How to Make Your Own Butter and Store it Without Refrigeration!steemCreated with Sketch.

Make your own butter with a whole raw milk and a little patience!

 

Whole raw milk means that it's not homogenized and it's not pasteurized. You can use pasteurized if that's what you have available or prefer, but you will need to make sure it's non-homogenized.


Whole Milk From a Local Raw Milk Provider! Help support your local small dairy if you don't have a milk cow! Check out the back of the bottle!

 

This is from a local dairy that we have. They are very well-respected and sought out in our area Pot 'O Gold Dairy. The Messinger family are a good, strong Christian family that run a reputable business.


As always, gather quality helpers in all your homesteading endeavors!

 

 

After pouring the milk into our big stainless steel pan and letting it separate the cream out while becoming room temperature, we begin to spoon out the cream into the blender. Ladles work also, but I had a spoon available.

 


This isn't a paid endorsement (although I'm not proud, I'd take one) or anything, but if you're a homesteader or even just a serious cook... you should have a Kitchenaid mixer.

 

You'll want to use a stand mixer (unless you have a hand churn) to hold your cream. I've used several methods to make it. I've shaken it to butter in a jar. I've used a butter church and I've used our Kitchenaid Mixer. The Kitchenaid is the easiest on your hands! You'll want to mix somewhere around the "2" setting or one of your slower speeds. High speed whipping will get you whip cream rather than butter.

 


A watched cream never "comes" to butter.

 

It takes a while to make butter. The more you watch it, the longer it seems to take! That's why it's good to have helpers! In this picture you can begin to see the butter starting to "come". That means it's beginning to stiffen and congeal into something other than whipped cream. If it begins to get too creamy, slow down your mixing speed.

 


You almost have butter... but don't stop yet!

Make sure you have a strainer available that you can put the unfinished butter into. Here we are using a spatula so as not to waste the precious butter!


Into the strainer it goes!

 

This is an important step. As you strain it out there will still be milk in the butter. This is still very fat-filled and rich milk. You've removed most of the fat, but what's left is nothing like the watery stuff you get from the store. This is called "buttermilk". You can poor it down the drain if you don't want it but that would be criminal. It's great in pancakes. Some people like to drink it (I don't). At the very least you have animals that will appreciate it. Now... you're still not quite done! Your butter still has milk in it that will make the butter spoil fairly quickly by going rancid. You must rinse your butter out and "work it". They actually make wood paddles for this but a couple of wooden spoons work also. Work it while rinsing it under water. You're almost there. You're next decision will be whether to add salt or not. (I didn't in this instance) and how to store it.

 


Congratulations! you've made butter. Immediately enjoy some on bread!

 

You've made butter! Now you have to store it. One option that takes no refrigeration and keeps the butter spreadable is a butter bell. I like butter bells because who likes hard frozen butter and ripped bread? The basic theory is the butter goes into the bell. It then gets put into the reservoir with water causing an airtight seal. Butter is fat so the water doesn't harm it and it stays soft and good for quite a while right on your counter!


Scoop butter into bell.

 


Put the bell into the reservoir!

 
I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please consider following me and giving me an upvote and a resteem!
 

Remember: GROW WHERE YOU ARE!

 

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Great how-to! I didn't realize making butter was so simple. Will try this weekend... Thanks @homesteaderslife !

Thans @texasoffgrid! Post on how it goes and tag me in it! :) Following!

Awesome information, great photos, following, upvoted, and shared!

I used to make butter years ago and it's really awesome to do - with the price of butter here now I wish I had a house cow again :) Great post!

I wish I had a homesteading neighbor and we could split the responsibility of a milk cow. The whole twice a day milking thing is more than I can commit to right now with 4 teens in a bunch of different stages/sports/schooling/university!

The best idea is to get the cow in calf and when she has her baby you leave it on her to grow - when you want to milk her you lock the calf up overnight in a yard so in the morning she has milk and you can milk the amount you want - you can do this every night or once a week.

Yeah, I've read up on it but when I've actually talked to people about it they always said the mother will dry up faster that way. I'd like to talk to someone who is actually doing it! I've been married for 21 years almost but the commitment to milk a cow is too much... LOL!

I have done this for many years and it works perfectly for both parties - the cow gets to keep her calf and you get milk when you need it. She won't dry up as you are only separating them overnight - just enough time for her to fill up. Hope this helps :)

Absolutely helps! How long did you keep milking in that condition?

You can keep milking her all year if you wish - It does pay to get her back in calf, dry her off before calving so that when she calves again her milk production increases. For quite awhile I milked a cow and froze the milk so that I could feed orphan lambs at lambing time :) I also froze the colostrum for the same reason :)

What a great post!
Like @andysantics48, wish I had a milking cow. ALthough there is a milk farm a few miles away, I'll have to check and see what their prices are for a gallon- haven't been there in a while.

@goldendawne I always stutter between wanting a milk cow and dreading the commitment of a milk cow.

Great story and pictures. Love to see children helping in the home. We use a butter bell, too. And I agree that to pour out the buttermilk is, indeed, criminal, lol.

Ohhhhhhh....that's how those containers work! Thank you @homesteaderslife!

Butter bell! That is what those things are called. I saw one once at a flea market or something like that and thought it was a great idea (I had never seen one before that).

And thanks for sharing how to actually make butter, @homesteaderslife!

They are really cool.

We make large amounts of butter at a time. We don't have a cow so must rely on a local raw milk dairy for their excellent cream. We make lbs at a time, putting in 75# for the year last year. We do it at the prime time of when the cows first go to grass in May until the end of June when the grass starts to go to seed. Making so much, we vacuum seal and freeze it. We don't salt it.

Do you buy just the cream from them?

Yes, they sell it by the gallon. Makes the most beautiful butter.

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