I need a good butter recipe. I have a dairy man with lots of extra milk right now. Thanks.

-- Dennis Carpenter (dgcn2country@aol.com), September 23, 2000

Answers

Dennis, you don't need a recipe to make butter -- you just need cream, the really heavy thick stuff from the top when your whole, unhomogenized milk has set for a day or so. Skim the cream off, put it in a quart jar with a tight lid, and let it set until the cream is room temperature. Then shake the jar vigorously until you start seeing yellowish lumps floating around in there (if it's winter milk, the lumps may be more white than yellow). Shake a few more times, and empty the jar into a clean bowl. Pour off as much of the buttermilk as you can, without losing the butter (save the buttermilk -- unless you use sour milk to make your butter, which some people do, this buttermilk is just fine to drink or use in the cooking). Now push your little lumps together to make one big lump. Now you need to start washing the butter. There is still buttermilk mixed in with it, which will go sour if you don't get it all out. Use ice water, or as cold as you can get it, and mash the butter around in it, then drain and repeat until the water stays clear. Salt your butter and refrigerate (if you need to freeze the butter, don't salt it as it will go rancid). Now make yourself some hot biscuits or fresh home-made bread, and have some of your fresh home- made butter on top!! Enjoy!!

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 24, 2000.

Kathleen had some great suggestions. Here is how I make butter. I use Jersey cream which I think is the best for making butter. (On the other hand, in my experience, Holstein cream makes poor, oftentimes smelly butter). I skim it right off my milk which I get locally. I can make butter right away, or wait a few days, in which I refrigerate my cream. I use my Kitchenaid mixer and whip the cream until butter forms, which usually takes about 15 minutes. When the lumps form, I strain off the buttermilk (which is good for pancakes), and then put the butter on a plate. Using a rubber spatula, squish the butter onto the plate while running under a cold stream of running water. Wash until all the buttermilk is out. Salt the butter and chill. Contrary to Kathleen, I have frozen salted butter successfully. I buy whole cases of salted butter and freeze them. Mary

-- Mary Fraley (kmfraley@orwell.net), September 24, 2000.

HHMM, I learned a thing or two! I have never been taught to rinse the butter, no wonder my butter gets weird tasting so fast!! I would put the whole cream in a jar, shake the daylights out of it, pour off the buttermilk, let it sit a while, pour it off again. Usually by the second pour off, we have already eaten some. Then I salt it. I have bought salted butter and frozen it just fine.

-- Cindy in OK (cynthiacluck@yahoo.com), September 24, 2000.

Dennis, Thanks for posting a good question,I'm printing the thread for my notes. I was wondering , in your checking around, did you hear if butter could be made from goats milk?

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 30, 2000.

Jay, butter can be made from goats milk, but you really need a cream separator. We managed one time to skim enough cream off some goats milk to make about two tablespoons of butter (goats milk butter is always white, by the way). For those of you who've frozen salted butter, how long did you keep it? I haven't ever frozen it for very long because it seems like the books all say it will go rancid faster if it is salted. (Maybe a month is the longest I've ever kept it in the freezer.) Mary, I suspect that breed has less to do with the quality of the butter than what the animals are eating, the stage of lactation they are in, and possibly general health and cleanliness at the farm. We've made butter from Brown Swiss and Holstein cows, as well as from store-bought cream (usually from Holsteins on commercial dairy farms), and it's always been good.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), October 01, 2000.

Thanks for the info.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), October 01, 2000.