I was blown away when I realized in my late thirties just how easy it is to make your own butter at home! This homemade butter recipe just may have you taking “butter” off your reoccurring grocery list. Bonus: only two ingredients needed to make this one!
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Why should I make my own butter?
I get it. Butter isn’t super expensive. It’s quicker to toss a four pack into your grocery cart than it is to make it at home.
But hear me out.
If you have access to fresh raw milk cream, all the better. I do not. It’s simply my mission for my family to reduce our grocery bill as much as possible.
We use heavy whipping cream to make a lot of things such as whipped cream for dessert coffee and banana pudding, for many of my cream-based soup recipes, and for chicken alfredo my family loves to eat weekly!
Why make your own butter? It’s easy, cheap, and tastes better than a stick of store bought or a “spreadable butter” with added unhealthy oils.
Homemade butter is also great for making your own honey cinnamon butter or herb butter.
UPDATE: we now have a raw milk connection and there is absolutely NO comparison to store-bought, pasteurized heavy whipping cream!
Ingredients for homemade butter
Two very simple and real ingredients are in homemade butter:
Heavy whipping cream or raw cream
Real Salt, just a pinch. I use Redmond Real Salt.
How to make butter:
First of all, it’s ironic I chose to start a blog that contains a lot of recipes and how-tos when I’m the queen of not measuring or writing it down. I often find myself editing my blog posts later when I realize I didn’t give the best measurement for a particular recipe. Bear with me! Learning by experience is the best teacher.
Whip the cream
Start by pouring half a quart of heavy whipping cream into a standing mixer. Homemade butter can also be made with a hand-held mixer or in a mason jar with a tight lid and a lot of shaking. Neither of which I have personal experience but I do know it is possible!
(You can also make butter in a blender for much less mess!)
Then begin by mixing on medium-low speed until the cream thickens some as not to sling cream out everywhere. Then turn up the speed. You will want to stop the mixer about every 3 minutes and use a spatula to get cream off the edges of the bowl and into the mixture. Use a kitchen towel to cover the standing mixer so liquid will be splatter the entire workspace.
You will start to see the yellow butter separating from the milk. Keep stirring until the butter is in larger clumps of yellow and the buttermilk is beginning to be be slung out of the mixing bowl. Stop here.
Squeeze and Save
You will need cheese cloth for this part.
Next, pour your butter and milk into a bowl covered with cheese cloth. Gather the cloth with the cheese in it. Squeeze out any extra milk from the butter. This is buttermilk and makes fantastic biscuits and pancakes! Do not discard it. Save it!
Now remove the butter out of the cloth and rinse under VERY cold water. If you are on municipal water, you may consider filtering and refrigerating water ahead of time to use in this rinse. This rinse water can be discarded.
Don’t be salty (or do)
Now, place your butter ball in a bowl and add about 1/8 teaspoon of salt to the butter. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to smooth the salt into the butter. I actually picked up the butter ball with clean hands and worked the salt into the butter that way. It was much easier on me.
If you need your butter to be unsalted, just skip this step and your butter is ready for use!
Shape and store
At this step, you can put your butter in a small dish and into the fridge for using later (some people choose to leave their butter out and that is totally your call. I will not weigh in on whether you should or shouldn’t with this recipe).
Alternatively, you could lay your butter ball on a piece of parchment paper and mold the butter into a stick to freeze for later use.
You can also find neat butter molds online like this one or this adorable butter dish with spreadable spoon.
Raw Milk Cream Butter
I’ve recently started making butter and ice cream using the cream off the top of the gallon of raw milk I get each week.
When I make the butter, it has such a rich dark yellow color. The color real butter should be. The only downfall I am finding with raw cream butter is it is much softer than using pasteurized heavy whipping cream. This means that the butter itself is harder to shape. However, it does make storing it in a dish a lot easier for me.
UPDATE: I’ve recently discovered the softness of the butter comes from the temperature of the cream before whipping. Some are suggesting cream needs to be 55 degrees before whipping.
Does homemade butter taste better than store bought butter?
In all honesty, pasteurized heavy whipping cream homemade butter tastes very much like regular butter you can buy in the store. With that said, it has nothing on the rich and real taste of raw milk cream homemade butter.
The bonus of making your own butter at home is you are rewarded with buttermilk afterwards. This buttermilk can be used in sourdough pancakes or homemade easy drop biscuits or any soups like ranch potato bacon soup!
Will I still buy store butter? Yes. I will still purchase organic butter in the store sometimes because I do like how easy it is to grate sticks of butter when I’m making bread.
Pin this homemade butter recipe for later!
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Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pour half a quart of heavy whipping cream into a standing mixer. Homemade butter can also be made with a hand-held mixer or in a mason jar with a tight lid and a lot of shaking. Neither of which I have personal experience but I do know it is possible!
- Mix on medium-low speed until the cream thickens some as not to sling cream out everywhere. Then turn up the speed. You will want to stop the mixer about every 3 minutes and use a spatula to get cream off the edges of the bowl and into the mixture.
- You will start to see the yellow butter separating from the milk. Keep stirring until the butter is in larger clumps of yellow and the buttermilk is beginning to be be slung out of the mixing bowl. Stop mixing here.
- Pour your butter and milk into mixing bowl covered with cheese cloth. Gather the cloth with the cheese in it. Squeeze out any extra milk from the butter. This is buttermilk and makes fantastic biscuits and pancakes! Do not discard it. Save it!
- Take the butter out of the cloth and rinse under VERY cold water. If you are on municipal water, you may consider filtering and refrigerating water ahead of time to use in this rinse. This water can be discarded.
- Put your butter ball in a bowl and add about 1/8 of a teaspoon to the butter. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to smooth the salt into the butter. I actually picked up the butter ball with clean hands and worked the salt into the butter that way.
- If you need your butter to be unsalted, just skip this step and your butter is ready for use!
- At this step, you can put your butter in a small dish and into the fridge for using later (some people choose to leave their butter out and that is totally your call, I will not weigh in on whether you should or shouldn’t with this recipe).
