Yes, you can make your own butter in your own kitchen! It’s pretty quick and easy to do and a wonderful project for kids. Since a quart of cream spatters quite a bit in a home stand mixer, this recipe uses a only pint.
stand mixer - Butter is dead simple to make if you have a KitchenAid or other stand mixer. You can use a blender or food processor, or one of the butter churns for sale in stores or online, but I prefer the stand mixer.
Ingredients
1pintheavy cream or whipping cream(I prefer heavy cream)
1teaspoonlarge-grain salt, such as Maldon(optional)
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Method
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Churn. Clean the mixer bowl, attach the paddle, pour in a pint of cream and turn it on low to start. Keep it churning for 5 minutes and it should start to get thick enough that you can begin to increase the speed. You might want to drape the bowl with a cover of some sort, like plastic wrap, as it will eventually start spattering all over the counter. For the fun of it, turn the machine off and taste the whipped cream as you go. If you want to extract some whipped cream for, say, topping strawberries, scoop some out and add sugar to it. After another 10 to 15 minutes of churning, depending on the speed of the mixer, the whipped cream will break into liquids and solids, and the solid butter will start to clump on the paddle, while the liquid buttermilk will separate and fly around the bowl and onto the counter (keep that cover on).
Flavor. Now, if you wish, you can add salt. A flake salt like Maldon really amps up the flavor and gives it a nice crunch. Normally I don’t stir in salt because I prefer unsalted butter, and I can always add salt later. At this stage, you can also make compound butter by adding spices, herbs, black garlic, and more. Just remember that adding things like this can introduce contaminants and shorten shelf life. Unadulterated, homemade butter will keep in the coldest part of the fridge for three months or more. Salted butter will keep longer.
Finish. When the fat lumps congregate and reach the texture of butter, remove the bowl and the paddle. Pour the buttermilk through a strainer into a bowl or jar. You can use this traditional buttermilk to make buttermilk biscuits or buttermilk pancakes, or just add it to your morning cereal. Scrape the paddle with a silicone spatula. Wash your hands and then use your hands to gather the butter bits and make a single lump of butter. Submerge the butter in a bowl of cold water and knead it, squeezing out any trapped buttermilk. Change the water as it gets cloudy, and keep squeezing, kneading, and refreshing the water until the water remains clear. Remove the butter from the water, pat dry with a paper towel, and shape it into a block, or roll it up like a Tootsie Roll in waxed paper, cheese paper, parchment paper, or plastic wrap. You can also scrape it into molds of various shapes. Keep your wrapped butter in the coldest part of your refrigerator.
