As most of you know, we have a cow...
...which is ironic, because I was a vegan for 7 months last year, during the height of Daisy's milk production. I still have mixed feelings about whether or not milk is healthy for us (I know, many of you are gasping and can't believe there is even a school of thought that milk isn't good for you), but because although I tried for 7 months to offer my kids various milk substitutes, I never succeeded in weaning them off cow's milk, so....I gave up.
And because we are currently being supplied with 2 gallons of milk a day, one of which goes to the family of the milker man, I have decided to just embrace dairy, and Daisy, and go back to making ice cream and butter.
When we first bought our cow, before I became a vegan, John bought a pretty nice gallon-sized butter churner. I liked using it and it made making butter easy. However, when we spent 5 hours in the American Embassy yesterday trying to get the infant's U.S. Citizen Born Abroad Birth Certificate, as I pored through a book I had brought along to entertain myself called Stocking Up: The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide,
I was introduced to the blender method for making butter.I was inspired, and even though I only had three-quarters cup of cream, I thought I'd give it a go and report to you on it. It was a wild success, and easier to use than my butter churner only because my Vita-Mix is ALWAYS out on the counter. You don't have to have a Vita-Mix, though. You can use any blender, even a food processor if you want. Okay, so here's how you do it...
Ingredients
2 cups of cream, or a third of the capacity of your blender
Salt to taste
Directions
1. Allow your cream to sit out on the counter for about half a day, or until it ripens and thickens a bit.
2. Return it to the fridge until it gets cold again, about 52 degrees F.
3. Pour cream into the blender...
...and blender on the lowest speed until small yellow balls begin to appear, about 5 to 8 minutes.
3 When these balls are about the size of corn kernels, your butter is ready...
4. Over a strainer, pour off the liquid, which is buttermilk, then add enough water to cover the butter and blend it for a few seconds. This rinses the buttermilk out of the butter. Pour off this excess water.
5. Repeat this rinsing process, adding water, blending for a few seconds, then pouring the water off again, until the water runs clear...
You may have to do this several times.
6. Spoon out your butter into a shallow bowl...
...and with a rubber spatula, press out all of the excess liquid, pouring it off the butter as you do. Do not spread the butter thin, though, or it will become oily. I have never seen that happen, but the book stated this over and over again, so it must be important.
7. When all of the liquid is pressed out, your butter is finished, and is sweet cream, unsalted butter...
8. If you like it salty, add salt to taste by pressing the salt into the butter with the spatula. I love it really salty, and my finished product was delicious on Zucchini Pineapple Macadamia Bread...
The 3/4 cup I churned only yielded about 2 tablespoons, but that's okay. Next time I'll use at least 3 cups of cream, or about a third of what the blender will hold, as per the book's instructions.
There are other fun ways to make butter that I'll be posting about as the summer goes on, so stay tuned, and let me know if you've ever made butter, and how it went. Thanks for listening!
13 comments:
I love homemade butter! We used to make it all the time when my kids were growing up--and boy is it a shock when you go back to store bought butter!
I have recently started buying Irish butter (obviously from Ireland:) at Trader Joe's and it tastes like homemade, so now I don't even both with the regular dairy butter.
I continue to wonder why people are so fearful of eating real butter and prefer to put the margaine into their bodies. No one got fat eating a table spoon of butter spread on their bread at dinner. Oh well.
I definitely am not going to do my own butter, first because I don't have a cow, second because I'm a lazy town girl, but one day I was whipping cream for a cake, I whipped too much and it almost became butter.
Does it count?
;)
I'm very back and forth about the dairy as well. It sucks that there is even a dilemma. I do eat dairy (and love it) but I go on occasional bouts of trying to go without. I do hear though, that if you are going to drink milk, raw is the way to go, so that's a plus for you. It must be wonderful to get it straight from the source. Thanks for the recipe. I never realized that it might be so simple even though we made it once just by shaking a jar of cream forever (good kid activity).
Alessandra, yes, that counts! You should have just kept whipping!
Jb, we've also done the shaking the jar thing, except we did it in a Ziploc bag and you're right, the kids loved it!
That is so cool. I would love to try that.
i have been wanting to do this forever. i guess its a sign that i need to get off my butt and do it! i love butter and refuse to eat margarine, so this will be good. very good. have you found that it cost more or less to make your own?
Well, SMC, since I have a cow, it's much cheaper for me to do it, but if you had to buy cream, I'm not sure if it would be cost-effective or not. Let if do this and figure out the cost, let us know!
I found your blog from a friend and think it is great. I am amazed by your efforts as a mother and wife and fellow being.
I have made homemade butter a couple times. The first by accident when I was using a blender to make whipping cream... opps. But it was tasty.
The second time with my children. We put a half cup heavy whipping cream in an air tight container and tossed it around (shaking it too) for a preschool activity. They all thought it was great and it didn't take to much time really. However with the amount of butter a half cup cream makes it is not really cost effective unless you have a good source that is really, really inexpensive. I guess it just depends on how much butter you use also.
I am on the fence about the whole milk thing, but then the there a couple thing that pulls me to the "use it" side
- one - we don't use that much, (except for the baby) and it is a great source of calcium.
- Two - I know God intended us to use animals for some part of our nutrition. I am not a big meat eater, I go with the use it sparingly and I would much prefer to get my nutrition without the butchering when possible.:)
- three - Unless you have really researched, some of the substitutes are worse for us. So we need to pick the substitutes carefully. I have heard goats milk/butter are better for us and it is cheap to get a goat generally, but if you aren't accustomed to the taste (it takes a bit to get use to. We use to cook with it, because we had goats as pets)
Now this seems like something I could do! I may just have to try it! I think my girls would have so much fun making their own butter!
I know it's none of my business, and to each her own, but I have been vegetarian and vegan and am also a nursing student and a food chemistry student and feel very satisfied in saying that veganism is the least healthy way to eat. Vegetarianism can work if one is very conscientious, but veganism, no. Now, I am a firm believer in whole food, real food, and good food. You are so, so lucky to have a cow! What I wouldn't give! You would gasp if you knew how much I pay for raw milk for my family of 8. Seriously. Dairy in its raw form is the best. You should read a book called Real Food, by Nina Planck. It's excellent. But I won't preach anymore. You're awesome, and that cow is so pretty!
Jenna, I definitely appreciate your insight. Thank you for sharing. I'll have to look into that book. So how much do you pay for raw milk? And is it on the "black market"? I hear that is the only way a lot of people can get it! Crazy!
Raw milk is so healthy...I too am jealous...check out this link which talks about it:
http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html
Enjoy that homemade butter!
I know I am 6 months late on this post, but I just found your blog and fell in love at first read. I have been around the block in avoiding milk products. I have learned many things about milk in the trek. Some things that you might find interesting and helpful in your decisions of possible avoidance. . .Milk Fat is one of the few foods today that has vitamin 'K' in it, which is prime in preventing cancer. Did you know that in the past skim milk was only fed to the pigs? They believed it was bad for human consumption. A calf would die if he was fed skim milk. We left milk for allergies. At first we avoided everything dairy even though protein is the culprit of allergies. When I learned about the needed vitamins the milk fat provided, we decided we needed to include the milk fats in our diet. In avoiding milk I learned that strep throat, Ear infections, and recurrent UTI's are usually due to milk. - - When removing milk from our childrens diets we added 1 tablespoon of coconut milk to rice milk as this would compare to calories/fat contents of dairy milk, while giving it a taste that our children could not resist.
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