Homemade butter is easy to do and very satisfying, It takes about 20 minutes and its important to get rid of as much buttermilk as possible, so when you think you have got it all, give it another squeeze and get rid of a little bit more, this will ensure that if you use it for cooking it won’t go watery. It works well with supermarket double cream, and because of our welfare standards I am happy to use that. but if you wish to use organic,dairy cream go ahead. if you want to see it work on a small scale, tip some cream into a jam jar with a tight fitting lid and shake it, shake it shake it, for about an hour and you will get the same result and good biceps too.
You will need, fresh double cream, iced water and salt if you want salted butter.Equipment you will need (for and easy life,. It can be done in a jam jar and lots of arm exercise) A food processor with regular blade, a bowl, a piece of muslin and or a sieve,and a spatula.Pour the cream into your food processor bowl. I have used a 1Litre bottle from Costco , this is about the maximum amount I can do in my bowl.Start the the machine and blend the creamAfter about 1-2 minutes it will be thick double cream, like you would pipe rossetes withcarry on and it will get thickerAs it gets thicker it will start to spil and look like its going wrong but carry on.Occasionally scrape the sides down so that all the cream is mixed in.when it looks like this its nearly ready, its been about 5 minutes nowVery nearly there now, the cream looks lumpyThe colour starts to change and the lumps come together and you can see liquid coming out of the cream, This is buttermilk.Another 20 seconds and there is a lot of butter milkstop the machine and pour off all the buttermilk you can.Because the blades have made the cream hot we need to cool it down and encourage more buttermilk to come out of the cream which is now butter. Its important that the water is ice cold and it will be if you add some ace to a jug of water at the beginning of the recipe. you only need to add a tablespoon.Turn on the machine again and more buttermilk will come out, whizz for about 20.Pour off the buttermilkUse the spatula to squeeze out as much buttermilk as you can.When you squeeze the butter ,buttermilk will come to the surface, its important to get rid of as much liquid as possible.Place the muslin over the sieve and place them both on top of the bowl with the buttermilk in.Tip the ball of butter into the siieve.Take the edges of the muslin and squeeze to get rid of more buttermilkIf you don’t have any muslin you can just use your clean hands to squeeze. pat it into a shape.Put it into a clean tub.Or you can create sausage shapes,by placing the butter onto some parchment and rolling into a log shape. I have then wrapped each log in cling film and put them into the freezer so I can bring out one at a time. this is when you can add salt or garlic and herbs as the butter is now very soft and workableThis is how much buttermilk I got from 1l of creamI poured the buttermilk back into my cream bottle so it could be used in other recipes, as you can see its about 1/4 of the volume.enjoy immediately or place in the fridge, I have also found that it freezes well. I always make unsalted butter and then I know I can add salt as I go.Yum!
