Butter

No, I'm not about to get out my butter churner. I've read you can make it by shaking, using an electric mixer, or even the food processor.

The store brand: Land O' Lakes Unsalted Butter

My Recipe (adapted from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/homemade-butter-recipe/index.html):

1 pint heavy cream, very cold

Pinch salt, optional

- Refrigerate the bowl/beaters/jar or whatever you are going to use ahead of time to get everything very cold.  The food network recipe says to shake the cream in a jar for 15 to 30 minutes, but I just put it in my food processor.



This whole process took about 8 minutes.



 - Pour into a strainer set over a bowl. The chunks in the strainer are butter, and the liquid in the bowl is buttermilk.

- Pour the buttermilk into a clean container, cover, refrigerate, and reserve for another use.

- Turn the butter into a clean bowl and cover with very cold water. Pour into a strainer, discarding the liquid. Continue rinsing the butter with very cold water until the water runs clear. (The cloudy water is buttermilk which will make the butter turn sour.)

- When the butter is clean, work with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to press out any remaining liquid. Discard this liquid. If desired, add salt to the butter. (Salted butter will keep longer.)

- Transfer the butter to a clean container for keeping and refrigerate until ready to use.

So that's it - you've got butter!  It tasted unremarkably like butter - for some reason I thought it would taste like magically delicious butter, but no, just butter.  It was a really neat thing to see though, I'd recommend everyone tries to make butter.



The cost?  You aren't going to save money making your own butter.  But I didn't account for the cup or so of buttermilk you will also get during the butter making process, so that's a bonus for your pancakes or bisquits or whatever.  That buttermilk is not the cultured kind you would get from the store, and I haven't used mine yet, so I'm not sure what I'll do with it. 

I usually just buy our store brand butter, which costs about a dollar less than Land O' Lakes, so store bought definitely wins the price category.

	Amount	Cost	Cost/pound
Land O' Lakes Unsalted Butter	1 lb	$     4.49	$          4.49
Homemade	3/4 lb	$     5.00	$          6.67

So overall, you get a butter that tastes a lot like the store bought version, that takes a little bit of work, but costs more...

Bake or Buy?  BUY!