The changes that we’ve made over the past year have increased the amount of butter that we’ve been using. From making things like homemade cookies or cornbread a few times a month, and switching to real butter, we’ve definitely seen an increase that comes with consuming real food.
Have you looked at the cost of organic butter? You can easily spend almost twenty dollars on a couple of pounds of real butter. Even when you’re shopping for non-organic butter, those prices quickly add up when you’re using it on a regular basis, and not stocking up on when it’s on sale.
What started with me realizing that we needing buttermilk for a recipe, and having none in the fridge lead me to remember that we could DIY butter, and then realize just how simple it was to make it at-home.
Adding to the list of things that we can make at-home, we’ve recently started to make our own butter. Before you start calling me Grandma Lori, note that it takes under ten minutes and the kids loved making butter.
Tip: If you’re not too concerned about the organic, Costco is going to be your best bet for whipping cream - the only ingredient needed to make the butter.
Make Homemade Butter
500 ml whipping cream
KitchenAid Mixer
Tea Towels
Container for finished butter
Yields approximately one cup of buttermilk and one cup of butter
1. Place the whipping cream into the mixer and mix, gradually increasing the speed until you get to high. After two to three minutes, you’re going to get whipping cream. It will look like this.
2. Keep going. After another two minutes or so, you are going to see the butter and the buttermilk begin to separate. This is good. You might want to grab a towel at this point to cover the mixer (and use the splash guard) to reduce the spilling, or wasted buttermilk.
3. At this point, keep the mixer on high for a few minutes. The kids love to make sure that it’s covered and watch the transformation into something that they want to eat (whipped cream) into something that they don’t really want to eat (yet).
4. When you’ve had some good separation, you’re going to drain the buttermilk into a jar or container, and you can stash it in the fridge. You can use it to make delicious pancakes, waffles, cornbread or other recipes - try the waffles with it, they’re delicious.
5. Next, rinse the butter to remove as much of the buttermilk as you can. As much as possible of the buttermilk needs to be removed to help the butter to last longer. The best method that I’ve found for this has been to first drain the buttermilk, then use a rubber scraper to form the butter into a ball, and squeeze the remaining buttermilk out of the butter.
After you’ve squeezed the butter, it’s time to rinse it. Use ice water to pour about 2 cups of ice water into the bowl of the mixer, turn the mixer back on gradually getting to high, and drain the water into the sink. Repeat 2-3 times, until the water runs clear and you can tell that you’ve removed as much of the buttermilk as you can.
Tip: this butter making video shows the easiest way to rinse the butter, using the method I mentioned above.
6. Remove the butter and store in your choice of container. It will keep for about two to three weeks in the fridge, but you can also freeze it.
Is Making Your Own Butter Less Expensive?
That’s the big question. $3.89/500 ml is what we paid for organic whipping cream, and that yielded a cup of buttercream and a cup of butter. Double that price and you’ll get the traditional 454g or so of butter, meaning that for a regular pound of organic butter for $3.89 + 2 cups of buttercream for $3.89, almost half the cost of organic butter, with the by product of organic buttermilk.
Finding organic whipping cream at your local store can be tricky. For this recipe, I used Avalon organic whipping cream from Spud.ca to get organic groceries delivered to our house, saving us time. The $3.89/500 ml container of whipping cream made just over one cup of organic buttermilk (perfect for waffle recipes) and one cup of organic butter, saving us money compared to the cost of buying it already made.
