Homedoings: Making Butter

In our house, we eat butter.

Lots of butter. 

We also use coconut oil and olive oil, but definitely butter.  I began buying Kerrygold butter at our local Kroger a few months ago, and while it is more spendy than the store brand butter, it is visibly different in color and texture, and is from the cream of grass-fed cows.  I like that.  The flavor is fantastic as well!

I have wanted to make butter since we started participating in a herd share program for raw milk 6 years ago, but was very spotty in actually doing it.  It takes time and some bit of practice and patience to get it done, in my experience. 

A couple months ago, I became resolved to make butter consistently from our milk, and it’s really coming along!   I know that there are many tutorials out there for making butter, but I got into a FB conversation with another butter lover and decided I would share my way here.  Maybe you do it, too and have some tips for me – or maybe I do something that can help you!  The pictures aren’t the best and I took more in better light during another session, but they are still on my phone I also have a couple little videos for you to see what it looks like.  Are you visual like me?   I’ll get those up soon and update you folks on that.

We get 3 gallons a week from our herd share at Sweet Land Farm in the Floyd area.  From these 3 gallons, I pull about 4 cups/1 quart of cream.  I am not usually doing it all at one time, or as soon as we get home.  Usually I am doing a rush job before someone starts pouring themselves a glass of milk!  We use this butter in cooking and for spreading on bread.  My brother-in-law and his wife got us a butter bell a while back, and that keeps the butter soft for spreading.  mmmmm….

So here is the {with eager hands } way to make butter :

1.Let the milk jugs sit still for a good while in the fridge, to make sure the milk and cream separate.  Even a few hours after you put them in the fridge is ok.  You can see the separation.  The creamy top is the cream, and the milk is almost blue-tinted.  It’s super faint, but it’s not as starch white as commercial milk. 

2. Gather your tools for getting your cream: Batter Bowl (or other bowl with a lid, and a  baster

3.  Catch your cream, then put your cream in the fridge until you have time to make butter.

HOW TO CATCH YOUR CREAMI started getting the cream out with a small ladle, but have found this baster to be so much faster.  That being said, it’s a cheap Vile-Mart baster, and now that I am dedicated to doing this weekly, I want to get a higher-quality (read: not plastic) tool.  This is STRICTLY for the cream-catching and washed IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the catching.  Otherwise, the process is a pain in my elbow, ya’ll. 

I get my bowl right up against my milk jug and a clean surface to lay the baster while I switch from one jug to the next.  Then, basically, I slowly suck the cream out of the jug.  Below is sort of how I do it, because you have to be careful not to suck the milk out with it. 

I squish the basting bubble at the top (what is that called, anyway?) BEFORE putting it in the milk.  Very important, folks.  I put the tip of baster in the milk, only a smidgen!  I then slowly let it open up in my hand, while moving my hand to guide it around the edge of the jug. 

In the beginning it’s not a big deal if you just stick the end in the middle and suck, but you’re likely to get the milk, so I just always run it around the edge.  This way, you can see the tip of the baster and also see if you are messing up the cream-milk line.  If you see that line skew, you know you’ve hit the milk.  I take my time here, letting my OCD fly.  I try to suck as much cream out as possible (more butter!!) and not any milk. 

As you can see below, I left a bit.  Since this picture, I have done several more batches and can a bit more out.  But, still, that’s a lot, considering it went to the very top.

In the picture below, the left milk jug has been creamed and shaken – just because I like to – and the right jug is one not yet creamed. 

4. When you are ready to make butter (or some time in the next few hours) get it out and give it some time on the counter (covered so nothing falls or flies in there) to warm up a bit.  If it’s fridge-cold, then you have to run the machine longer to make it separate.  Gather the rest of your tools during this time: food processor, a couple quart Mason jars and lids, fine mesh sieve, canning funnel, small bowl, Pampered Chef Small Mix ‘N Scraper (it needs to be this one. It is awesome.)

5. Pour it into the food processor bowl (unless that’s where you put the cream to begin with) and let ‘er rip!  I do it on “1”. 

In the above picture, I haven’t gotten started, and it just looks like cream.  When I ramp it up, it will ride up the sides….like cream would do, lol!  You have to let it run for a few minutes, but exactly how long depends on the temperature of your cream, the machine and the way you hold your head (just joking about that last one.)
After a while, you will see the contents beginning to behave differently in there whilst spinning.  It begins to clump a little and slide down the sides, like this:
And when you open up to see if you have butter, you might see this:
It’s not butter yet, but you can see that it is beginning to come!  Church, butter churn!  Close it up, turn ‘er back on, and let it go some more!  At some point, maybe 2 more minutes (give or take), will change more…..

Do you see the separation?  The butter is in the back, clumped up, and there is white milk at the bottom. 
BUTTER!

6. After you see the butter, stop the machine and pour the “buttered milk” (as I say) into one of the mason jars outfitted with the blue canning funnel with a fine mesh sieve on top.  That sieve catches any clumps of butter that might fall out.  Label this and fridge it up.  You can use this instead of regular milk in any recipe you have – or even drink it! It is a little sweet and has a buttery taste.  Laura Ingalls liked it!

7.  We don’t have an ice maker, so I just pour cold water (I have started pouring a good 1/2 cup or more in there) into the bowl and then run the machine for a minute or 3.  (Can you see the water at the top, all cloudy, and the butter on the bottom, slammed against the side of the bowl?)This cold water and the agitation will draw more of the milk from the butter.  I then move the funnel and and sieve to the second mason jar and save this watery-buttered milk and the next round and label it so.  Again, you can use it in place of regular milk.  I was dumping this all, and just felt so bad about that – there is STILL milk in there, you know!
8.  I will drain the butter of the water-with-less-and-less-milk, refill with more clean cold water and run the processor until the water is clear.  I do this routine several times.  It won’t be perfectly clear, veeeeery nearly so.  At that point,  I take my butter out of the food processor bowl and put it in a small bowl.  I squoosh the butter with the back of the scraper and it makes more water come out.  Pretty soon after starting, I will add about 1 teaspoon salt (we use RealSalt brand) for flavor and a smidge of preservation.  Then I squoosh more, pouring out the water now and again.  This is where my patience is tried, to be honest.  It’s not hard, but it’s teaching me to slow down……much like kneading bread. 
9.  After I squoosh until I am not seeing water come out, or only a drop or so, I will put it in a small bowl, like one of those Pampered Chef Prep Bowls that hold 1 cup of something up to the top (and it has a lid, yaya!)  I have found that squooshing in the bowl brings more water out. We go through the butter in a week’s time, but in the past, I wasn’t getting al the milk out and it was souring a bit.  From raw milk, cultured butter is very healthy, but none of us like it here, so I like to keep it sweet cream   Baby steps, right?  I am getting better and as I find myself being consistent in this, I hope to use the spring butter and early fall butter to save for the winter months.  Did you know that the grass grown in those times is even better than the rest of the growing season?  The milk, then, has even higher vitamin counts!  Next year, then!

I’d love to hear your tips for making butter!

Linking up: 

 

Homedoings: Make-Ahead Hash Browns

I love potatoes, it’s no secret and I think that the rest of the family will agree – spuds are spectacular! 

I bought a couple 10# bags at our local produce market, because I want to make my own hash browns!

Have you ever done this? My husband will fry potatoes sometimes, but it is a bit laborious.  I was in my final months of this pregnancy when I saw a recipe on Pinterest for a breakfast casserole that had hash browns as the base.  I thought it looked good, but something about buying frozen shredded potatoes felt wrong.

It didn’t take long for this idea to come across my scree:

http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/make-your-own-frozen-hashbrowns 

This gal makes her own hash browns, then freezes them for later!  It may seem obvious to peel and shred potatoes to freeze for later use, but then you get funky-colored spuds.  Bleh.

Have you clicked on the link yet?  She discovered that if you bake the potatoes first, they don’t get funky!

I scrubbed the taters down, poked them with a fork, and baked them at 350 degrees for about1.5 hours or a little more.  I let them cool in their skins until I had time and two hands to deal with them. 

When I had time and hands, I peeled the spuds and started to shred them (or do you call it grating?)  with my food processor.  It seemed to turn some of them into mashed potatoes, so I stopped and flipped my disc over to the slicing side and went on from there.  That was a little better, but I need to work on it.

I froze two bags of taters and then used the last portion in our supper. Horrible picture, I know, and even worse tater-packing!  Hey – I was doing it with a wiggly 6-month old in arms, and 4 children squabbling over ice cream in the background.  I was in “git ‘er done” mode!

I threw some Kerrygold butter in the big-daddy cast iron skillet and fried them! yummmmmm…. butter and potatoes!

Next time I will try to cook the potatoes a little less, so they are more firm.  I will also batch cook the meal’s potatoes so that they get crispier faster.  I look forward to pulling out the potatoes for a breakfast addition, or another beans-and-fried-taters meal.  Yum!

We had black-eyed peas, fried taters, and carrots & cukes, washed down with good milk!  This was all that was left!

Have you tried this technique?  What have you found works for spuds?

Dear Blog,

Dear blog,

I haven’t forgotten you, I promise.  I think of you often, of all the things I want to share.  I find myself throughout the day composing lovely posts in my mind on a recipe, a funny thing one of the children said, a series of photos taken, neat lessons done during school, or a Bible verse that spoke to me.  The thing is, by the time I get to the laptop to tell you these things, I am exhausted.  And I have mostly forgotten what I was going to tell you. It’s more than postpartum exhaustion that has kept me from visiting, though.

I’ve thought a lot about our future together, you and I, and had to come to grips with our relationship, and our future.    ~~   I have always been a people-pleaser, needing the praise of others to make me feel better.  Have you ever felt like that?  It’s been a long time in saying so, but you and I both know that’s all-out sin.  I don’t struggle with that as much as I used to, but having you, blog of mine, has made me realize that the struggle is far from over.

You see, wee blog, when I post, I love to get comments and private emails about what I have written!  It feels so good!  I have even been nominated for things, and asked to guest post here and there.  Isn’t that cool?! Let me answer that for you.  Yes, it IS cool, but the problem with that is what is going on in my head and heart. 

Can I be honest with you? I like writing here, I truly do! There is great value in it, but I tend to share what looks good to others – tiny snippets of a life that, for our readers, might give a skewed impression of who I am, and who my family is. Does that make sense, bloggy blog of mine? I sometimes write to please other people. My intentions for blogging aren’t always pure.   I don’t want to blog about the dirty, the ugly, the trivial, the loud, the mundane, the sin.  I want to show the pretty, the tasty, the creative, the what-I-want-to-be – so few of the harder posts ever see the light of day. 

And so I have been silent.

I have spent a great deal of time with my God, questioning why I started with your big sister, Adventures in Living & Learning and what my intentions are for you. I love blogs, but the truth of the matter is that these other blogs that I read and love are part of what is causing me such strife in my life right now. Don’t worry blog, I won’t worry you with that mess.   In this period of blog silence, I have come to grips with WHY I blog, and for WHOM.

**I blog to journal what we as a family do – a family of 7 on an acre in rural Virginia – in our home, with our faith, alongside one another. 

**I blog to share our lives with family, all of whom live far away from us.  I stink at calling people, bloggity blog (as my mother will attest.  Ahem.), so this is a great way to get things to them.  An online photo album, if you will.

**I blog to process some feelings and thoughts, and to reach out to others who may be experiencing the same things and can help, or be helped.

Blog, these months of silence have also shown me that it is of greatest importance that I build relationships *in real life* before I do so online.   Those who read this blog are awesome, but I have to remember that real people I see (or need to see – Amanda!!) have got to take priority!    ~~   Does this all make sense, blog?  What I’m saying is, the silence was necessary to get my intentions right and my agenda pure.  What I’m saying is, it’s not you, it’s me. 

I may post many things here, or I may post only once in a great while.  Before I hit “publish” I have made the commitment to check my intentions at the door, and make sure that I share is God-honoring and honest.  I know that when I read blogs, I want to read about their “real,” not just the pretty or the staged-for-pictures.  I do this now and again, but mostly, I keep it light.  This is all good, but I have to make sure I am not panting a particular picture that isn’t true to form.  

I just want to share our lives, chronicle what I can, in a way that is respectful to my family, honoring to God, and that is good and true.  That might look different for different posts, which may come fast or slow.

So here is to a fresh start, a Real beginning!