Do I have to culture cream before I make butter?

[Koalamom]

I am in my glory. My husband works at an organic farm and gets unlimited free raw milk. Last night he brought home 2 gallons and to my amazement, almost half of each jar is cream.
I am going to make raw butter, but I was wonder if I have to culture the cream before churning it. And how do I go about that if so?

[momma_sprout]

I make my own butter all the time and I follow the directions in NT which say to leave the cream out on the counter for 8 hours before making the butter. It always turns out great

[rosewater]

I don't like the "cheesy" flavor raw butter gets after a while....I"m wondering if culturing it can make it taste better for longer. I wonder if anyone here knows.

[AJP]

You do not have to culture it. I prefer uncultured butter most of the time, and I haven't found that cultured cream churns any more easily or keeps longer without getting that cheesy flavor. (I keep butter in the freezer and only take out enough to last a few days, to avoid that taste.)

If you want to culture the cream, you can add a bit of live-culture yogurt or creme fraiche and leave it at room temp for about 8 hours. Room-temp cream breaks into butter more quickly than cold cream, whether it's cultured or not.

[Koalamom]

Do you all churn the butter with a mixer, blender or by hand?

[momma_sprout]

Originally Posted by bluebirdmama1

Do you all churn the butter with a mixer, blender or by hand?

I use my food processer until the butter seperates from the butter milk, it takes about 3 or 4 mins.

[AJP]

We've used a food processor, but now have an electric butter churn. Shaking in a jar usually works beautifully, too. Some cream churns much more quickly. If it's cream that takes longer to break into butter, the jar method gets tedious. At one point late last summer, our cream changed consistency and started to take forever to break into butter (like nearly an hour in the electric churn). Hopefully yours isn't like that. The food processor is probably the simplest electric option (if you already have one), but I don't like the texture of the butter as well as a slower method (by hand in a jar or the electric churn), it seems grainier and harder to press the buttermilk out of.

[fek&fuzz]

I use an electric hand mixer, since that's all I have.

[Koalamom]

So I made butter and let the cream sit out for about 6 hours. I have tried a kitchen aid and a blender in the past, so I decided to do the jar method this time. Oh it took about an hour. One long hour. When I was about to give up and change to the blender, I got butter! The buttermilk was so tasty.

[dogmom327]

I personally like the taste of cultured butter better. You can use a bit of yogurt culture (such as Piima) or buttermilk culture. As the PP's mentioned though, it's certainly not necessary culture the cream prior to making butter.

[Sasha_girl]

I don't use culture, I just let the cream sit out for awhile (I often pull cream at night and just leave the cream out overnight, as the evenings are still cool here). I make butter in the food processor.