How to Make Homemade Butter

This was really quite simple, far easier than I would have thought! It requires just one ingredient and ~ 15 minutes of time. This is so delicious spread on a hot slice of sourdough or on homemade buttermilk biscuits. You can also add in fresh herbs, honey, cinnamon sugar, etc. to taste at the end if you’d like. This recipe makes ~ 1 lb. of butter and ~ 12 oz. buttermilk.

Ingredients:

1 quart heavy whipping cream

Step One: Pull your heavy whipping cream out of the fridge a few hours in advance and leave it on your kitchen counter. You want your cream to be at room temperature.

Step Two: Set up your Kitchen Aid mixer with the whisk attachment, pour the heavy whipping cream into the mixing bowl.

Step Three: Place a couple of large tea towels over the Kitchen Aid mixer – this will prevent the cream from splashing all over your countertop. This step will save you some clean up afterwards.

Step Four: Turn the mixer on the highest speed possible – the cream will go through three stages as it whips. The first is whip cream, the second is when the cream starts to solidify into small chunks, and finally it will “break” resulting in a solid mass of butter and the byproduct, liquid buttermilk. If using room temperature whipping cream this process should take ~ 10 minutes. Note: Do not stop the mixer to check how the process is going – just lift the tea towel to peek in there.

Step Five: Remove the mixing bowl from the stand and pour the buttermilk into a glass jar. Set aside for other use (like making buttermilk biscuits or buttermilk waffles to enjoy your butter on?!).

Step Six: Take the mixing bowl with the butter in it and place it under a very small stream of cold water in the sink. As the cold water is running over the butter press on the butter with a butter paddle (if you don’t have one a big spatula will do) to extract the remaining buttermilk, pour off into the sink as needed. Once the water is running clear you’re almost done! Note: It’s not worth keeping the buttermilk in this step since it is diluted with water. The more buttermilk you remove, the firmer your butter will be and the longer it will last in the fridge.

Step Seven: Now you are ready to add a pinch or two of fine sea salt (optional but recommended), mix well with your butter paddle (or spatula) and store in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

Step Eight: Enjoy!

Want to learn how to make your own sourdough bread to spread your butter on? Check out my three posts on this topic;