Make your own butter with a whole raw milk and a little patience!
Whole raw milk means that it's not homogenized and it's not pasteurized. You can use pasteurized if that's what you have available or prefer, but you will need to make sure it's non-homogenized.
Whole Milk From a Local Raw Milk Provider! Help support your local small dairy if you don't have a milk cow! Check out the back of the bottle!
This is from a local dairy that we have. They are very well-respected and sought out in our area Pot 'O Gold Dairy. The Messinger family are a good, strong Christian family that run a reputable business.
As always, gather quality helpers in all your homesteading endeavors!
After pouring the milk into our big stainless steel pan and letting it separate the cream out while becoming room temperature, we begin to spoon out the cream into the blender. Ladles work also, but I had a spoon available.
This isn't a paid endorsement (although I'm not proud, I'd take one) or anything, but if you're a homesteader or even just a serious cook... you should have a Kitchenaid mixer.
You'll want to use a stand mixer (unless you have a hand churn) to hold your cream. I've used several methods to make it. I've shaken it to butter in a jar. I've used a butter church and I've used our Kitchenaid Mixer. The Kitchenaid is the easiest on your hands! You'll want to mix somewhere around the "2" setting or one of your slower speeds. High speed whipping will get you whip cream rather than butter.
A watched cream never "comes" to butter.
It takes a while to make butter. The more you watch it, the longer it seems to take! That's why it's good to have helpers! In this picture you can begin to see the butter starting to "come". That means it's beginning to stiffen and congeal into something other than whipped cream. If it begins to get too creamy, slow down your mixing speed.
You almost have butter... but don't stop yet!
Make sure you have a strainer available that you can put the unfinished butter into. Here we are using a spatula so as not to waste the precious butter!
Into the strainer it goes!
This is an important step. As you strain it out there will still be milk in the butter. This is still very fat-filled and rich milk. You've removed most of the fat, but what's left is nothing like the watery stuff you get from the store. This is called "buttermilk". You can poor it down the drain if you don't want it but that would be criminal. It's great in pancakes. Some people like to drink it (I don't). At the very least you have animals that will appreciate it. Now... you're still not quite done! Your butter still has milk in it that will make the butter spoil fairly quickly by going rancid. You must rinse your butter out and "work it". They actually make wood paddles for this but a couple of wooden spoons work also. Work it while rinsing it under water. You're almost there. You're next decision will be whether to add salt or not. (I didn't in this instance) and how to store it.
Congratulations! you've made butter. Immediately enjoy some on bread!
You've made butter! Now you have to store it. One option that takes no refrigeration and keeps the butter spreadable is a butter bell. I like butter bells because who likes hard frozen butter and ripped bread? The basic theory is the butter goes into the bell. It then gets put into the reservoir with water causing an airtight seal. Butter is fat so the water doesn't harm it and it stays soft and good for quite a while right on your counter!
Scoop butter into bell.
Put the bell into the reservoir!
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Remember: GROW WHERE YOU ARE!
