As I have mentioned, we are being blessed with two to four gallons of milk per day by a neighbor. Using all of that milk is a challenge, and the situation is not permanent, so I am trying to process the milk into things we use regularly and things we can freeze for later use. Butter is just one of the bonus items that I am storing for later use.
Making butter is actually pretty simple. First, I skim the cream off the raw milk. I find it easiest to skim the cream if I put the milk into a beverage jar with a spigot on it and let the milk sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours. I like the glass, one-gallon containers because I can fit up to eight of them on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. Once the milk sits, it separates into distinct layers, with the cream floating on top. When I’m ready to start making butter, I make sure that all of my utensils are super clean, including my stand mixer bowl and the whip attachment. Once they are dry, I put the metal mixer bowl and the whip attachment in the freezer while I skim the cream.
- Drain all of the milk layer from the beverage dispenser using the spigot.
- Pour the cream into the cold mixer bowl, scraping the glass dispenser to get all of that yummy cream.
- Start whipping the cream using the stand mixer. Start on low and let it whip for a few minutes, gradually increasing the speed.
- Once the cream starts getting frothy, I put a towel over the mixer to make sure the cream doesn’t get splattered everywhere.
- Increase speed. The cream should start looking like whipping cream, because that’s what it is at this point. You could stop here and use the cream over fruit or ice cream and it would be delicious!
- Increase speed again. I’m usually at 9 by this point and I’m making sure that towel stays over the mixer. You can hear that the cream is really dense at this point and it’s about the “break”.
- Once the cream breaks, you will hear liquid sloshing in your bowl and that towel will be catching all the splatter coming off the cream. Turn the mixer off.
- Remove the towel and you should see yellow butter in the whip attachment and, sometimes, there will still be little globs of butter in the liquid.
- Remove the bowl and the attachment from the mixer, keeping the attachment in the bowl.
- Strain the contents of the bowl through a thin towel. I like to put a big bowl in the sink, with my strainer inside and a thin kitchen towel over the strainer to catch the butter. Remove the butter from the whip and add it to the towel.
- I wrap the towel around the butter and squeeze out as much water as possible, then pour cold water over the butter and squeeze it again. Note the color of the liquid that is coming out. At first the liquid will be white, which means there is still whey in the butter. Rinse until that liquid is clear. This means that you have rinsed all of the whey off the butter. Rinsing off the whey helps keep the butter from going rancid.
- Once the liquid is clear, put the butter into your container of choice. If you want salted butter, mix the salt in at this stage. You can also use any other herbs that you like. We love garlic, so I sometimes add dry garlic powder or parsley or italian seasoning to mine.
- I also like to use a small rectangle butter keeper to “mold” my butter, then put it in the fridge until the butter is nice and cold. I pop the butter out of the mold, wrap it in wax paper, and add it to a bag I keep in the freezer just for butter.
I have been making butter every other day for the last couple of weeks. We have several pounds of butter in the freezer at this point. I’m finding that I get about a cup of butter from every gallon of milk, which is equal to two sticks of butter at the store. Oh, yeah, don’t throw away the liquid that comes from making butter. Some people call that liquid buttermilk, while others say that it’s just whey. I put it in a jar in the fridge and use the liquid for making bread, or add it to my milk when I make cheese. I understand that it can be fermented as well, but I haven’t tried that quite yet.
