It’s so easy to learn how to make butter in a jar! Butter is just SOOOOOOO yummy. It makes biscuits nice and flaky, pie crusts perfect and brown, grits creamy and delicious, buttercream icing rich, mashed potatoes would be nothing without butter, you get my point- Butter makes everything better!
How to make butter in a jar
From Udder to Butter
Besides tasting good, butter is good for you (despite popular belief)! Butter made from the raw cream of animals on a grass based diet is even better! It is rich in vitamins, anti-oxidants, minerals, saturated fat (vitally important to your health, again, despite popular belief), and has many more health benefits. So, on top of being delicious, butter is vital to your health. It’s a win-win in my eyes.
Butter is made when the butterfat solids in cream stick together. This happens when the cream is agitated. There are multiple methods for making butter that include- shaking in a jar, beating in a mixer, using a blender, a food processor, or a butter churn.
The method you choose depends on how much cream you have, what tools you have available, and how much work you want to do. Since I was using a small amount of cream I went with the simple making butter in a jar shaking method.
Here’s how to make butter in a jar: Place your cream in a jar that has plenty of room for the liquid to slosh move around a lot, I had just under a pint of cream so I used a quart size mason jar. Ideally, the cream should be around 60° F for churning. Make sure you have a tight fitting lid unless you want to end up wearing the cream instead of eating the butter.
Now, you just shake the jar, or get your kids to shake it, or if everyone else is tired of shaking, employ your ever so strong farmer husband to shake it. As you shake, the butter will start to become thicker. If it is coating the jar and feels like nothing is happening, don’t fret, you are getting close. At this stage you have whipped cream. This is a good time to stop, realize that you haven’t had pie in a long time, abandon the butter idea, make a pie and top with the luscious whipped cream. Oh wait…… I got side tracked.
Keep shaking. Alas! You hear a splash and just like that, you have a solid chunk of butter and a nice pool of buttermilk. Now, shake a little more to be sure that all of the butterfat has stuck together. It takes about twenty minutes to get to the “breaking ” point.
Next, you want to drain the buttermilk off into another jar (reserve this for baking, or pancakes, or something else delicious). Now, you need to get all of the buttermilk out of the butter. To do this I place the butter in a bowl of ice water, you want to keep the butter very cold so it doesn’t melt in your hands. Rinse the butter in the bowl of ice water replacing the water every so often. Continue to do this until the water runs clear. You can knead the butter to be sure all of the buttermilk is gone (it will keep longer this way).
You can add salt if you’d like, I did not this time. The butter can now be stored, I just used a small bowl. A butter mold is nice if you have one or silicone molds work well too. If using a mold you will want to put the butter in the freezer to allow it to harden enough to pop out of the mold.
That’s it, that’s how to make butter in a jar. It really is so simple! The cream turned into beautiful, delicious, healthy yumminess called butter! Now, go slather that deliciousness on a piece of homemade bread and feast away!
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Awesome!
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Looks yummy! Oh, and the new site looks great.
I would love to make my own butter! Thanks for idea and the submission to the HomeAcre hop. Feel free to stop by at http://www.PintSizeFarm.com or another one of the hosts to submit another this week!
Thanks! I will do that. 🙂
I loved seeing your blog about butter making. I just learned how to do this myself, tried the other methods, but found the shake-a-jar method is easy and fast. My question is, you called this blog from udder to butter, but I didn’t see any info about what kind of milk you might use directly from the cow, or whether you have to separate cream first from the milk. I’m trying to figure out, short of buying cream from the store, about getting milk directly from a farm, and how much butter fat must be in the milk. Do you know? Have you blogged about this elsewhere?
Thanks!
Hi! I’m so glad you found my blog post helpful. The butter comes from the cream. If you have fresh raw milk from a cow, you can separate the cream from the milk by letting it set in the fridge and rise. the butter is all of the fat solids in the cream. When they separate from the liquid it makes the butter. So, you need to either buy cream from the store or have access to raw milk. 🙂
If you do a salted version how much salt do you add?
I’d star with 1/2 tsp and salt to taste from there. 🙂