Making Butter

[amomof4]

Making butter from fresh milk is easy:

1. Separate the cream--should give you about 1 quart
2. Allow cream to come to room temp. Using cold cream will eventually work
but it will turn to whipped cream first, thereby taking up too much space
3. Put in blender on lowest setting--if you use a high setting, you will
homegenize it & it will never turn to butter.
4. Blend until butter forms--1-2 min. or even less.
5. Put butter in bowl & wash it with cold water. A potatoe masher helps
6. Add salt if desired
7. Pour butter milk back into milk. This butter milk is sweet & won't
affect the flavor of the milk. You could turn it into real butter milk by
letting it stand a room temp for a few weeks. But unless your
environment has the right kind of bacteria, you might not like it.

If the butter has a sour taste, it's because you didn't wash out all the buttermilk. Some people prefer that taste, but I prefer mine sweet. If it does taste sour, it won't on bread & crackers. You can also use it to cook with & it won't pick up the sour taste.

Fresh milk doesn't spoil, it sours. Store milk doesn't sour, it spoils. If your fresh milk has soured, make pancakes. If your store milk spoils, through it out. Fresh, soured milk can be used so long as the color doesn't change.

Fresh butter should be kept in frig. It only has a shelf life of about 1 week, so if you can't use it before then, freeze it. If you want to make your butter spreadable, you can mix in a little canola oil.

[momma4]

just curious what is the total time on making this? How much does it make total? and where should I go for fresh milk?

[amomof4]

It doesn't take long at all. Probably 10 min., including separating cream, blending to make butter, rinsing, & salting.

If you don't live in the country, you probably can't get fresh butter. I did notice that some stores are starting to sell it, but it is expensive.

A quart of cream gives my about 1/2 lb of butter. I then pour the butter milk back into the milk. It is interesting that unless you rinse the butter, it will have a sour taste because of the butter milk, yet the actual butter milk tastes sweet????