We have a milk cow for various reasons. One of the main ones is the cost of milk here in Panama. It's usually more than $6 a gallon. Butter is also really expensive as well as yogurt and cream! All this from the location in the country where most of the dairies are!
Because of the high cost of dairy products, I make good use of the milk we get from our cow. I just finished making a gallon of yogurt overnight and also made some fresh butter this morning. Check out the process.
First I take the cream off of the top of the milk. If it sits in the fridge overnight, it collects a nice bit of cream - enough to make a good amount of butter!
The cream goes directly into the food processor or blender. If it's been sitting on the counter for a little while, it processes quicker than if it comes straight out of the fridge. The only difficult thing with that is the butter is then super soft after it separates.
After a few minutes on high, the color of the milk starts to turn a little yellow. I love this part because you can actually hear when the butter and the milk separate. The machine starts making a different sound and you know it's almost done!
The next thing you notice is little yellow chunks inside the container! Wahoo! The butter has started to clump together and it is done. The blender is turned off and it is time to see what you have!
Then I scrape everything out into a bowl and you can see the butter has separated from the milk! What you have left is some amazing tasting butter and some pretty tasty buttermilk. I use it usually for making biscuits or bread. None of it goes to waste either!
The next step is to squish, squish, squish out all of the buttermilk from the butter. This will take a few minutes to get all of it out. I just basically fold the butter back onto itself over and over again until nothing comes out when it is squished.
What is left is some amazing butter! Tastes great on bread, in cookies, or with biscuits! Yummy!!
Have you ever made butter? It's the same process if you use cream from the store - might be a fun project to try!