Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Butter. Plain & Simple.

Over the month of January, I was blessed to teach a course all about food.  From the biology of how plants & crops grow, how we harvest & transport, how we process, package & advertise our food, and finally, how we prepare food in our own kitchen.

Sound like fun? 

It was. 

One of the things we did during the course was make butter. 

I had never made butter before, and I thought it would be fun to do alongside a class period that looked at historical approaches to cooking and preparing food. 

Before class, I prepared a small quart jar by washing it well and sterilizing it in warm water.  Then, I added 1 C whipping cream and a dash of salt. 

I closed the lid, and brought it into my classroom. 

The students passed it around the room, each giving it a shake for a few moments before passing it along to their peers.  After about 20 minutes, we had butter!

Then, I used the butter the next day to make them breakfast.  They really enjoyed that. 

Butter

Materials

  • 1 C whipping cream
  • salt, optional
  • Glass canning jar, or a jar with a tight lid

Directions

Pour the cold whipping cream into a glass canning jar that is cleaned and sterilized.  Sprinkle in a dash of salt.  Seal tightly. 

Shake. 
Shake.
Shake.

You’ll need to shake for about 20 minutes until the cream solidifies. 

When you have a solid, decant the liquid (that’s buttermilk… use that for pancakes!) and if desired, shape the butter into a stick.  Alternatively, you can keep it in the jar you made it in. 

Use as you would with store-purchased butter. 

Enjoy!

This post is linked to: Kitchen Tip Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday

14 comments:

  1. That is awesome! Now I know what to do if I ever run out of butter!

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  2. This is so great! :) Thanks for sharing this with us...I'm so curious to try it myself now!

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  3. Haven't made butter since I was a kid at grandma's house. I'll have to give it a try.

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  4. PINNED! Can't wait to try this! Come share at my link party, PLEASE! http://www.dwellonjoy.com/2012/02/dwell-on-fridays-five.html

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  5. Love this, Next time my kids use the words "I'm bored, I'm going to hand them a jar with cream and salt in it!

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  6. There is nothing better then freshly made butter. So delicious!


    www.seekinghisgrace.com

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  7. I've been wanting to try this for some time. The end result looks really good! Thanks for sharing at Kitchen Tip Tuesday today!

    Willa
    www.armstrongfamilyfare.com

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  8. I used to do this with my pre-school classes, before I retired. I used baby food jars. Then we'd eat the final product, sweet creamy butter, on crackers. The kids loved it, but never had a class not ask why it wasn't yellow... so sad.

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  9. I feel like we did this somewhere through school, but I don't remember exactly when. That's fun that you were able to do it for class. It's always amazing how simple things can be to make at home.

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  10. Can you still bake with this as usual? Can it be frozen?

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  11. @wizzo81 -

    I have used it to bake -- it doesn't melt in the microwave very easily, but gets nice and soft if you let it come to room temperature. I would guess it would freeze well too, but I honestly haven't tried it. Let me know if you do!

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  12. Homemade butter freezes fine. We tried the jar method once and everyone got tired of shaking. Nowadays, I'm lazy; I put my cream in the blender on med for 10-15 minutes. Works great!

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  13. i'm so doing this. and now all that leftover whipping cream in the fridge that's just waiting to be whipped but i can't seem to use it all up before it's expiry date will get used! love it!

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  14. I did this today & it did make the butter - amazing! However, there wasn't really much liquid to remove, & the butter was pretty soft - definitely wouldn't have been able to "shape" the butter into a stick as you suggested. I shook for nearly 20 minutes. Do you think I needed to go longer, or does my result sound OK to you? It tastes OK - definitely creamy, but I need to add more salt next time - I barely put any in.

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Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear from you; especially how you're finding JOY in your kitchen.

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