Make Your Own Butter. Seriously.

I have been horribly neglectful, dear reader.  I know.  You've missed me terribly, haven't you?  Things have been very chaotic around here lately.  My parents came to visit (Hi, Mom!) and since then we've been busy planning for some fairly major life changes that are coming at us.  All super hush-hush, so don't even bother guessing.  Some of you know some of it, a few of you know all of it, but if any of you spill the beans, I'll kick you in the kneecaps.  So there.  And, no, it isn't what you think it is.  Or is it?

Anyway.  I have waxed poetic before on the joy that is butter.  Not margarine, which certainly has it's place, but real, honest-to-goodness butter.  Butter is awesome.  Not in a Paula-Deen-put-butter-on-everything kind of way, but if you're baking or cooking "real food" (not from a box), butter is a must-have.  Example:  Roast chicken?  Sure, you can do that with margarine, but it's SO much better with butter.  Fresh baked bread?  Go ahead and slather that slice with margarine if you must, but why?  Save the margarine for the boxed potato, pasta, and rice side dishes and for the endless slices of toast you give to your kids.  Everything else, use butter.

Now, real butter is expensive.  And while butter should consist of just cream and possibly salt, a lot of the ingredient labels I've read say that it also includes "natural flavorings".  What the hell?  They put butter flavor in the butter?  This makes no sense and scares me a bit.

So, today, I'm going to show you how to make homemade butter in less than 20 minutes, cheaply, and get an awesome arm workout in at the same time.

All you need is:

• Heavy whipping cream.  I got a half-pint at Walmart for less than $2.
• Salt, if you want your butter salted.  Your choice.  I won't judge either way.
• A jar big enough to allow your cream to move around freely.  Putting a half-pint of cream into a half-pint jar probably won't work very well.  I used a quart jar today, because that's what I had clean.

Now, about the arm workout part of this.  You know those As-Seen-On-TV Shake Weight things that you used to see on the infomercials all the time?  The ones that prompted lots of masturbation jokes?  This will do basically the same thing for free and you'll have butter at the end of it.  If you don't feel it in your arms and abdomen by the time you're either doing it wrong or in much better shape than I am.  Either way, shake harder next time.

This is so easy......

1.  Pour your cream into your jar.

Cream in a jar.

2.  Add salt if you want.

3.  Put the lid on the jar.  (It's sad I have to even mention this.)

4.  Start shaking.

Still just cream in a jar.

 5.  After about 2 minutes, you'll see the cream is coating the inside of the jar without running back down.  Keeping shaking.

This isn't going to work, is it?

6.  After around 3 or 4 minutes, if you open the jar, you'll see this fluffy goodness.  Essentially, this is simple whipped cream.  Try not to eat it all.  Keep shaking.

7.  After 6 minutes or so, you'll notice that your cream isn't sloshing around as much anymore and is starting to glob together on the sides of the jar.  Keep shaking.  Shake it up. Shake it down.  Shake it side to side.  Put on some dance music and really get your groove on.

I know.  Just keep shaking.  Trust me.

8.  This is what it would look like after 8 minutes or so.  Just keep shaking.  At this point, you're going to start doubting me.  You're gonna think I'm a little loco or that you've done something wrong.  Nope.  Keep going.

Pretty, but not quite there yet.

9.  Just keep shaking, just keep shaking.  Just keep shaking, shaking, shaking.  What do we do?  We shake!

10.  After 13 to 15 minutes (I lost track), you'll start hearing sloshing again.  And you'll see that you're starting to get some lovely lumps of butter in your jar, surrounded by liquid.  Keep going.

There's something happening here......

11.  Give it a couple of more minutes of shaking and then you can stop.  You have my permission.

That actually looks like butter now.

12.  Dump the contents of the jar into a sieve, being sure to have something below to catch the liquid.  Trust me.

BUTTAH!

13.  Yay!  You made butter!

14.  That liquid that was left over?  You know what is?  It's BUTTERMILK!  And this is good timing on my part, since I'm making breakfast for dinner tonight and I think it's time for some buttermilk pancakes!

Buttermilk!  A great free by-product of the butter!

15.  Put your butter back into your jar or some other storage container.  Keep it in the fridge.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

16.  Save the buttermilk, too.  Drink it or use it in recipes.  But, you know, you should probably chuck it out after a couple of days, so use it quickly!

And the equally lovely buttermilk!

And that, dear readers, is how you make butter.  A couple of notes:

1.  You can stop shaking before the butter starts to separate from the liquid if you must.  You'll end up with a very light, whipped butter-type product.  I've also had that happen if I stop shaking for too long and then start back up again or if I keep shaking past the separation stage. 

2.  You can use a mixer to do this and avoid all the shaking.  I don't own a mixer, so that's not an option for me, but from what I understand, you just dump your cream and salt in the mixer, cover it with plastic wrap (it'll splatter, don't say I didn't warn you), turn it on and let it do it's thing.  But, I'm a bad ass without a mixer, so I do it the hardcore way.  Shake, baby, shake!

3.  The REALLY hardcore butter people will tell you that you have to rinse the butter in an ice bath and press it and blah, blah, blah. That's fine if you're a purist.  Frankly, I don't see the need.

A half-pint of heavy cream yielded me a half-cup of buttermilk and probably somewhere between 1 and 2 cups of butter.  All for less than $2 and 20 minutes of effort.  Not too shabby!

Go forth.  By some cream.  Shake the cream.  Make some butter.  Then bake some bread to put the butter on.  Or pancakes.  Whatever.