Homemade Butter and Cultured Buttermilk using Heavy Cream

Ever wondered how to make homemade butter or buttermilk? Here's a complete tutorial for how to make and culture both . Elevate your cooking with these two homemade ingredients.

Guys, this is the real deal. Homemade butter and homemade buttermilk using heavy cream.

★ Why You'll Love this Recipe ★

This is a two-for-one deal. The process of making butter produces buttermilk as a byproduct, so might as well make use of it. Creating buttermilk is as simple as adding cultures.

Making your own butter is easy and tastes so different. It's more fresh than store-bought butter. You may never go back. The whole process takes about 15 minutes all said on done thanks to modern kitchen tools.

So, make a big batch. This homemade butter is freezer-friendly.

And read on to learn how to culture your leftover buttermilk to make delicious pancake or use it to tenderize chicken.

★ Tips & FAQs ★

Go modern or go old school.

Your choice. You can use a blender, a food process or a mixer. Or, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can use an old fashion butter churn like we do. 🙂 The kids think it's fun and I tell myself that I'm burning calories in order to feel justified when I slather a piece of bread with butter and chow down.

Believe it or not, you can actually purchase butter churns on Amazon.

If you're trying to just get some homemade butter — stat — though, you might just want to go ahead and use a stand mixer or a food processor.

★ How to Make Butter ★

Homemade Butter in 15 Minutes

It's really easy to make homemade butter and doesn't take a lot of time either.

Once you sort out what tool you want to use to make your butter and buttermilk, you're truly half way there.

Here are the basic steps of the process. (The full recipe is further down).

• Beat the heavy cream until is separates using a hand mixer, food processor or butter chun!
• Pour off the buttermilk and save it to be cultured. (more info below).
• Rinse the butter fat by adding cold water and blending again.
• Pour away the milky water. Repeat until water is clean.
  Note: This step removes excess liquid that can lead to your butter spoiling. Your goal is to be left with just the fat of the milk. The fat will not spoil even if left out at room temperature but if any milk is left in the fat, that can spoil and cause your butter to be rancid.
• Mix in salt to taste. You can use table salt or sea salt. You can also blend in herbs if you want flavored butter.
• Shape your butter into a stick and chill to set if desired.

★ How to Make Cultured Buttermilk ★

Once you have buttermilk as the byproduct from making your butter, all you need to do is add cultures and allow time for those to activate.

Or, if you're starting with raw milk, then your buttermilk will already be cultured.

To add cultures, you can purchase culture starters or add plain Kefir to your buttermilk which contains live cultures.

If using Kefir, add 1 tablespoon to your buttermilk. Cover loosely to keep out dust but to allow airflow and place in a warm spot (70°-77°F is ideal) for 12-24 hours. Once the buttermilk becomes thick, use it or refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Note: Using live cultures involves the risk of consuming bacteria. More information below in the Tips & FAQs.

★ Tips & FAQs ★

Cheesecloth is helpful for making homemade butter.

Then you'll need to rinse and knead the butter to get out the rest of the buttermilk. The best way to do this is using cheesecloth. Some recipes will tell you to press it out with a spoon but I have a hard time imagining how that works. You've got to really knead the butter fat to get all the milk out, then rinse it several times under cold water.

Cheesecloth acts as a strainer for you to do that really easily. You can buy cheesecloth at some groceries stores or online. Shop cheesecloth on Amazon.

Does homemade butter need to be refrigerated?

Homemade butter does not need to be refrigerated as long as the milk is completely removed from the butterfat. However, I recommend keeping your butter refrigerated just in case some of the milk remains even after you thoroughly rinse your butter.

What happens if you don't get all the buttermilk out of your butter?

Basically, bad things. You will want to take a little extra time to make sure you squeeze all the buttermilk out and thoroughly rinse your butterfat with cold water. This mean repeating the rinse and squeeze process as many times as needed for the water to run clear.

Why? Well, first, you don't want your butter to be milky because this will make things like your toast soggy instead of nice and crispy.

Second, any leftover buttermilk will start to go bad quickly, giving your butter a rancid taste. You butter can potentially become contaminated with bacteria as well.

Can you make butter out of pasteurized heavy cream?

In short, yes. But it will not be cultured butter.

The pasteurization a process heats raw milk to get rid of certain bacteria and ultimately makes the milk last longer on the shelf. Some argue that nutrients are also lost with the pasteurization process. You can read more about pasteurization as well as homogenization here.

Depending on what state you live in, you may be able to find a small market or local dairy farm that sells raw milk if you're interested in getting the health benefits of raw milk and are not afraid of the risks. Read more about the risks of consuming raw milk here.

The pasteurization process does not prevent the natural separation process that happens when you churn heavy cream.

Pasteurized or not, the fat or cream, separates from the milk. The reason this separation occurs is because the membranes surrounding the fat in milk are very fragile and they rupture when agitated (source). Once the membranes are rupture, the fat can attach to other fat and eventually begins to form clumps, leaving behind the milk.

Since pasteurized heavy cream does not contain cultures, some say you don't get as buttery of a taste as you would using raw milk, or when you add cultures back in. However, it's still quite yummy so you can choose whether or not to take the extra step of adding cultures to your butter or starting with raw milk.

So what about buttermilk? Can buttermilk be made from pasteurized heavy cream?

Yes and no. I'll explain. But first you'll be curious to know that the buttermilk you can buy at the store is actually not necessarily real buttermilk. Shocker, I know. I was surprised to learn this myself. The reason though, goes back to pasteurization.

The pasteurization process kills harmful bacteria but it also kills active cultures that contain helpful bacteria. You've probably heard them called pro-biotics. There are a number of drinks now you can buy that have been re-cultured after pasteurization in order to re-gain those pro-biotics.

Re-culturing

So, in a similar way, you can re-culture your buttermilk if you want to sour it naturally. You can purchase culture starters and add them to your buttermilk, follow the instructions for fermenting and you'll have wonderfully soured buttermilk in two or three days.

Another way to add live cultures to your buttermilk is by using a product you can find at most grocery stores called Kefir. You just need to stir in  a small amount into your buttermilk. Then cover your container of buttermilk with cheesecloth or a cotton shirt so it gets air but keeps dust and particles out, and let it sit out and ferment for two to three days.

You can also just use buttermilk as soon as you separate it from your butter fat, it will just taste more like milk than the more tart cultured buttermilk.

Can I just add lemon juice or vinegar to the leftover milk to make buttermilk?

You could and that's a good hack if you don't want to deal with culturing and all that. But it's not true buttermilk. True buttermilk goes through a chemical process and produces a different taste and a thicker texture.

When you culture your buttermilk, the fermentation process actually transforms lactose, or sugars found in the milk, into lactic acid. By the way, lactic acid is much easier to digest than lactose, which is appealing if you are lactose intolerant.

So if you're really after the authentic flavor and smooth, creamy texture of buttermilk, then culturing the milk leftover from making butter, is the way to go. Also if you are lactose intolerant, you may find that cultured buttermilk is easier on your stomach.

Okay, so remind me then how do I culture buttermilk?

You need to add the cultures back into the milk if you're using pasteurized heavy cream for this recipe. Or buttermilk can be made using raw milk which already contains live cultures.

However, it can be difficult to find raw dairy so you're only choice may be to use pasteurized heavy cream, and then add cultures back in. You can buy starter cultures for a variety of uses and follow the direction on the package in order to ferment your buttermilk!

Shop starter cultures on Amazon or purchase Kefir from your grocery store. You'll find it near the yogurt. You want the non-flavored Kefir. It's actually similar to yogurt but contains live cultures.

Bet you didn't know this was going to be so complicated.

Luckily making butter and buttermilk is not complicated, but understanding how it all work is pretty complex!

★ More Recipes You'll Love ★

Here are some recipe ideas using homemade butter and buttermilk.

Since homemade butter doesn't always last as long as store bought, you'll want to use it up quick or freeze it in batches. Try making my chocolate buttercream frosting with homemade butter and see what you think!

Try making these soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies. Or my popular ham and cheese sliders with butter topping.

Homemade butter is of course great on toast and for everyday cooking. Browse all my recipes to get more ideas.

As far as the buttermilk, well you could make buttermilk pancakes. But that's kinda boring don't you think? Why not try using your buttermilk to make something a little different! Try my creamed roast beef with Yorkshire pudding? Or my loaded potato soup.

This recipe for butter and buttermilk was featured on The Country Cook!