Homemade Butter

Delicious homemade salted butter in a wax wrap

Glorious, Luxurious Butter...

The history of butter is older than records exist, it's safe to say that as long as we have been consuming milk, we have probably had butter. This is actually to do with how easy it is to make, so easy in fact that it can be made by accident.

The popularity of butter has generally been more prevalent in the northern territories in Europe, with the hotter regions such as the Mediterranean, preferring unrefined oils like olive oil. In India, it's even traditional to leave tins of 'ghee' (clarified butter) as offerings to Krishna who is the god of love and compassion, and they have been doing this for millennia.

It is great for adding depth and richness to pretty much any type of dish, it's good on hot bread straight from the oven, it's a great cooking fat for pan-frying, basting or as a baking ingredient. It is really easy to see why this is such a cultural and culinary cornerstone.

When making butter, it's useful to know that it isn't cost-effective at all. It will cost you more to buy cream than just buying a block of butter but by making it yourself you have that control of the level of salt in it and you know its fresh. Fresh butter always tastes better and if you have leftover cream in the fridge that needs to be used up then look no further. I have quantified 1 litre of cream here just so I can give you an approx guide to how much butter you get from a set amount of cream, but you can do this with as little or as much cream as you like.

• Makes approx. 350g butter (Plus around 500ml of buttermilk)

• Prep - 30 mins

• Cook - N/A

Gather The Following...

• 1 litre Double Cream or Whipping Cream
• Salt to taste (optional)
• Cheesecloth/Muslin

(yep, that really is it)

What to do...

You essentially need to whip the cream and keep whipping until you over-whip it and ruin it

I sense a little confusion here but honestly, that's what it boils down to. Historians reckon that butter was discovered by a complete accident by early humans who just discovered milk would transport it on foot or by an animal. The moving it around whilst transport it would churn the milk fats and they would end up with butter.

You can do it by hand if you really want to but you will be there all day and you will probably suffer from a very painful couple of wrists. Luckily you can buy churns pretty cheap online if you like the idea of doing something manually without as much effort. If you aren't all that keen on manual labour (and I do not blame you) you can just use your electric mixer.

Pour the cream (but absolutely not any salt) into your mixer bowl with the whisk attachment on and set it off on a medium to high speed. Once the cream is whipped and has nice very firm peaks, turn it off.

Now if you have a cheaper mixer, you will want to swap the whisk attachment for the beater attachment. Back when I first decided to start making butter, I had a really low-end mixer. It absolutely did the job for what I needed at the time but once the cream went beyond this point and turned into butter, I actually broke the whisk attachment as it wasn't strong enough. If you have a good sturdy model then you are fine to continue.

Now that's cleared up, turn your mixer back on to medium speed and leave it. It can easily take 10-20 minutes but you must stay with the mixer as it will turn very suddenly.

you should notice a watery liquid starting to form in the cream and the once beautiful whipped cream turning lumpy. Get ready.

Bang! it should just suddenly go, you will end up with a big pool of fluid coming out of nowhere with an off-white/yellowish group of masses that start sticking to your whisk or beater paddle and if you aren't careful the fluid will slosh up the sides of the bowl and onto your surface or floor. Or face.

Turn off the mixer and pour the contents of the bowl through the cheesecloth into a measuring jug or separate bowl and do not discard it. The butter should now have been caught by the cloth. Take this and wash it under very cold water to get the excess fluid off.

Squash all the butter together and wrap in the cloth and squeeze to get more fluid out and keep repeating this until you are happy it's just the butter left.

Now you can either leave unsalted or at this stage you can add salt to the butter and knead it through like its a dough. With your finished butter, you can shape it and keep it wrapped in baking parchment or a wax wrap and it will last for up to 3 weeks if salted or a week if unsalted.

You are wondering what we do with this fluid we saved, so many things.

This is lovely fresh buttermilk, and it is the reason we did not salt the cream at the start. Technically you can do and it won't affect the quality of the butter, but it will ruin the buttermilk afterwards. You can use this buttermilk on cereal, in coffee or you can swap it into any recipe instead of milk to add extra richness. Why not make some scones with it using my scone recipe here