45 years old. I was going through a pretty bad time in my life and was in a mid-life crisis. I needed to do something outside of my norm, to get away from myself, my life, and do something big. So I went to South Africa for three weeks to volunteer on two animal reserves. One day we went to a school; it was one of the best days of my life during one of the best trips of my life.
What goes with home made jam? Butter of course–home made! About a year ago I had an idea in my head to try and make butter. How hard could it be? People have been doing it for hundreds of years without fancy machines so I figured I could do it too! When I started this activity, my plan wasn’t to make butter, it was to make cheese. As it turned out, the cloudy drizzly day I decided to do this, I didn’t have everything I needed for cheese, nor the patience, so butter it was!
Much to my surprise, butter has very few ingredients…two to be exact, cream and salt. There are a couple of different methods you can use to make the butter; you can do it by shaking a container of cream, or you can use a mixer. I opted for what seemed to be more authentic–the shaking method. No, no churns were used or injured in this activity.
So here I am already to shake rattle and roll! I shook the container for about 15 minutes then checked to see how things were coming along.
That sure doesn’t look like butter, it looks like whipped cream. So I shook some more, with no better results. The recipe I was using didn’t give too much information so I decided to check online for a video to see if I was doing it right. I was, but it just wasn’t turning into a ball of butter like it was supposed to. I’m not sure why, maybe it just needed more time. Being impatient, I decided to go with plan B. Rather than using a mixer I decided to use my blender. The purpose is the same after all! And my arms thanked me!
And what do you know? It starts to thicken up! I had to keep scraping the sides and then the blades got stuck in the butter, so then I had try and get the butter off the blades, which was a bit of a challenge in itself. Once that was done, I put the butter in a colander to drain off the buttermilk. So THAT’S where buttermilk comes from!
I think I have to make some REAL buttermilk/ranch dressing now.
You have to make sure you get all the milk pressed off the butter, and once you do that, rinse it in cold water.
And voila! SUCCESS!!
Of course the REAL test was the taste test on some good bread.
Delicious!! It was sweet and salty and so fresh tasting. I was so proud of myself.
Then I decided to try a little variety, on the left is a small batch of garlic and tarragon butter, on the right is regular. They WILL be used.
My kitchen was a mess and I had cream all over the place, but it was worth the effort. Actually, it wasn’t hard or time consuming, especially if you used a mixer or blender!
My reward was the steak I cooked that night topped with my “gourmet” butter. Of course I removed all the fat and calories in my butter batch! LOL!
I think I’ll be repeating this lovely for my New Year’s Eve dinner!!
Happy New Year to you all and happy buttering!
50 for 50 