Receta Kitchen Tip: How to Make Butter {& Giveaway}
Dear Readers,
I’d like to welcome our very first ever guest post by our very own Pastor Alaska – my husband, web developer, business manager, and homemade butter-maker. Enjoy (and be sure to leave him some comments, too!). The Giveaway is at the bottom of the post. – Maya
Weather: 33 Degrees & Raining
What I’m Listening To: Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) – Zion (Deluxe Edition) - Hillsong
Around here, I’ve developed the nickname Pastor Alaska. Most of the time I come to the site because I am designing, updating, or checking the statistics. It is not because I am cooking or writing a post!
On the other hand, I am known around the house for “projects.” Whenever I cook something, it is sure to be a project (ahem, mess)… I like to call it “Project Cooking.” Every time I want to cook something, it’s something unique… like making handmade mozzarella or ricotta cheeses, vanilla sugar, Sriracha Salt, homemade banana chips, or figuring out how to get sea salt out of the ocean water from Cook Inlet. My lovely wife felt like it was time, when my projects are successful, that I share them with you.
The first thing I said when I completed this particular project was (in a very surprised voice), “I can’t believe it IS butter!”
This method is extremely simple and makes DELICIOUS BUTTER!
You need one pint of cream (heavy whipping cream from any supermarket) that has not been ultra-pasteruized, a stand mixer (for this method), a kitchen sink, and a pair of hands. I clarify heavy whipping cream because I don’t normally do the shopping and I visited four grocery stores trying to find “regular cream” before learning that heavy whipping cream works just fine.
Start by pouring one pint of cream in the mixing bowl (room temperature cream seemed to work better than cold cream). I started with the whole quart, but it is VERY messy and splashes out… So I removed a portion and did a pint-sized batches instead. Even with only a pint, drape a kitchen towel around the mixing bowl. Turn on mixer to medium-high or high. After 2-3 minutes you will have whipped cream. Keep going… at about 10 minutes the cream will “break.” You can see the difference below where liquids and solids separate. It happens quickly and it is obvious when the change occurs (one indication is that buttermilk will begin splattering everywhere, but hopefully you’ll have your kitchen towel over you mixer when this happens as I suggested above). Note: you can save the buttermilk that separates from the butter and refrigerate it to use for making pancakes and such.
At this point, turn off the mixer. Grab the hunk of butter and start squeezing firmly by hand over the sink or bowl. Run cold water over the ball as you squeeze. Dropping the temperature of the butter with cold water helps keep it together more easily as you squeeze. Also, I hate three things… anything to do with eyeball-touching, needles, and oily grease. If you don’t like oily stuff on your skin… I advise you to buy butter at the store… this part can get nasty. Super nasty.
Keep squeezing while running cold water over the ball periodically until the liquid you squeeze out runs clear [if it is not running clear and you store the butter, the butter will go bad very quickly].
And it should taste wonderfully delicious… and you will want to slather it on everything.
Homemade Butter Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pint heavy cream
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Pour cream and salt into the bowl of a stand-mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.Tent the mixer with a large kitchen towel and turn the mixer on medium high for 8-12 minutes. At first, you will have whipped cream, but continue beating the cream until the mixture separates into butter solids and buttermilk (you can reserve the buttermilk and refrigerate for other uses).
Remove the butter solids from the mixer. Squeeze the butter firmly by hand over the bowl in the sink while periodically running the butter under cold water. When there is very little liquid left and when any liquid remaining in the butter runs clear when squeezed, the butter is ready. Form the butter into a ball or stick. Store butter, covered, at room temperature up to three days or refrigerated up to a week. It also keeps nicely in the freezer.
Notes
To use your homemade butter for baking, weigh it on a kitchen scale in ounces. A standard store-bought (1/2 cup) stick of butter weighs 4 ounces.
2.2
http://www.alaskafromscratch.com/2013/05/03/homemade-butter/
GIVEAWAY
Maya here. I was so enamored with this cookbook, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making, by Alana Chernila. I was drawn in – first – by the writing. She had me at the introduction. I was so enamored, in fact, that I wrote to her that same day (I never do this). And she wrote me back (how delightful!). It was then that I decided that we needed to highlight one of her recipes in a blog post and that a few of my readers needed to have a copy of this cookbook as well. So, I am giving away three copies of The Homemade Pantry to three lucky winners!!! The Giveaway begins on Friday, May 3 and ends at 8p.m. Alaska time on Friday, May 10. Three winners will be selected at random and will receive their cookbooks via Amazon.com. Unfortunately, we are only able to ship to U.S. residents at this time.
This Giveaway is sponsored entirely by Alaska from Scratch.