Galganov's Free Recipe For Making Sweet Butter at Home!

Method I (Separating the butter from the buttermilk):

1. Put cream in bottle and let come to room temperature (let it stand for a while).
2. Open the cap (to let any pressure out of the jar) and recap it just prior to churning.
3. Shake with sharp up and down motions sending the cream dashing the length of the jar. (Force/abruptness of movement is more useful than speed.) About 1 complete stroke (up and down) every second is a good speed.
4. Taking a little break of a couple of strokes to rest your arms will not damage your project.
5. Continue until you see a pool of while liquid sitting around a lump of yellow butter.
6. Pour off the buttermilk leaving/returning the butter to your jar.
7. Close the jar and dash the butter a few more times, again, to extract more liquid - and pour it off.
8. Repeat until you no longer get buttermilk.

Method II (Washing the butter):

1. Pour cold water into the jar with the water barely covering the butter.
2. Dash it as if churning to "wash" the butter.
3. Discard the milky water and repeat the process, using a little less water than the first time, until you are satisfied with the clarity of the water. It usually takes us 4 to 5 rinses.
4. After the wash, dash the butter ball again to extract as much water as possible. Repeat until you can no longer extract water by this method.

Method III (Finishing the butter):

1. We like to store our butter in a wide-mouth jar. What ever storage vessel you use (even if you use a butter mold and put it on a plate), The butter can be kneaded with your fingers, or any rigid tool. We like to use a long-handled teaspoon to knead the butter right in the jar.
2. As you knead or press out your butter you will hear air pockets being moved around and more water will be freed from your butter. This water should be poured off/discarded. Continue the kneading process until you can no longer extract water from the butter. Once done ... You've got butter!

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The Background Story
Home Made Sweet Butter

NEW: Watch our new Youtube video on making butter

Butter is a wonderful, tasty, natural fat suitable for consumption as part of a sensible, balanced diet - as a bread spread, as a component in many dishes or even as a medium for frying. Certainly, there are many varieties/flavours of butters. As most of us know, butter is also the only medium for frying certain foods. Nothing tastes like great butter (even though some dishes prefer other fats).

Our favourite is fresh, sweet butter - the result of absolutely nothing but churned cream. Of course, one will also find salted and cultured butters and wonderfully flavoured herb butters including the most common of flavoured butters - garlic butter.

Cultured butter, very roughly explained, is the result of churning soured, 35% (whipping) cream. We believe the use of even slightly soured, commercially treated (non-organic) 35% cream to be unsafe. We do not advise using these soured creams. While we have tried, successfully, slightly soured organic creams, we cannot recommend it. You may choose to do so at your own risk. Typically, good cultured butters are butters where the cream is "turned" under controlled conditions with a specific bacteria.

We like to make our butter from fresh, organic (additive free) cream. 500 ml (1/2 litre, 16 fl oz, 1 pint, 2 cups - no matter how you measure it) yeilds about one (1) cup (225 g, or 1/2 lb) of butter PLUS a bit over 1 cup of sweet (properly known as "traditional") buttermilk. The finished butter tastes like fresh, sweet cream. The taste of an unwashed butter (or butter not properly washed after churning) will be affected by milky undertones.

This traditional buttermilk (as with cultured buttermilks) may feature a little tang as a result of the lactic acids left in the liquid. In all cases, traditional buttermilk will be thinner than cultured buttermilk - the sort we buy, today, in supermarkets. Of course, your butter and buttermilk will be affected by the cream you start with. Good cream will yield good butter. Butter needs no additives ... so we would recommend additive-free cream.

How do we use buttermilk? It depends. If the cream soured we will bake or cook with it (we may freeze it to preserve it until needed). If not ... if it is fresh, we may take a refreshing, low-fat (at anywhere from 1 to 2% milk fat) draught of this thirst-quenching drink; or it may be used over cereal. We also could use it in our cheese sauce recipe or we may bake with it. It's wonderful for any of our such breakfast greats as Crepes, Pancakes, or French toast, or turn any of our muffin or quick bread recipes from vegan to dairy by using your buttermilk.

For something so simple ... something that was once common knowledge, assembling the utensils to make butter was an interesting challenge. A function once so common we found to be, in practical terms, lost so we dug back to people who had, in the long-gone past, to make butter. We couldn't find a churn - at least not at a sensible price considering our purpose and how often we would use it. A small, manual churn designed to process 1 1/2 liters (quarts) of cream costs around 100$ plus shipping and often more. Butter molds are, of course, extra. You may find less expensive "vintage" (used/old) churns. After an unsuccessful local search for a churn, we decided to seek alternate methods to "dash" the cream. We turned to a 1.5 Litre (1.6 quart) mason jar.

We listened carefully. The cream would be warmed to room temperature. It would be churned (with an old-style barrel churn or a glass rotary churn) until the buttermilk would separate from the butter (the liquid separates from the fat). You would, then, pour off the buttermilk. What you were left with was a ball of butter which would be kneaded in icy-cold water to wash and keep it in a nice lump. Finally, kneading out the water after washing would result in a delightful, smooth ball of sweet butter - salted only when you were concerned it might spoil from less than suitable storage conditions.

Well, so simple it seemed. This is the right time to tell you, "It will take longer to make the first time ... and it will gradually go more quickly until you find, probably, about 1/2 to 3/4 hour to make about 225g (1/2 lb) of fresh butter. Is it time well spent? Only if you want to enjoy the very best in fresh, sweet butter.

These instructions use, dependably, 250 to 500 ml (1/2 to 1 pint) of fresh, 35% cream. Each 1/2 liter (1/2 pint) of cream yields about 225g (1/2 lb) of butter.
Specific issues: Doing 250 ml (1/2 pt) is a little easier than doing a full 1/2 L (1 pt). Churning butter in a bottle as described here is a good, short (10 minute) workout for the arms. The larger amount is harder work but not longer. We recommend doing 250 ml (1/2 pint) at a time the first few times - just to learn the rythme but doing the full half liter (full pint) is more economical.

What should you expect? After about 2 or 3 minutes (maybe 10 the first time or first few times) the cream will start to thicken and won't seem to be doing much. If you continue to dash the cream in the jar from top to bottom, you will see, after about 4 minutes, the cream starts to turn into a lump. In another minute or two you will notice liquid will accumulate until there is one yellowish lump of butter and a pool of white buttermilk in the bottom of the jar. It takes a little patience and a little stamina ... and the confidence and understanding that it will become butter.