. And as 4 cups of cream plus 1/3 cup Greek yogurt ended up producing about 2 cups of butter and 2 cups of buttermilk, I've got most of the buttermilk left over (hence me asking for suggestions yesterday - thank you, everyone!).

As a piece of advice for anyone else thinking of making butter who hasn't yet, I'd never do this without a stand mixer, because it took somewhere around 10 minutes of beating, and I've have given up quite some time before if I had to hold a hand mixer or do it by hand. And the section in that recipe where she says it goes from grainy to broken in a matter of seconds was more like 2-3 minutes in my experience.


As for why I made butter? No reason, really, other than I wanted to see how it was done. :)


* Okay, not really. But it felt like it, and I had lots of bowls and utensils that had varying amounts of dairy fat in them, and cleaning them ahead of me, so I wasn't particularly inclined to make more mess.

Comments

[opusculus]

I once made butter by hand in school as a child. The fact that it took 20 or so small children rotating through doing it until bored at least twice was enough to convince me that I should never, ever try it by myself. Somehow it had never occurred to me that I could try with a mixer, though. It sounds awesome.

[telophase]

I did it once in after-school day care in 2nd or 3rd grade, but I don't think I got a taste, as there was only one jar being passed around and shaken and a lot of small children. :)

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

One of our libraries had the kids make butter in storytime. They put the heavy cream into little plastic jars and just had them shake the dickens out of them. XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I remember doing that waaaaaay long ago in second or third grade, at the daycare place I went to after school. XD Don't remember if I tasted it or not, then, as we only had one jar and a bunch of little kids.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

They all got their own little jars of cream to shake, and bread to put it on when they were done. :)

I'm going to have to try it myself sometime.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The moment where the cream breaks and becomes butterfat globs sloshing around in buttermilk really is sort of magic. :D

[kintail.livejournal.com]

That sounds very cool! I do not have a stand mixer, though, so I'd have to be REALLY motivated to do this myself. Maybe I will purchase a small amount of cultured butter next time I see it available, to see if I like the difference, first.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You could always use a jar and shake it, as generations of schoolkids have done! Still tiring, but at least you could watch TV while doing it. XD

I like cultured butter, as it gives a lovely little tang to it.

[kintail.livejournal.com]

Alas, my health has been such lately that shaking the ketchup bottle so I don't get watery separated stuff on my scrambled eggs is about the limit of my abilities, although I now realize I had a deprived childhood!

The real solution, of course, is make nekonexus do it. ;)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

A perfect solution!

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Glass butter-churn jars are still pretty easy to find on eBay and in thrift stores. I think that would avoid at least some of the "everything buttered" problem!

I've made butter accidentally.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think the majority of the butter everywhere occurred as I was kneading it with a spatula to get the last of the buttermilk out of it. XD (It also occurs to me now that I've got a shield-thing that fits on top of the bowl of the stand mixer and I have no idea why I didn't think of it last night!)

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Well but, so what I want to know is, what does real buttermilk taste like?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

As I hate milk, I wouldn't be any good in describing this, because all I could say would be "Icky." So I put the question to Toby, who is a milk drinker. He treated it as if it were a glass of Scotch. He said first, there was a whiff of butter, then the taste was basically the taste of whole milk without the mouthfeel - whole milk with something missing, as pretty much all lowfat products taste, and then a light tang. Which was more pronounced in the last sip, so maybe something settled.

I think the cream was sitting overnight at a little too low a temperature to culture really well, and that if it had been a hair warmer, or I'd let it go for a few more hours, the tang would have been more pronounced.

ETA: He just wandered in here to let me know that it was not as horrid as skim, 1%, or 2% milk are. He hates those with a passion. While he prefers whole milk, if he, say, had gall bladder problems and had to cut as much fat out of his diet as he could, this would be a preferable substitute instead of other lowfat milks.