Sometimes it feels like there is just not enough cream! The lucky thing about cream is that because it is so low in water content and high in fat content, the products that it makes are good at being frozen. Butter and full fat cream cheese freeze very well and can be made during times of high cream production and saved for those drought days.
The progression of butter ➡️ Cream becomes butter and buttermilk ➡️ Buttermilk becomes ricotta, ➡️ Butter can be eaten or turned into shelf stable ghee.
Butter can be made in many different ways;
- Blender
- Kitchen Mixer
- Jar
- Electric Churn
- Food Processor
- Hand Churn
The basic principal behind making butter is that you are trying to jostle the fat globules out of their casing. To do this, you agitate them until they start to glom together. At first they are glomming together and as they stick, they begin to trap air between them (the whip cream stage), as more and more of the fat is released from their casing, the air is pushed out, (the foam stage), and as the air is pushed out so is the buttermilk. Finally you will see that the fat globules have formed grains by sticking together and the buttermilk is left separated from the fat.
There is actually more to butter than you think. The general principal of it is simple, but the composition of cream can really wreak havoc on your butter making. Nine times out of ten, butter making is as simple as agitating the cream until it separates, but there may come that one time, when it just won’t turn to butter; for this reason I have a butter troubleshooting guide in the dairy processing guides.
Today we are going to be talking about the days when it is as simple as 1,2,3 to make!
Find the recipe in your recipe book!