5 minute Blender Probiotic Butter
If there is one thing that motivates me to make my own butter, it's making cultured butter. When it comes to butter, this is the creme de la creme! Cultured butter is prized by chefs around the world. Butter is good, but cultured butter is in a whole other class. It's more complex taste wise and what's even better? It's probiotic. What's not to like about probiotic butter!
I enjoy the flexibility of cultured butter. This means, I can make it when I get around to it. I scrape the cream off my kefir, countertop yogurt, or kefir yogurt and save it in a jar in the fridge. When I get around to making butter, I gather up all my cultured cream, pour it into a blender and in less than 1 minute, I have butter curds. Just a few more steps later and I have rich cultured, probiotic butter. In fact, one of my best batches of butter was made from some cultured cream that had been in a second fridge for around a month. It smelled pretty strong! I didn't have the heart to throw it out, but I didn't see how it could make decent butter either. I kept putting it off while it continued to age and get even smellier. I decided to give it a go. I'm sure glad I did. It was heavenly! Now, all your stinky cultured cream may not turn out quite so well, as cultures tend to have a mind of their own, but culturing your cream will give you a little bit more time to get around to butter making than fresh cream butter will. I hope you enjoy this as much as we do.
Blender Cultured Butter
1 quart chilled cultured cream (approximately)
1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste
1. Pour cultured cream into a blender.
2. Cover and process on high for approximately 40 seconds - 1 minute.
3. The cream will go through three phases:
Runny liquid
Whipped cream
Thinning out and sloshing around a bit
4. At this point, remove the lid and you should see butter curds floating in the liquid buttermilk.
*If your cream does not have enough buttermilk in it, it will turn into thick cream and stop churning in the blender. In this case, add some milk until it starts to churn.
5. Pour the curds into a fine mesh strainer suspended over a container to catch the buttermilk, drain well.
6. Over a sink, rinse the curds in the mesh strainer under very cold tap water, until water running through is mostly clear. Your butter will keep longer if you get as much buttermilk out as is reasonably possible.
7. Place curds in a container and press water out of the curds. I find it's easiest to do with my hands, just squeeze and knead. Continue to press (or squeeze and knead) water out of the butter until you have removed as much as possible.
8. Salt to taste- about 1/2 tsp. per quart of cultured cream
9. To keep butter as fresh as possible, I prefer to store it in the freezer in 1/4 cup portions (about 1.9-2.0 ounces.) I keep a portion of it on my counter in a butter crock and remove it from the freezer as needed.
10. Store buttermilk in the fridge and use for baking, salad dressings etc.
TIPS
1. Here is a very old video of me making butter. It's a bit embarrassing, but just in case it's helpful for you, I will swallow my pride and let you see it.
2. 1 quart of cultured cream will make about 10.3 oz butter, or 1 1/4 cups butter.
3. Sometimes when it gets to the cream stage it creates a pocket of air above the blender blades and it stops spinning. If this happens, just stop the blender and give it a little stir with a spatula and then start where you left off.
4. The amounts used above will yield about 3 cups of cultured buttermilk.
5. To be honest, I don't usually have exactly a quart of cultured cream. When I have about 4-5 cups, I pour it in my blender and make butter. Because I'm removing the cultured cream from kefir or yogurt myself, I'm not exact and I get some cultured milk in the mixture. This actually works out well, because there's usually enough milk in my cream that I don't have to add additional liquid to create a vortex in my blender. It's the one time that my hastiness in the kitchen works in my favor. You can easily see how much cream to milk you have in your jar by observing the cream line.
6. If it doesn't work out, chances are you have let it process too long and your butter curds have become warm and melted. It's ok. Put it back in the fridge and try again tomorrow.
7. I highly recommend using raw cultured cream off of raw cultured milk from pastured cows! Since it's not pasteurized, has no stabilizers etc. It will yield the most nutrient dense, easily digestible and probiotic butter. You really can't match the benefits of raw cream, cultured butter! However, when you're first starting out, or in a pinch, you can use the most minimally processed cream you can buy. It's not the best option, but it will still yield a higher quality butter than most of what you can buy.
8. When you figure you can get butter, yogurt or kefir and all the various food you can make with yogurt/kefir, as well as milk for drinking etc. out of one gallon of milk, it's actually a very economical, delicious and nutritious venture!