You know how you’re all impressed when you go to a restaurant and they serve “house-made” butter with the basket of bread? Well it turns out that making your own butter is incredibly easy. And when it comes to wow factor, serving your own house made butter is guaranteed to get you some bragging rights.
Essentially you only need two ingredients for homemade butter; whipping cream and salt. And of course, if you prefer to make unsalted butter, the go-to ingredient for many baked goods and pastries, cream is all you need. And a good food processor, that will help. One of the nice things about homemade butter is you can choose the cream you want- from your favourite dairy, organic, from grass-fed cows, that sort of thing. And the salt too, you can use natural sea salt from, say, The Newfoundland Salt Company or any other esoteric source.
Of course you can also control the amount you want to make; a quart of cream will make about a pound of butter which may be too much for some of us. And making your own, in small batches will ensure the butter is totally fresh. If you’ve ever bought a pound of butter and it is dry and breaks apart when cold, chances are the water content is way off, or that brick has been frozen. Fresh, homemade butter is creamy and delicious, and making it is fun. If you’re still not sure, have a gander at this neat little video, once you see how easy and fun it is you’ll be sure to give it a try!
Homemade Butter
Makes about 1 cup
2 cups whipping cream (35% MF)
½ teaspoon salt, optional
Bring the cream to room temperature. Pour the cream into your processor. If you are using a smaller capacity food processor only use 2 cups at a time as the cream will froth up quite a bit before splitting; in short, don’t fill your food processor over half full. If you are adding salt, adding about half a teaspoon will give you a nice flavour. Place the cover on the food processor and turn unit on to medium-high. Let it run for about 5-6 minutes or until the whipped cream separates into butter and buttermilk.
Set a strainer over a bowl and scoop the butter into the strainer. You can use the buttermilk for other things like pancakes or biscuits, or just drink it.
Rinse the butter under cold water several times, turning and squeezing the butter gently with the back of a spoon; you may want to put the butter in a large bowl of water and knead it with your hands several times to remove as much buttermilk as you can. Once rinsed, place your butter in a re-sealable container like a mason jar and store it in the fridge for up to a week.
