True Homesteading
A Bit of Butter Lore and How-to
by Angi Killough
When I began this article on butter I thought to myself, is there really that much to say about butter? As usual, one never knows where one might end up when chasing answers to such a question.
As it turns out, there are records of butter use from as early as 2000 BCE, and butter is among the earliest commodities in oversea commerce. In the first century CE, butter was shipped from India to ports of the Red Sea. Nearer to our interests are records of Scandinavian butter being shipped to Germany in exchange for wine. There is also speculation that butter-making in north and middle Europe actually originated in Scandinavia.
Apparently, butter is also a common archaeological find in Ireland. Barrels, or firkins, of butter have been found in peat bogs. It seems that, according to archaeologists, Norsemen, Icelanders, Finns, and Scots used to flavor their butter heavily with garlic, pack it into these firkins made of wood and bury it in a bog, often for years at a time. They would also sometimes plant trees to mark the location of the butter. Whether this aging was simply for taste, to hide from enemies, or an odd storage closet, isn’t really known.
The story of butter is an interesting one, and bound up with our relations with, no doubt, ‘cattle.’ As Master Ristandi has pointed out on the Rune Gild forums: “At the deepest strata of our ancestry we are cow-herding, cow-stealing, cow-sacrificing, cow-honoring peoples…”
It is with the continuation of tradition in mind that I offer the following instruction on methods to make butter at home, with ordinary tools.
First, let me stress that you don’t need a butter churn to make butter. If you have fresh milk, straight from the cow, and a few ordinary household items, you can make your own delicious homemade butter. (Butter can also be made from heavy whipping cream purchased from the supermarket, but I’ve not found it as tasty. Same principles apply.)
Perhaps you have a milk cow, or know a neighbor that does, so you have the primary ingredient at your fingertips. Your first step is to pour about a gallon of the fresh milk into a clean container and chill it quickly in the refrigerator. Leave it in there for at least 12 hours to give the cream time to separate from the milk (and discourage any little bacteria critters).
The next step is to skim the cream into a jar. You can use an ordinary spoon to do this (as long as it’s clean) and the time to stop skimming is when you see that you’re only getting a ‘skim’ milk type liquid in the spoon. So, not only have you got the cream for your butter, you’ve made skimmed milk. Close the lid on the jar tightly and set the cream on your counter. This is the part that’s called ‘culturing’ the cream, but I usually just call it ripening. The cream needs to sit out until it reaches 75 degrees, which could take varied amounts of time depending on the temperature of your kitchen. Your cream should smell just a bit ‘sour’ but not too sour. This is a bit of a trial and error process and also a matter of preference, but the culturing is what gives the butter its flavor.
If you are using store bought cream, you would begin with the ripening step, mainly to warm the cream.
If you used an itty bitty jar for culturing, you’ll want a bigger one for churning because you only want the cream to take up about a third of the jar. The cream needs quite a bit of room to move around in there so it can gather enough force when it slams against the walls of the jar. It’s the ‘slamming against the jar’ bit that’s going to turn your cream into butter, or the concussion to cater to those of a more technical bent.
(Some prefer to make their butter by whipping the cream with a whisk. In the beginning, this will cause the cream to become stiff, but keep whisking and it will begin to separate.)
Now, if you are using the jar method, it’s time to settle down into your favorite shaking position and get to work. Your job is to shake that jar in such a way that the cream really slams against the walls of the jar with every shake. This can take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes usually, depending on how skilled you are at slamming, the temperature of the cream and the room, etc. So shake, shake, shake, shake your butter!
At some point you’re going to notice that there seems to be a kind of separation going on in the jar, with bits of butter separating themselves into little clumps. You don’t want to shake too much more after you have granules of butter unless you like really hard butter.
Once you have your granules, you’ll need a colander or some such, to strain off the buttermilk. If you like buttermilk, you now have some. Personally, I’m not that fond of it. While your butter is in the strainer, rinse it in cold water. By now it should be kind of crumbly. Dump the crumblies into a bowl and work out the water with your hands by kneading it kind of like dough. Just pour off the water.
With the water gone, it’s time to salt the butter. Add a bit of salt and work into the butter. Turn the butter over and work in on the other side also. Now you can taste test to see if it needs more salt. Once you have it salted to taste, you can pack it into an ordinary plastic container, wrap it in freezer paper, or if you are feeling creative, there are butter molds available, as well as various stamps you could use to decorate your butter. There are also some suppliers of “butter bells” out there which enable one to keep butter sitting out so that it is not as difficult to spread, but also keep it from spoiling out of the fridge. Your options are many, but remember, while you are enjoying the results of your efforts, to offer thanks to the ancestors for passing down such a tasty tradition, and perhaps consider the effects of ‘shock’ and movement on the cream, and how the principle might apply in other areas. Enjoy your butter!
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