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).
Notes
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.
More recipes at www.johnsonhomenc.com