How to Make Butter

One of the best flavors in the world is homemade butter on homemade bread! Today, we’re going to teach you how to make butter by preparing the cream and choosing which implements will be easiest for you to use. We also teach you how to clean out all the buttermilk residue. Happily, that artisanal flavor can be yours for tonight’s dinner because butter is so easy to make!

Why Make Your Own Butter?

The making of butter and cheese has always provided a way to preserve the health benefits of dairy in substances that don’t spoil as readily as milk.

These products could them be placed in cold storage for several weeks (butter) or even months and years (cheese). Dairy has been preserved this way for centuries.

In our day, we can simply run to the store or local farm and buy butter. So why learn to make it?

For the same reason you make any food from scratch at home! Homemade butter is:

• Adaptable to your tastes.
• Made from cream you source yourself with high butterfat content.*
• Crafted in your kitchen so that you can retain and use the byproduct, buttermilk.
• Has no additives or preservatives.
• One less thing you have to buy from the store, and if you have a budget-friendly source for cream can be cheaper than store bought.

*Most of the butter you buy from the store (especially the cheap stuff) only has just enough butterfat to legally be called butter. It’s really more like water with a little fat and salt added to it. Bleh.

Other Dairy Resources for Later Reading

How to Make Cultured Cream in 3 Steps

Make Maple Yogurt Cheese

How to Make Homemade Ice Cream

Steps – How to Make Butter at Home

I’ll briefly outline the steps to this process (briefly only because it’s so quick to make), as well as a few different ways butter can be made. I’ll also talk a bit about buttermilk.

Step One – The Cream is Key

The first thing you’re going to need is cream. Fresh, organic if you can, raw or pasteurized cream (try to avoid ULTRA pasteurized cream), in whatever amount you wish. 

Whereas goat cream will be white, cow cream (the most readily available in the US) will be yellow.

What Contributes to Cream Color:

• Nutrient content of the cow’s food
• Health of the animal
• Time of year
• Lactation cycle
• Possibly, which way the wind is blowing – ha, ha, just kidding

The resulting butter should be yellow, even if the shade of yellow varies throughout the year. 

To Collect the Cream

1. If you’re using fresh cream, let your cream mellow in the fridge for a day or so to allow the cream to rise to the top.
2. Carefully skim off the top layer of cream, trying not to include any milk in the skimmings. Place the cream in a container with a lid.
3. If you end up with some milk, don’t worry, you’ll work it out in the butter making process.
4. Before you make butter, bring the cream to room temperature. You do NOT want to try and make butter from cold cream. 

Step Two – The Container

The container in which you make butter depends on how you plan to mix it. The most common options are to shake the cream in a canning jar, or to mix the cream in a stand mixer.

Both options have their pros and cons, so let’s discuss those. 

In a Stand Mixer

If you have the mixing collar for your stand mixer, this is probably the fastest option. The mixing collar is important because it keeps the cream and butter bits inside the bowl.

To make butter in a stand mixer:

1. Place the cream in the mixing bowl, affix the bowl in the stand, and place the paddle attachment.
2. Put the mixing collar on with a kitchen towel over that to cover any open spaces that are left (or your eyebrows and backsplash will be creamy).
3. Turn the mixer to high. 
4. Watch carefully/ check frequently as the cream goes from liquid to whipped cream to a cottage cheese looking substance to where it thunks against the side of your bowl, spewing white liquid and, if you’re using cow cream, turning an impossibly gorgeous color of yellow. 
5. Turn off you mixer, give thanks to God, and marvel at what you’ve just done (you did just make butter from scrach, after all). 

To clean the butter of the buttermilk (the white liquid), keep reading further on in the article.

But How Do You Make Butter By Hand Like in Old Times?

The second way to make butter is to do it without electricity. There have been several options for tools to help domestic engineers throughout history to make the family butter. 

However, in my house I use a half gallon or quart canning jar for small, quick batches.

• If I have larger quantities of cream, I use a tabletop crank butter churn.

To Use a Canning Jar

1. Fill the jar with cream, leave 2-3 inches clearance at the top. The clearance between the cream and the top of the jar will help build up some air pressure that will wallop that cream. The agitation of the cream is what makes the butter.
2. Secure a lid to the jar very tightly because you don’t want to end up with cream down your front. I did that once. Only once. 
3. Now, here’s the hard part…shake it. Really hard. For 2 to 20 minutes, depending on your arm strength and the age of the cream, just keep shaking the jar.
4. Watch for the same process as described for mixer butter makers – liquid, whipped, cottage cheese, butter (when it thunks against your lid and turns bright yellow). 

For finishing the butter, keep reading!

A Quick History of Butter Churns

If you really want to impersonate Ma Ingalls or any other pioneer woman, you can use a wooden butter churn with wooden dowel (called a dasher) inserted inside to agitate the cream until it becomes butter. 

However, along about the mid-1800’s table-top crank churns were developed that replaced the wooden churns. These easy to use churns enabled women to make the family butter without the back-breaking work of moving the dasher. 

• For a super fun, geeky butter making history, please visit Churncraft’s article on The History of Crank Churns. 

Step Three – Strain out the Buttermilk

The white liquid that separated from the butter during processing needs to be removed from the butter. This liquid is called buttermilk.

If left mixed in the butter, it will culture and alter the flavor of the butter. If you’re making butter with raw cream, this may be desirable to you because it will help the butter ferment.

Remember, raw dairy doesn’t spoil, it cultures, or ferments. However, it may culture beyond what you consider palatable (tasty), so be mindful of the buttermilk.

To Clean Out the Buttermilk

Place a mesh strainer over a bowl and pour the contents of the jar into it. The buttermilk will drain into the bowl and the butter particles will stay in the strainer. 

• Remove the strainer from the bowl and remove the bowl from the sink. Set the buttermilk aside.

Under gentle, cold, running water, rinse the contents of the strainer (the bits of butter should look like fine, yellow bread crumbs) to get out the rest of the buttermilk-y whey.

• If you’re making butter with raw cream, this whey-type liquid will cause the butter to taste really ripe after a few days.
• If you’re making butter with pasteurized cream, it will most likely just taste rancid.

Step Four – Shape the Butter

1. Working in the strainer over a bowl, whip the butter pieces together with a spoon. This process smashes the particles together and also pushes out more liquid.
2. Alternatively, you can put the butter particles into a regular bowl and go through this process. Either way is fine. 
3. Press and press and reshape the butter ball. Always press it  to work out more liquid. (You don’t need to save this buttermilk because it’s so watered down.) 
4. Once you’re satisfied the butter is dry enough, add 1/4 tsp sea salt (or to taste) per cup of butter and work it in thoroughly with your hands.
5. Pack the butter into your preferred container. I like to find containers that have capacity I can measure evenly like a ½ cup to a cup, since those are the measurements we use most often when baking. 

How Long Does Homemade Butter Last?

After processing, raw butter can be used right away, stored in the fridge, or frozen.

• Raw butter on the counter should be used within 2-3 days
• . Raw butter in the fridge should be used with a week or two, depending on your flavor preferences.

Raw butter will continue to culture as it sits and it may culture beyond where you think it tastes good.

If you’ve used pasteurized cream for the butter, store it in the fridge or freezer.

• If it’s in the fridge, the butter should be used within a few weeks.

Butter Instructions

If you want to be able to print the instructions, I’ve thrown them into the recipe card so that’s easy to do. Plus, this organizes the information in a format with which we’re familiar. Don’t let the recipe make it look hard, though – it’s a super simple process!

A Quick Note on Buttermilk

Be sure to place all that white liquid in a container with a lid to use later. You can use this fresh buttermilk like you would whey in any recipe for:

• Pancakes and Waffles
• Cookies
• Sweet Bread
• Cinnamon rolls
• Sandwich Bread
• Dips & Dressings

And more like this Homemade Probiotic Honey Mustard from Learning and Yearning!

• The “buttermilk” you’ll have leftover from butter making isn’t like the thicker, cultured stuff you buy in the store. This fresh buttermilk has the consistency of whey or non-fat milk and is slightly sweet.

You can leave it out on the counter overnight to culture on it’s own, but don’t expect it to thicken and taste like your grandma’s buttermilk. If you don’t how, reformation Acres can teach you to culture buttermilk.

• Here are 36 Ways to Use Whey from Don’t Waste the Crumbs.

Is Making Your Own Butter Worth the Effort?

Yes! Go eat the homemade butter on something hot and yummy – toast, oatmeal, popcorn.

Oh, this makes the best popcorn butter!! To learn how to pop popcorn from dried ears of popcorn, just visit this post.

• Or try mixing a cup of this butter with 3 TBLS (or to taste) of Grade A Maple Syrup and some raw hazelnuts in a really good blender and spoon that mixture onto your baked oatmeal. 

I love to include fresh herbs like basil and rosemary in my homemade herbal butter, of course. My husband says I should add bacon, but he says that about most things.

Just a rich spread of this butter on your Sourdough Bread will work wonders in your mouth. 

Make it a Family Activity

Making butter as a family is a great school project or living history activity! So, gather your kids around,  get your equipment out, and don’t worry too much about the mess of being in the kitchen with kids.

Decide first what you’re going to  make to put this butter onto. Will it be:

Bread or Toast?

Banana Bread?

Biscuits?

Food is a great motivator, especially with children!

• Do you have any handy tips to share from your butter making adventures? Feel free to post a comment – you’d be doing mankind a great service by improving the process for everyone.

A Word on Goat Cream for Butter

Goat milk has a very different make up than cow milk. Goat milk is naturally homogenized because the fat globules are much smaller and, therefore, disperse themselves throughout the milk.

Incidentally, this is part of what makes goat milk easier for humans to digest. Some supposedly lactose intolerant people discover its only cow milk they can’t drink. 

Goat cream does rise to the top of the goat milk after a few days but it does so slowly and not in great volume. You can use a cream separator to filter out the cream more quickly, though.

• Goat cream, like goat milk, is pristine white, so the butter will be the same color.
• Goat butter is sweet and smooth and you’ll be glad you tried it.

If you’re currently debating between getting a goat or a cow for backyard dairy, you might our article Goat or Cow Milk Which Should You Produce?. 

Or, better yet, read about it – and so many other homesteading topics – in our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. With 400 pages of homesteading information, projects and plans presented on four different levels of experience, you’re bound to find something useful to you! Click below for more information.

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