The easiest and oldest method of butter making involves putting cream into a sealed container and shaking. I have a lump of butter and about a cup of buttermilk, the real stuff, not the skim milk sour, cultured buttermilk sold in stores. The butter turned out amazingly golden yellow. I haven't seen butter this color since I was a little girl on my parent's farm. Once I open the second jar and make another batch of butter next week, I'm going to make a soft buttermilk cheese as well.
Larga Vista Ranch also sells grass fed, grass finished beef. We bought twenty lbs of stew meat and chuck roast in addition to picking up the milk. A pound of the stew meat made its way into the afore mentioned veg and beef soup. It has way more flavor than super market beef and since the owner uses homeopathic treatment for most of the illnesses his animals contract, it's also completely free of drugs and hormones. I am so very glad we learned about what Doug and Kim are doing! Not only is my family eating better, I've also learned a lot of things from them related to what I want to do with our own farm in the future.
2 comments:
Wow, your butter sounds delicious. I have access to raw milk, but I think some of the cream is skimmed before bottling. How would I need to go about making butter? I am jealous of your superior milk! :)
Stick your milk in the back of the fridge (coldest place without freezing). After 12 hours or so, you'll see a separation line. The cream is above, the milk below. If this doesn't happen, your milk has probably been homogenized. You can still make butter but it's considerably more difficult.
If you get a cream line, let it sit in the fridge another couple days. The older the cream, the easier butter is to make. When you're ready, skim the cream off with a spoon into a car that has a tightly sealed lid. Screw on the lid and shake until you get a lump of butter (10 minutes or so). That's it. You can wash the butter until water runs clear (like kneading bread dough) but if you're working with small amounts, going to refrigerate and most likely use it up quickly, it's not really necessary.
If you don't get a cream line, pour a cup or so of milk into your jar and shake. It's going to take quite a bit longer to get butter since the milk fat particles have been broken up smaller but you can do it with time and determination.
There are manual and electric butter churns also. But again, if you're working with small amounts of cream on less than a daily basis, these really aren't necessary.
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