How To Make Butter At Home

This is one of the first projects we did as unschoolers. And we had a BLAST!!!! Robyn could not stop bragging about HER butter!!

I'm not going to lie to you. Making butter does involve a certain amount of physical effort (unless you use a blender) but the whole process is pretty straightforward. In fact, because making butter is so simple, it makes a great project for kids or adults. It's a fast and easy process that lets you see for yourself where this basic and familiar food comes from.

The Basic Process

To make butter, first start with a simple ingredient, heavy cream. You can buy whipping cream at the grocery store, although if you live in a part of the country where you can get fresh cream from a dairy, so much the better.

Next, stir up the cream so that the butterfat globules begin to separate from the liquid. One of the simplest ways to do this is to get a canning jar with a sturdy lid and fill it about one-third full of cream. Then simply shake the jar until you feel and see the butter separate. When that happens, there's a sudden and noticeable difference in the consistency. That's the time to stop shaking. What they Don't tell you, is that you're going to shake your arms off to get to that point. :) We passed our jar back and forth, so we could rest our arms!

Now separate the butter from the buttermilk by straining it. A colander or piece of cheesecloth may be helpful for this task. Personally, we just used the colander. Rinse the butter with cold water, VERY gently turning the butter with a spoon while the cold water runs over it until the water runs clear. It's really really soft, so be careful. Then mix in a little bit of salt, to taste or leave the butter unsalted if you prefer. Put the butter in the refrigerator. (We put ours into a coffee cup). Let it chill, and then it's ready to eat!

Of course, you could forgo the canning jar and make butter in an old-fashioned butter churn, or in a mixer. Whichever tool you choose, the basic process is the same. The main difference is the amount of effort it takes to whip the cream into butter.

Also what they don't tell you, is that the buttermilk that is leftover from making the butter. Refrigerate it overnight, (as you're doing with the butter anyway so it can get hard), and use that buttermilk to make biscuits. Robyn helped make the biscuits, and she was VERY proud of 'her' biscuits and 'her' butter!! Now we need to make jelly! :)