How to Make Homemade Butter
Note: You will notice in photos that I begin with the paddle attachment on my stand mixer. Just use your whisk attachment!
Over the last few months, I started to realize that I had zero knowledge on how to make basic things that I was buying from a grocery store on a regular basis. I decided then that I wanted to learn! Am I going to stop buying these things? Absolutely not! But I also want to have some basic skills in my back pocket for times that I may need them. I’ve since learned to make bread (that recipe is here), fruit jams (blueberry jam recipe here), and now, butter – and the best part is it’s so easy to make.
Equipment You’ll Need
To make homemade butter, I would highly recommend a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. You could absolutely do this with a hand mixer, but I imagine that it’d be very time consuming and you’d end up with quite a sore arm. You could also do this with a butter churner if a stand mixer isn’t something you have on hand!
Butter
Yields Approx. 400g
Ingredients
- 1L of heavy cream (35% or higher fat is needed)
Directions
- Pour the litre of whipping cream into your mixing bowl, and set to medium speed.
- After a few minutes, turn it up to high, and cover as best as you can with a towel – the buttermilk will splash out of the mixer, and it is going to get messy.
- After a few more minutes, you will notice the fat and milk will separate, and you’ll start to see the butter clump up. Once it’s clumping up in your whisk, you can turn off your mixer.
- Grab the butter and squeeze as much of the buttermilk out as you can (if you don’t, your butter will go rancid very quickly), and transfer to a bowl of ice water. Squeeze a few more times in the bowl of ice water to get as much liquid out as possible. You can also use cheesecloth to help with this process. Don't forget to pour out your buttermilk through a strainer into a container, and store for 2 weeks in your fridge.
- Empty your bowl of ice water, and put butter in the bowl, and then salt to your desired taste. Fold your butter to get the salt evenly throughout.
- Transfer to wax paper, fold, and put in the fridge for up to 5 days, or freeze.
And there you have it! Homemade butter. Is it easier to buy from the store? Of course, and I probably will most of the time, but undeniably, homemade anything tastes better, so having fresh, homemade butter on hand during special occasions is going to be amazing (plus it makes a great gift to give!).
* Note: Links and linked products featured in this blog post are commissionable links. Should you purchase a product with these links, I will make a small commission at no additional cost to you.
