How To Make Home-Made Butter

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My friend Sarah over at Faded Country shared with me how to make butter using a mixer. Well, bless her heart, she did it with a hand held mixer, but I was lucky enough to have a stand mixer... and it worked GREAT! So, here's how it goes:

Get some real cream, I prefer to use the cream off a raw whole milk if I'm lucky enough to have a "fatty" batch! Pour the cream (maybe after carefully scooping if off the settled milk) into your mixing bowl. Closer to room temperature is preferred and will cut down on your "churning" time. I think fired up the ol' Kitchenaid to almost high using the whisk attachment.

It whisked and whisked and whisked for probably 20 minutes before it finally began to separate. The curdles are what will be the butter and the clearer liquid is what is considered buttermilk. You'll keep both parts to use - don't toss out that fabulous buttermilk!!

Once your mixture has separated, pour off the buttermilk, and begin squeezing the solid butter to help it release more of the liquid in it. Continue to squeeze it to get water out as best you can. This will help it to "keep" better.

Once you're done squeezing, you can wrap it and store it in the fridge or freezer. I just kept mine in a lidded container in the fridge. If you used a raw milk from a good farm with healthy cows, you now have some great butter free of anything extra you might not want in there!!

Happy Cooking!

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Benefits of Raw Milk

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RAW MILK

I've started getting some raw milk from a local around here, and you know what I've discovered? This stuff is really good!

Now, I know there are some people that get a little freaked out by unpasteurized milk, but I think that may be due to simply not knowing all the facts.

Did you know that they used to use grass-fed cow milk as a medicine in the last century? You might call it a stem cell kind of food concept. Well, it was regularly used to heal many serious illnesses. It's loaded with vitamins and minerals!

And enzymes... whoa nelly! There are tons of good ones in there... but you can say goodbye to those if you pasteurize your milk. There are also good bacteria in there that also get the boot when the milk is pasteurized.

Now, I know some of you are concerned about the fat and calories, but before we hydrogenated our fats and pasteurized everything, heart disease wasn't as common. I'm not an expert in this by any means, and this isn't meant to fully inform anyone on all the facts of raw milk, but I do hope that if you've never considered it, I hope you will... at least look into it!

P.S. It made up the best waffles I've ever had in my life the other night too!!

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