When you have a milk cow, you need to know how to use up milk, and a fail-proof homemade butter recipe from raw cream or store-bought heavy cream is a must for every homesteader.
I will teach you about subtle nuances, especially when using raw milk or cream. With these tips and tricks, making butter is very simple!
Why You’ll Love This Homemade Butter Recipe
Between raising goats for dairy and adding another milk cow to our homestead, our family is rich in milk. We make various dairy products such as homemade kefir, easy Instant Pot yogurt, probiotic-rich raw milk cottage cheese, various other cheeses, homemade ice cream, and plenty of butter.
Here’s why you’ll love this homemade butter recipe as much as we do:
- Superior Flavor - Farm-fresh butter has a noticeably better flavor than butter purchased from the store. Once you make it, you’ll never want to buy store-bought butter again!
- Sustainable - As mentioned above, when raising dairy animals, you need to be prepared with the skills to make homemade dairy products practical so that nothing goes to waste. Butter is a great beginner-friendly project that results in an end product everyone loves.
- Basic Equipment - While you can invest in a electric mixer, or a butter churn to make this homemade butter recipe, I’m going to show you how easy it is to make butter with a simple glass canning jar!
Sweet Cream vs Cultured Butter
Butter falls into two categories: sweet cream and cultured. Here are the differences you need to know about the two.
- Sweet Cream – Making butter from sweet cream is slightly easier than making it from cultured cream because you don’t need to take the step to culture the cream. You’ll end up with a slightly sweeter butter, but it will be lacking in the extra live cultures.
- Cultured Cream – Using cultured cream to make butter means you allow your cream to “culture” before churning. Cultured cream makes healthier butter than sweet cream because the end result is filled with live enzymes. Additionally, your finished product will be more consistent.
Key Ingredients
- Cream - Raw, farm-fresh cream is our preference, but this recipe also works using store-bought cream.
- Salt - Salt is optional, but if you choose to salt your butter, choose a quality salt such as Redmond Real Salt. (Using that link will give you 15% off your order.)
- Water - When rinsing the remaining buttermilk from your butter, remember to use room-temperature water. Cold water won’t separate the butter from the buttermilk, and hot water will melt your butter.
Homemade Butter Recipe Instructions
Step 1: As mentioned above, cultured cream produces a healthier and more consistent butter. To culture your cream, just fill your glass jar halfway with cream and add the lid. Leave it out for a day or two at room temperature. This will give you a slightly sour cream, which you then churn into butter. You can culture your cream more quickly by adding one teaspoon of live cultured buttermilk to 2 cups of fresh raw cream. Leave this mixture for about 1-4 hours at room temperature (or place it in the refrigerator overnight).
Step 2: After your cream has been cultured, start shaking away! Get your kids involved in the process and pass the jar to a new person every 30 seconds.
Step 3: Continue shaking until you have one solid lump of butterfat that has separated out from the buttermilk. If your cream was at the right temperature when you started, and you cultured it correctly, the cream can turn to butter in as little as five minutes! Once winter comes along and the cow’s feed changes, it can, however, take up to 20 minutes (rarely it will take 30 minutes), so get those arms ready!
Step 4: Once you have a large mass of butter, wash the butter with water that’s in the mid to high 60°F. Continue to rinse and press your butter until that water runs clear. If you find your butter is melting, reduce the temperature of the water. Likewise, if your butter is too firm, increase the water temperature. Washing your butter is critical to keep it from going rancid. However, if you’re planning to eat your butter within 24 hours, you don’t need to be as meticulous about getting the buttermilk out.
Step 5: Even if you don’t care for the flavor of salted butter, it’s important to do so for the preservation of your butter because it draws out the excess moisture in the butter to help preserve it. Place your butter in a nice clean bowl, add the ⅛ teaspoon of salt to the butter and knead with clean hands, avoiding mixing the moisture back into the butter as you knead.
Step 6: After kneading, thin your butter out on the side angle of your bowl and allow it to sit for about 5 minutes to allow as much water to drain off as possible. Your butter is now ready to serve with a slice of this homemade sandwich bread, or to store for baking, cooking, and more.
How to Store Homemade Butter
Homemade butter doesn’t typically last as long as store-bought butter. This is why we like to freeze our butter and use it up within a week when stored in the refrigerator.
If you’re going to use your butter within a day (which can be easy to do when you keep no-knead bread dough on hand to make fresh homemade bread fast), go ahead and just place it in the refrigerator on a plate. No cover necessary.
If you’re going to use it within 1-2 weeks, you’ll want to wrap your butter so it’s not exposed to the air. Plastic wrap works well here. (We recommend wrapping in a rectangular block.)
For long-term storage – up to a year, wrap your butter in plastic wrap (one or even two layers is great) in a flat disc so it defrosts quickly when you’re ready to use it.
Mark the butter well and store it in the freezer until you’re ready to use it! Then, follow the storage instructions above. Real butter is a great, healthy fat source on the homestead.
Recipe Tips
- Buttermilk - Buttermilk is a valuable by-product of making butter, and should never be thrown out! Although this buttermilk does not contain the live active enzymes found in cultured buttermilk, it still reacts with the leavening agents in baked goods to make fluffy whole wheat biscuits, sweet breads, easy sourdough pancakes, muffins, cakes, and more! If you don’t enjoy baking, you can always give it to your animals. They love it!
- Temperature - During the butter-making process, it’s important to be working with the right temperature of cream. The ideal temperature to churn your cream is about 62-63°F. If your cream is too cold it will take much longer to churn into butter. If your cream is too warm the butter will have a slimy consistency that’s hard to recover from.
- Vessel Capacity - Do not be tempted to overfill your jar in an attempt to make more butter at a time. If the jar is more than half full, you will not allow enough room for the cream to agitate and the butter fat solids to separate.
- Timing - We like to think about Goldilocks here… you want to continue shaking until the butter is “just right”. It can be tempting to continually open your jar and check the consistency of your butter. But just know, when your butter separates from the liquid buttermilk, your jar will get nice and clear, and you’ll see the separation of butterfat and buttermilk. If you see little clumps of butter that have separated from the buttermilk, this is great, but you’re not quite done. Keep shaking until you have one large chunk of butter (a few small floating pieces are OK). Once you have a large chunk of butter, stop shaking! If you continue to mix, you can actually separate your chunks again and ruin your butter
FAQ’s
On average, it takes about 32 oz. of cream to make one pound of butter. However, the amount can vary depending on the cow, the cream, and the time of year (as the cow’s diet/feed changes). Cows tend to be “high yield” in the summer months, when the cow freshens and is eating more fresh pasture. Yet, during the winter months, you may only get about ½ pound of butter from 32 oz. of cream.
Cultured cream yields the healthiest and most consistent butter. To culture your cream, leave it out for a day or two at room temperature. This will give you a slightly sour cream, which you then churn into butter. Or, you can culture your cream more quickly by adding about one teaspoon of live cultured buttermilk to 2 cups of fresh raw cream. Leave it at room temperature for about 1-4 hours (or place it in the refrigerator overnight).
When making a large amount of butter at a time, our electric butter churn from Wiseman Trading works great. Or you can even use a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Just keep in mind that the amount of cream compared to the size of your vessel is very important. Never fill your container over halfway full, or you won’t have the room for the butter to churn. No matter which method you’re using, your cream will go from cream to light whipped cream, to heavy whipped cream, to a grainy, thick whipped cream (almost like soft ice cream consistency). It will then begin to separate out into butterfat (butter solids) and buttermilk, until finally, the butterfat clumps together into a solid mass.
When washing or rinsing the butter, be sure you’re using room temperature water. If the water is too cold, your butter will harden, and it will be difficult to get the buttermilk out. If the water is too warm, your butter will begin to melt. Likewise, the warmth of your hands can melt butter, so using a spatula can keep your butter from getting too warm.
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Homemade Butter
Equipment
- Mason Jar with Lid If you’re using a plastic mason jar lid be sure to put a metal lid on the inside of the plastic lid because they’re not leakproof. Otherwise, a two-part canning lid will work.
- Large Bowl
- Wooden spoon or silicone spatula
Ingredients
- 2 Cups Cream
- ⅛ Teaspoon Salt We use Redmond Real Salt. Use that link to automatically get 15% off your order!
Instructions
- Pour cream into a glass canning jar (or other vessel) until it's ½ full. Screw on the lid and make sure it's leak-proof.
- Shake the jar until you have one solid lump of butterfat that has separated out from the buttermilk.
- Once your butter is in one solid lump, strain out the buttermilk and transfer butter to a clean glass bowl.
- Wash your butter by running room temperature water (about 68 degrees) over the butter and mixing with your hands.
- Change out the water 3-4 times until the water runs clear when mixing the butter.
- Salt your butter (⅛ teaspoon per 2 cups of cream) and mix well, straining out any additional liquid.
- Spread your butter thin onto the side of your bowl and let it rest for 5 minutes to allow any excess water to drain out.
- Use right away, or follow the storage instructions below.
Notes
- Buttermilk – Buttermilk is a valuable by-product of making butter, and should never be thrown out! Although this buttermilk does not contain the live active enzymes found in cultured buttermilk, it still reacts with the leavening agents in baked goods to make fluffy whole wheat biscuits, sweet breads, easy sourdough pancakes, muffins, cakes, and more! If you don’t enjoy baking, you can always give it to your animals. They love it!
- Temperature – During the butter-making process, it’s important to be working with the right temperature of cream. The ideal temperature to churn your cream is about 62-63°F. If your cream is too cold, it will take much longer to churn into butter. If your cream is too warm, the butter will have a slimy consistency that’s hard to recover from.
- Vessel Capacity – Do not be tempted to overfill your jar in an attempt to make more butter at a time. If the jar is more than half full, you will not allow enough room for the cream to agitate and the butter fat solids to separate.
- Timing – We like to think about Goldilocks here… you want to continue shaking until the butter is “just right”. It can be tempting to continually open your jar check on the consistency of your butter. But just know, when your butter separates from the liquid buttermilk, your jar will get nice and clear, and you’ll see the separation of butterfat and buttermilk. If you see little clumps of butter that have separated from the buttermilk, this is great, but you’re not quite done. Keep shaking until you have one large chunk of butter (a few small floating pieces is OK). Once you have a large chunk of butter, stop shaking! If you continue to mix, you can actually separate your chunks again and ruin your butter
