Don’t be scared by this quest. It’s really one of the easiest–and most rewarding–quests of all. Rewarding because fresh homemade butter is soooooo good. You’re going to love this.

Now, you could go and get your own milk, as in, milk a cow. Once you’ve got some milk, let the cream rise to the top, scrape it off and there’s your raw material for making butter. Now you need a churn. A churn, if you can find one, can be fairly expensive but will last several lifetimes if you take care of it. I’d go for a ceramic one, but that’s just because it’s what I’m accustomed to. But a churn isn’t absolutely necessary. Here’s  one method you can use and all you need is a jar and some store-bought cream.

If all else fails there’s a smaller hand crank version you can purchase.

As with most things in the world, fresh butter is much better than the butter you buy at the market. But as usual we humans love us some convenience, so we’ve been dumbed down into thinking that margarine or store-bought butter is the real deal. Well, it isn’t, and if you’ll try a little real butter I think you’ll agree with me. The great part about making butter is that it isn’t hard at all.

In the old days, we made butter using a churn. Churns were made in a variety of styles and shapes, often crafted at home out of wood. Store-bought, plunger-type churns were sometimes made of metal, sometimes ceramic. There were also barrel-style churns with a hand crank rather than a plunger. Regardless of the style of churn, however, the process remained–and remains–the same. For homemade butter, you simply burst the milk molecule (or, for you scientific types, you must burst the membrane that surrounds the microscopic butterfat globules). That’s why churning seems like such a violent process. It is. You must bruise the cream to make butter. You have to beat the crap out of it.

First, a little primer on the products of milk:

• First, there is milk. Straight from the cow.
• Left to sit, the cream will rise to the top.
• If you skim the cream off the top of the milk, you are left with “skim milk” in the bottom.
• The cream is what you use to make butter.
• You can use either pasteurized or non-pasteurized cream to make butter. Pasteurized butter is called “sweet cream butter.” Non-pasteurized is called “raw cream butter.”

Now, here’s the part you’ve been waiting for: How to make a small amount of butter for home use.

All you need is a jar and some cream. Just go buy a little carton of cream from the grocery store. Important: Let the cream sit on the counter, unrefrigerated, for around twelve hours. Yes, I know it will sour. It needs to sour. Those little bacteria which turn milk into lactic acid are busy transforming your cream into the perfect butter base. When you open the carton, you should sniff that slightly sour smell and revel in it, because it is good.

So. At this point you want to pour your slightly sour cream into the jar. Tighten that cap nice and tight, and then, grasping the jar by the lid end, shake it. Now, you don’t have to shake it continuously for an hour. Just swing it hard, as if it was a hammer and you were hitting a nail with it. But, of course, don’t actually hit anything with it. Stop it hard, and then swing it again. Stop it, hard, again. Keep doing that, as violently as you can manage, for three or four minutes. You should at the end of that time realize that there’s a lump evolving in your jar. That lump, my friends, is buttery delicious goodness.

There is still some liquid in the jar. That liquid is buttermilk (YAY!!).  My grandmother used to salt and pepper her buttermilk and drink it. And, of course, there’s never been a better biscuit than was made with homemade buttermilk. Anyway, drain the buttermilk out and then fill the jar with cold water. Swirl the jar around–this is to harden the butter. Slowly pour the cloudy water out (this cloudy water can be discarded).

Now put the butter on a board and press down on it to force out any remaining buttermilk. Any left inside will make the butter go sour. What’s left is butter!

If you’d rather not waste your time reading all these instructions, here’s a rather brilliant video on the exact same procedure. Note: It’s not me in the video. It’s a nice gentleman named Robert Krampf.

Further reading:

• http://www.webexhibits.org/butter/

Images by:

• deirdren
• jilldoughtie