Homemade Salted Butter

Since moving to the Oregon coast, my knowledge of fishing and foraging have vastly improved, but there’s still so much I have yet to learn. For example, even just some of the most basic primitive skills that humans have been using for thousands of years, such as salt processing and butter churning, I’ve never tried to learn how to make myself. And although I’ve been dying to try my hand at processing sea salt — since we have the very best resource for that right here with the Pacific Ocean — that News-Times article will have to wait because I decided to start with learning how to make homemade butter.

I always have heavy cream on hand for chowders and other dishes, so I wondered how difficult it is to actually make butter from scratch. It must be somewhat challenging or everyone would still be doing it, right? WRONG!

Only two ingredients, 10-15 minutes tops, and you have yourself fresh butter that tastes like store bought — maybe even better!

In fact, it’s so easy even kids can make it, and mine had a blast this week learning right alongside me doing just that. I am thrilled that we can now add butter making to our self-sustainability resume, and the kids were thrilled to share a delicious sample of what they learned with their dad when he came home from work. These are skills that everyone can appreciate and enjoy, and skills that will last a lifetime.

Homemade Salted Butter

Ingredients:

• 1 quart heavy cream

• 1 teaspoon salt (optional — this is for salted butter, which is what I typically purchase at the store)

Directions:

• Pour the heavy cream into a large bowl and add salt if you are making salted butter like I did. Then turn the mixer (using either a hand mixer/electric beaters or KitchenAid mixer) on to medium speed.

• Let the mixer churn the heavy cream into butter. (This takes a good 10 minutes or so. Don’t stop mixing until you see the butter separate from the buttermilk). 

• In about 10 minutes or so you will have homemade butter! You will also see buttermilk at the bottom of the bowl, which you can keep for buttermilk biscuits or buttermilk fried chicken. 

• Have a bowl of ice water sitting to the side.

• Remove the clumps of butter from the bowl and press into a ball (like you would with any kind of bread or pie dough), then put butter into bowl of ice water to keep chilled. 

• At this point, you can remove from ice water and shape it into a neat ball, roll, or rectangular shape — the preference is yours.

• Then just store it in an air tight container in the fridge for 7-10, days or at room temperature for 3-5 days.

Kid-Friendly Homemade Butter in a Mason Jar

Making homemade butter in a mason jar is fun and easy, and kids always take so much pride when they’ve created something on their very own for the whole family to enjoy. 

• Fill a quart mason jar half way with heavy cream and 1/2 teaspoon salt, making sure there is enough room for the cream to mix around in the mason jar and turn into butter.

• Once the cream and salt are in the mason jar, put the lid on — tightly!

• Then get to mixing! All the kids have to do is shake the mason jar, and shake, and shake, and shake! They will see the butter forming in the mason jar.

• Once all the butter is done churning they will have a clump of butter, and you will see liquid at the bottom of the mason jar — that liquid is buttermilk. 

• Then just repeat the steps above in the Homemade Salted Butter recipe for the remaining steps for finishing your butter.