How to Make Butter! (and Buttermilk)

Howdy from the homestead! We made butter this evening. With just a bit of heavy cream and a few common household items, we shook...and shook...and shook...until all of a sudden we had butter! It is sweet and creamy — by far the best butter I have ever tasted. And as an extra bonus the dairy gods gave us a bit of buttermilk too!

It is super-simple — and with a bit of arm strength and 20 minutes, you can do it too! Here's what you need:

• Heavy Cream
• Clean Empty Jar (with a tight fitting lid)
• 1-2 Clean Glass Marbles
• Plastic Wrap
• 2 Small Mixing Bowls
• Spatula (needs to be able fit into the jar)
• 2 containers: 1 for Butter, 1 for Buttermilk
• Pinch of salt (optional)

Here's how you do it:

1. Fill the jar a little more than half way with heavy cream.
2. Place a marble or 2 into the jar.
3. Cover the jar opening with some plastic wrap and then screw on lid tightly. This prevents lingering scents in the lid from making the butter smell/taste strange.
4. Shake the heck out of the jar for about 15-25 minutes. It will be easy at first, then it will be harder to move the marbles around. Sometime after the 10 minute mark you will see a definite separation of butter and milk and the cream will no longer coat the inside of the jar. Shake for 2 more minutes.
5. Use the spatula to help strain the buttermilk out of the jar into one of the containers.
6. Fill the two mixing bowls half way with cold ice water.
7. When you have all of the buttermilk separated, place the butter into the first mixing bowl to rinse. You can use the spatula to knead the butter a little and get the buttermilk out of any pockets in the butter.
8. Transfer the butter into the second bowl for a second rinse.
9. Place the butter into the second container, strain any water remaining, and mix in salt to taste if desired.

The salsa jar I show in the first photo gave me 1/2 cup of butter (shown in the photo above) and about 1/4 cup of buttermilk.

The photo above shows the two butter containers (on the right) I have filled so far, and the container of buttermilk (left). I have used about 1/4 gallon of heavy cream so far and it gave me 2 1/4 cups of butter and about  1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. I am really happy that this process creates two products I can actually use. There is no waste (unless you are on a diet). Tomorrow I will make some buttermilk biscuits with the fresh buttermilk. Wahoo! I can smother them in homemade butter!