Making your own cultured butter

[sarah_bella1050]

I found this wonderfully informative post on making your own butter, that includes a lot of pictures. Best part is I could do it in my kitchenaide! He says that they used to let milk sit on the counter periodically skimming the cream on the top of the milk and then using that to make butter. The butter that you get would then be cultured butter and the buttermilk that you would also get is really good high quality buttermilk. This actually seems SO easy to me! Has anyone else done this or have any recipes, advice on the culturing. Should I use raw milk for this? Check out the site and let me know what you think.

[blueridgewoman]

You absolutely can do it. BUT, the butter might not taste the way you expect it to taste. I've made cultured raw butter before and it's easy (though it does take longer than you'd expect) but it's pretty cheesy tasting.

It's not a bad thing, but it just isn't going to taste like grocery store cultured butter. I have a batch of raw butter now that is actually too cheesy for everyone else in my family. But the good news is that if all else fails, you can heat it, turn it into ghee, and salvage it.

It's worth a shot and it's definitely healthy for you!

[sarah_bella1050]

So how did you culture your cream? Did you use raw milk and then skim the cream off the top frequently while it cultured or did you just buy straight cream???

[dogmom327]

I agree with blueridgewoman--that method does work, it just doesn't often taste very pleasant.

An alternative is to use just straight cream (either skimmed off your raw milk or buy cream) and culture it using a starter culture (a piima or buttermilk culture work well) prior to making butter. That way you get the complexity and depth of flavor but also a consistent result.

[blueridgewoman]

I used raw milk and pulled the cream off after it cultured, yes. I also tried un-cultured butter to see if it would cut down on the strong taste, but it didn't.

[sarah_bella1050]

Oh OK I think I am understanding now. A friend of mine had told me that they don't buy raw cream because it has a funky taste so they just buy the Strauss instead. So cultured or not the raw milk has a funk taste. My thinking was that if I cultured it first I would get more cream off the top and the cultured cream is the one that will make really good buttermilk. The site I linked to said the uncultured buttermilk wouldn't be like normal buttermilk. I just want to get the most bang for my buck. Also what could you do with the cultured milk after you took the cream off?

[ParisApril]

I buy raw sour cream that is cream with added culture, piima I think. We eat it as sour cream and I also whip it into butter. I use the leftover buttermilk to make ricotta cheese and soak grains with. I think the amount of butter you get will depend on the fat content of your cream.

[sarah_bella1050]

OK so I made the butter last night. I laddled the cream off the top of gallon of milk that came from a farm and actually had quite a lot of cream. I let the cream sit on the counter for 8 hours like NT suggests. Then I put it in the kitchenaide and waited and waited and waited. Several times I left the kitchen and one time I left and came back to buttermilk everywhere . I ended up getting 1 cup of butter and about 16oz of buttermilk. Now the part that I wasn't expecting is that there is no funky taste. It tastes like a sweet butter. Maybe my kitchen was to cold to properly culture it? It is only 63 degrees in my house. Do you think the buttermilk is still usable in this case? I want to make the buttermilk biscuits and some creme frache.