How to Make Old Fashioned Butter

I chose to use raw cream for this episode as it is the main thing that makes recipe “historical”. When making modern butter, I always used Pasteurized cream. The process has saved countless lives and I think it might be a good topic for a video!

When I was in elementary school I had a teacher who would tie food to history lessons when learning about pioneers she had us all learn how they made butter by passing around the butter churn jar until it became butter. We then got to eat the butter we made on bread she had baked at home. It’s one of my favorites memories from elementary school. I credit that teach with starting my love of history by making it come alive rather then just facts on a page.

Fun fact about butter: In Medieval times, butter was used to pack breakable items like glass and crockery. The items were packed in crates and warm, liquid butter poured over them. Once the butter solidified again, the items could not move in the crate and where thus safe from breaking. This practice is the origin of the German idiom "alles in Butter" (literally: "Everything in butter"), meaning "everything is allright".

My sister was trying to make whip cream, but she processed it too long and made butter. So, for Christmas, she made small loaves of bread, homemade jam, and home made butter. All 3 in a basket( each basket from dollar store) and gave as gifts. BEST Christmas present ever!

Now you just need to find a peat bog and leave it there for about 2,000 years, and you can finally construct the FORBIDDEN GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH!

The tall butter churn actually only takes 30 minutes or so if you take turns with excited children! I used to work at a historical museum, and it's amazing how fast it can happen when that's all the kids want. 😂

Laura Ingalls Wilder devoted a section of her "Little House in the Big Woods" (the first of her "Little House in the Prairie" series) to how her mother Caroline would make butter, from start to finish. Look it up and it's pretty detailed. Includes how Caroline would color the butter with carrots, to give it extra sweetness and yellow that the milk may have lacked. (And added salt as needed.) It's a great description of how rural Americans in the 19th c. made it.

A hilarious rancid butter in hair story: when I was a one-year-old, I almost looked like I was bald because my hair was sparse and very fine. My mother heard that putting butter in the hair would make it grow thicker. We lived in the tidewater Virginia area, and it was in August. The butter went rancid very quickly, and my mother felt terrible about it. I have extremely thick, wavy hair. And I have always been crazy for butter! When I was 30 months old, my mom discovered me in the kitchen eating a stick of butter with big bites. I still am likely to sneak a bite here and there. Make of that what you will...

I remember my mother making butter from our “top cream” in just the way you describe. We salted our butter. As an adult I made gee. I was born 77 years ago when we made our own soap from ashes and fat and of course our own milk,butter, butter milk, cream, soft and hard cheese. Thank you for bringing back this “lost lore”

Such a wonderful episode! We can all relate to butter. 😄 I grew up on a farm and we had a single milk cow (Molly). During early spring when all of the wild green onions would sprout up in the pasture, Molly would just gorge herself on these. She loved them! While this made her happy, it made for terrible milk. It became undrinkable. BUT, it made for wonderfully flavored butter that was excellent on a baked potato or in mashed potatoes. My mother would label it as green onion butter in the fridge lest we accidentally put it on toast with jam. 😄

Growing up on a ranch in western Nebraska, we had a milk cow. As kids, we had to milk her every morning, and sometimes evenings too, depending on how much she was giving, or if she had a calf with her at the time. We made a lot of butter off of the cream from that. It also made the best caramels you will ever taste!

Your empression of Julie Childs is on point. I cant count the number of times my dad and I laughed about her. At the same time she changed the kitchen game for all generations. Im so glad we have her recorded for all time.

I grew up on a small farm, and making butter was an everyday thing for us. Loved seeing this video. Here's a couple of tricks that will save you some trouble: put the cream in just a regular wide-mouth mason jar, or a half gallon jar if you can find one. No paddles or churn. Just shake it like shaking a mixed drink. Not too fast, but not slow either. You want the cream sloshing in it. Then as it starts to thicken/separate, slow down to a back and forth "rolling the cream" motion to gather it. It will collect in a ball as it separates and starts to stick together. Takes about 15 mins. No straining in a cloth or scraping needed. Then dump it, pour out the buttermilk, and wash it by working it with a spatula in cold water, drain it, work out any water in the butter, and work in your salt. Then mold it/press it, and refrigerate. The whole process takes maybe 30 mins. Mmm. Oh, and Max.....the "music for churning" - no. Just, no. 😂. Oh, there is one other thing. You mentioned the sweetness of the butter. There are two kinds of butter, sweet cream and sour cream. Most people are used to commercial butter which is in the middle. You can put your cream in the fridge until it sours, and then make butter, and it will taste a little bit more like what you're accustomed to. Fresh cream butter, or sweet cream butter, is going to be milder and a little more...bland. I personally love both of them, just for different uses.

My mom loves to tell a story about me as a toddler where she found me in the fridge, stick of butter in hand, just munching on it like a candy bar. Nearly 3 decades later, I gotta say... the urge is still there. Loved this video!

If you make butter at home, make sure to have a sip of the buttermilk you pour off. It's really very pleasant and so much better than whatever masquerades as buttermilk that you get from the store. Real buttermilk is also great for pancakes and biscuits.

This reminds me of how we made butter as a kid but what we did was just put the cream (fresh from our cows) straight into a mason jar, about 3/5ths full and seal the lid with a little plastic wrap, and then we just shook it but not in a violent back and forth motion, it was more of like a rowing motion where you'd dip the lid end down and then sort of scoop it up. Anyways you do this for like 15-20 minutes and one hell of an arm workout later you'd have a smooth ball of butter in the jar (depending on how good your motion was, if you just went violently back and forth it would all be little clumps that would have to be strained). We boys used to have contests of who could make butter the fastest and still in a smooth ball. Lots of memories and basically no equipment other than a mason jar and some elbow grease! Thanks for the video, many fond memories.

Two words: Cultured butter. Historically, cream was kept until there was enough to churn. With little refrigeration, the cream would ferment. The better has active cultures in it and a much more complex flavor. Also, the fermentation would help to preserve it.

Nothing beats home made butter.

My dad is from rural ireland. He used to go turf cutting as a kid and sometimes they'd find bog butter. His father actually found a bog body back in the 50s too.

Having made amazing cultured butter a few times at home, I honestly recommend it so much over normal "sweet cream" butter. All you need to do is to make a crème fraîche: just add about 1 part cultured buttermilk or good-quality yogurt to 10-15 parts cream (about 2-3tbsp per pint), shake or stir it until fully combined, and let it sit in a closed container like a mason jar at room temperature for 12-24 hours, until it thickens. After that, just put the crème fraîche in the fridge until cold, and then follow the normal process for making butter. The culturing process gives it such a lovely, subtle flavor that's far superior to sweet-cream butter in my book, and as an added benefit, it also tends to last longer. Not that it's likely to need to.