I’ve been making butter at home
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- July 17, 2023
- 709
Butter from Europe is said to be of better quality and more flavorful than we commonly have here. There are deeply yellow butters from Ireland and France and all over the continent, some of which can be found in area stores for a steep price. I’ve always balked at the expense, but now ordinary butter costs almost as much as the fancy Euro stuff used to cost.
Butter is an ingredient that varies widely in how good it is and how well it behaves as it’s expected. Yet much of what we do in the kitchen uses ordinary, pale butter you can find in any refrigerated section of any grocer.
I’ve been making butter at home, and the difference is definitely noticeable. The result is a richer, tangier product, without any colorings or additives. Making butter is easy to do at home, and you may already have the equipment to do it at hand.
You can buy new glass churns fitted with a paddle and crank, and it’s an effective way to get good results. You’ll need to be patient and have an arm that can crank the handle at a pretty good pace for 15-20 minutes or so. The jar churn, which usually comes with shaping paddles, costs about $50-$70, meaning you’ll be making a lot of butter before you are into money-saving territory.
If you have access to an old-fashioned, clean wooden churn with dasher, well, good luck. That’s even more work.
If you have a sturdy stand mixer with a wire whip attachment, you’re set to go. I certainly wouldn’t spend a few hundred dollars on a machine just for making butter, but if you already have one, butter making can be added to the dozens of things you’re already using it for. You simply add the ingredients to the bowl and set the thing running on a medium speed until you have butter. The hand work comes in after this stage is reached.
You can make butter with just cream, of course, but to get more flavor, it is best to add another more tart dairy element. My wife adds a little Greek yogurt when she makes it professionally, and I add some sour cream. Once you master making butter, you can add all sorts of herbs and flavorings to get flavored and compound butters, which can be used for specific purposes, like adding to a pan-seared steak for basting.
The salted or unsalted butter argument is too big a saga to tackle here. The argument for unsalted butter makes perfect sense. Using unsalted butter gives greater control over how much salt you’re adding to anything you’re making. I’ve never found any difference between using the two, and the kind of kosher salt I use for everything allows me all the control over saltiness I need. You can add salt or not as you see fit.
Once you have your finished fresh butter, you’ll need to shape it somehow. You can get the little wooden paddles made for the purpose if you like. The simplest method is to form the butter into a generally log shape, then roll it up in plastic, Tootsie Roll style, into an even cylinder. You can refrigerate it if you like it more solid or leave it at room temperature, covered. It should last as long as any other butter and can be used in the same way for cooking and baking.
I used pasteurized but not ultra pasteurized cream.
HOMEMADE BUTTER
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
Clean cheesecloth
Get a large bowl ready with ice water.
Add the cream and sour cream to the mixing bowl of a mixer fitted with a wire whip attachment. Whip the two together, gradually increasing speed, until the mixture thickens and looks like butter sitting in milk. This will take a good 15 minutes.
Gather the butter from the liquid and squeeze it a bit, then transfer to the cheese cloth, wrap it tightly and plunge it into the ice bath, squeezing out any extra buttermilk. Save all the buttermilk in the bowl for another purpose.
Remove the butter from the cheesecloth, massage the salt into it evenly, then either pack it into a butter dish or form a cylinder in plastic wrap.
(Recipe: Alex Guarnaschelli.)