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comrade1234 | on: Runners who churn butter on their runs
This is really funny. My wife and I watched all of New Scandinavian Cooking over a few months and there was an episode where he made butter. It blew our minds at how simple it was. We had no idea!

So we bought a couple of liters of cream (35% fat), put it in the stand mixer and made butter. There's a Serious Eats page about it.

The butter we made was better than what we normally buy. We live in Switzerland so the normal grocery store butter is very good. Our butter had less water in it (you can tell in a frying pan) and more flavor. Plus we take the resulting buttermilk and make ricotta cheese and then we take the leftover whey and make Norwegian cheese (more like fudge). So we get three products from one batch of cream. The butter comes out to be about 20 cents cheaper per 250g than store bought and then the ricotta and "fudge" are free, so financially you come out ahead. The cleanup is a bit of a pain though.

We've also made cultured butter from crème fraiche. It's tasty but even when the crème fraiche is on sale it's still like 2x the cost of using cream so probably not worth it other than gifts and special occasions. We made mandarin sorbet with the sour buttermilk after the crème fraiche butter and that was excellent.

When I tell old Swiss people (people in their 70s/80s) that we make butter they think it's hilarious. They tell me about how when they were kids their parents made their own butter and also at parties/gatherings the parents would give the kids a jar of cream and it was their job to shake it and pass it around until it was butter.

If you have an hour on the weekend and if you have a stand mixer I suggest just trying it. Start with the balloon whisk and when the peaks start forming switch to the paddle watch it because when the butter forms it happens quick and you get a big clump of butter rattling around in the mixer knocking it off balance. It takes maybe 25 minutes and then you have to wash it in ice water, mold it, then clean up. About an hour.

darreninthenet | parent | next
My wife and I have occasionally made our own butter for years now... one thing people always forget to mention is that it goes bad really quickly. The trick is either to cut it up into chunks and freeze most of it and the remainder you keep in the fridge/defrost later will last about 3 days. Or you can add salt after you've done the separation but this does of course mean you now have salted butter... this will last up to two weeks usually.
MisterTea | parent
In preschool our teacher brought in a jar of cream that was passed around and everyone took turns shaking it. Then we had buttered bread. I believe this was done for thanksgiving.