Making Butter :O)

I was just in the kitchen making my weekly batch of fresh butter and thought it might be interesting to post the butter-making process on the blog. (What? You mean you're not interested??? Hmmm, better scroll down and read something else then.) :O)

So it all starts with fresh milk....yep, as Rachel puts it, "right outta the cow." :O) Let the milk set long enough for the cream to settle at the top...normally I just leave it in the fridge overnight. Then next morning, I skim the cream off the milk. Usually in the half gallon jug like you see in the picture below, there is about a 3-5 inch layer of cream...sometimes more, seldom less.

The above picture is what cream I got off of less than two gallons of milk. I let it set out on the kitchen counter for about 12 hours....it all depends on the the temperature. The warmer it is, the quicker it's ready. More often than not, I will skim the cream off the milk in the early morning, then it's typically ready by that evening after suppertime. You'll know it's ready when it's just a bit soured. You learn to judge when it's "ripe". :O)

When it's ready, make sure it's in a jar big enough that it's about half full. Put the lid on good and tight, find a comfortable chair, then shake, shake, shake. And then...shake some more. :O) It takes about 15 minutes (sometimes a little more). This is where the size of the jar comes in handy...you want enough shaking room so that the cream really sloshes hard against the jar. That's what makes the butter. At one point in the shaking process, it'll get a heavy feel to it while you're shaking. You're getting close then. :O) You'll know it's done when you see the butter floating on top.....here's a picture to show you what I mean.....

Scoop the butter out of the jar and plop it into a bowl. What's left in the jar is buttermilk and makes awful good biscuits and cornbread. :O) Put the buttermilk in the fridge and use it rather quickly because it doesn't seem to keep as long as store bought cultured buttermilk.

Here's a picture of the butter I just scooped out of the jar...

The next step is to turn on a steady trickle of cold water. Put the bowl under the water, scoop up the butter with your hands, and sorta knead the butter in your hands while holding it under the stream of water. What you're doing here is squishing all the milk out. Do this until the water runs clear. If you leave even a trace of milk in the butter, you'll have quite a nasty smelling and tasting butter in a few days. Been there, done that....once. Ew! So once the water is clear, you're finished and all that's left now is to squeeze the water out of the butter. At this point, you can salt it if you like...sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The butter is good and soft at this point, so you can easily stir in salt with a spoon. Put your butter into a little bowl, dip a finger in and get a little taste. Nothing beats the taste of fresh, homemade, creamy butter. :O)
Oh, there is one final thing.....grab a hot, fluffy, right-out-of-the-oven homemade biscuit ....slather on some homemade preserves...smother it in a big ol' glob of your freshly made butter...keep a napkin handy...and oh my! Yum. Yum. :O)

By the way, I'm on the lookout for a butter churn. :O) Sometimes the shaking gets to be a little much if I have alot of butter to make. Anybody know where I can get one?