My husband is a Doukhobor, which means (among other things) that butter is a very important part of his diet. It’s something that his mother makes regularly, as though whipping up a batch of homemade cultured butter was as simple as breathing.
Initially I was daunted by my lack of a churn, butter press and all the rest those museum pieces. However, it turns out that making butter is really easy and fun! Now we make butter whenever we have leftover whipping cream in the fridge.
Making butter in a mason jar
This recipe is designed to be made in a 1 quart mason jar. And the whole recipe can be made by shaking the jar of whipping cream. However, I usually kick start the process by using the whipping attachment on my stick blender
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When it’s fully whipped, then I put the lid on the jar and start to shake. At first it feels like nothing is happening, but just keep shaking. It takes about 10 minutes of shaking to get the butter to separate.
This is a perfect activity for kids. It’s like a pass the parcel game, everyone wants to be the one who is shaking when the butter finally separates.
Homemade Cultured Butter
It’s easy and fun to turn whipping cream into butter. Homemade cultured butter tastes divine. Serve it plain and salted, or flavour it with herbs and garlic. See the bottom of the post for more flavour suggestions.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 1 cup 1x
- Category: Condiment
- Method: Fermented
- Cuisine: French
Ingredients
- 2 cups whipping cream
- Culture (see notes)
- Scant 1/4 tsp salt, to taste
Instructions
- Mix the whipping cream and the culture in a 1 quart jar. Leave it on the counter to culture for at least 12 hours.
- When you’re ready to make butter, start by whipping the cream. You can do this with a hand mixer, or by shaking the jar of whipping cream.
- The whipping cream will thicken so that it seems like nothing is happening, but keep shaking/whipping. After about 10 to 15 minute the butter fat will separate from the buttermilk. (See photo above).
- Keep shaking until all the buttermilk has separated and the butter has formed into a ball.
- Scoop the butter out into a bowl. You want to extract all the buttermilk possible to prevent the butter from going off. Start by pressing the butter into the bowl with the back of a spoon. Pour any buttermilk that comes out back into the jar. When you’ve squeezed out all the buttermilk, rinse the butter with cold water, then press the butter out with a spoon again.
- Rinse the butter with cold water a second time, and press out any remaining buttermilk.
- After all the liquid has drained away, sprinkle on the salt (and any additional flavours). Mix everything into the butter with the spoon and put it into a container for serving and storage.
- Unsalted butter needs to be stored it in the fridge. Otherwise, salted cultured butter can stay on the counter for up to a week.
Notes
- Unpasturized cream will naturally ferment without any additional culture. However, store-bought cream can be cultured with milk kefir grains, 2 tbsp cultured sour cream, or 2 tbsp cultured buttermilk.
- This recipe is designed for a 1 quart mason jar worth of butter. The 2 cups of cream turns into about 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of buttermilk.
- The buttermilk is AMAZING. My kids make butter just so they can drink the buttermilk! Alternatively, you can use the buttermilk for baking. Fresh buttermilk is much sweeter than store-bought buttermilk.
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Additional Flavours
Homemade butter is perfect for making flavoured butters. It’s easy to mix flavours in when you add salt to the soft butter. After mixing in the flavours, let the butter sit for 2 hours to infuse the flavours before serving.
Store flavoured butter in the fridge for up to a week. You can also freeze flavoured butter if you aren’t going to use it up right away.
I like storing butter in rolls of wax paper (see picture above.) It makes serving easy! Using a knife scrape the butter onto a piece of wax paper, and roughly roll into a tube. Then twist the ends of the paper to keep the roll closed.
Here are five of my favourite flavours of butter:
- 1/4 cup of finely diced chives and parsley
- 1/4 cup of finely diced fresh basil
- 1 tsp fresh lemon juice and 2 tbsp lemon zest
- 2 cloves of finely diced fresh garlic or 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 cup honey with 2 tsp cinnamon
Could you use whey from yogurt for the culture?
Yes, but if it’s regular (heat-set yogurt) then it will need to culture at around 40 C.
When I am making yogurt with a thermophilic culture, I need to heat the milk to 180°F. If I’m using a commercial mesophilic culture with raw, extra-heavy cream, should I first scald cream, too? Or just bring the cream to room temperature before mixing in the culture?
Milk is scalded before making yogurt to denature the proteins so that it can thicken with the culturing. For cultured butter, you don’t want to scaled the cream, whether you’re using mesophilic or thermophilic culture. I usually just mix mesophilic culture into cold milk, then leave it out on the counter to warm up and culture. That’s because I culture milk nearly daily, so I just move my culture into a new jar every morning. 🙂