Churning your own butter tips, please.

I churned my own butter this weekend and I was surprised at how easy and tasty it turned out to be. I used pasteurized heavy cream that I left out of the fridge overnight. It produced a wonderful natural creamy flavor butter. I was wondering if anyone could share any tips they may have on making it even better. Thanks.

Greg

Welcome to the club, Greg. In my experience, the only thing that makes butter better is the cream. If you have access to a local dairy farmer -- it's very hard to make it as a small dairy farmer these days so the search is not easy -- you may be able to buy fresh cream. If that's possible, you'll find that the butter changes from time to time as the cattle feed changes. Early spring butter is usually fantastic in this hemisphere.

Probably not an option, but if you have a choice of breeds, you'll find a real difference between butter made from Holsteins, Jerseys and Guernseys.

A very good collection of butter making hints appears at http://waltonfeed.com/old/butter.html . Some real old timer stuff here, much of it like we used to use on the farm. The souring step adds a real bite that I like alot.

Have fun -- you almost can't go wrong.

Thanks, Bob. I'll check out the link you posted.

I made it based on the Shelburne Farms directions which involved putting the cream in a small tupperware container with a marble and shaking it until it turned into butter. It only took a couple of minutes and was very good.

We visited Shelburne years ago, and they taught us to make butter that way. They had fresh cream and a bit of sour cream so we could make our own and then do a taste test. The bread was superb. Great place to visit and stay overnight.

I wonder if one of those Jamie Oliver Flavour Shakers might be good for this purpose ?

I'm still occasionally making butter in the food processor (as suggested by Bob some time ago), but only do it to use up leftover cream. I really like the idea of adding a bit of sour cream to it - must try that.

I made it based on the Shelburne Farms directions which involved putting the cream in a small tupperware container with a marble and shaking it until it turned into butter. It only took a couple of minutes and was very good.

Interesting way to do it. Years ago, back at school cooking class, we learnt that if you overwhipped what you call "natural heavy cream" and what we simply call "cream" in this part of the world, it would turn into butter. But it was never as yellow as store-bought butter. Lots of us unintentionally made butter in that introductory class.

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A very good collection of butter making hints appears at http://waltonfeed.com/old/butter.html . Some real old timer stuff here, much of it like we used to use on the farm. The souring step adds a real bite that I like alot.

Have fun -- you almost can't go wrong.

Bob, the souring step is what I grew up with. Sweet cream butter is simply not as good, Even if it is organic!