Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Cultured Butter

Oh, yes.  I was reading something somewhere about my "French Breakfast"  radishes.  I understand that they are commonly served for breakfast (no real surprise) with butter (woah) on them...  i think i twitched when i read butter.  I usually have mine with salt.  Butter and fresh radishes never occurred to me as a logical combination, i'm still not sure. But since i live on a carbohydrate-controlled eating plan,  butter is my friend not my enemy.
So i did some research.  It seems that it is true, and its not usually just butter, (though that is acceptable) it is made into a sort of open faced sandwich. Bread is buttered and then thin slices of radish are placed on top to be enjoyed. Well i won't bother with the bread so i'm still intrigued and making  a mental note.  I figured there must be something particular about the butter because even though i want to like the idea, something is simply not clicking.

The key may be that the butter commonly used is not the butter we in the US are used to. Cultured butter seems is supposedly what is used and over here its unusual, over there it is apparently the commonest type.

So, up for a search for how to make this at home. It can't be that hard...

And it really isnt:


Full fat yogurt and heavy cream are all that is needed. Maybe some salt.

I have all that!


One quart of heavy cream mixed with 1/3 cup of full fat yogurt...



Mine is  frozen in cubes because whole, plain yogurt only comes in big containers and i only use it to make more yogurt.
Use a very clean container.  I'll be using the Pyrex measuring cup that i measured the quart of cream into.


Mix the milk and yogurt well (after it thaws), but don't beat it in.

Cover and let it sit someplace warm for about 24 hours.
I decided, since it was cool last night, to use my yogurt incubator. I understand anything over 70-75 degrees F is good enough.


It should look thicker the next day, like yogurt does after incubation...
Cut the thick top with a whisk and stir to make sure it is all smooth


Now its time to make butter. Well, not quite. I decided to chill the culture because butter gets really soft at warm weather room temperature and i have "churned" butter before. It goes easier if everything is at least chilled.
I didn't take a picture of that part. ;o)
So, on to the churning. 
Since i saved a large pickle jar for this, i can shake it and roll it.  It takes a while, but if you pawn part of the task off on your kids it will go faster. (You could use a blender set on low speed i guess, but what would be the fun in that?)

And, shake, roll, slosh until it starts to grain...once that happens things go faster and you might not even notice the grainy stage. I tried to get a picture, but i can't really see that the camera caught it.

The butter will happen suddenly. Its almost like a magic trick,  give it a few more shakes to compact the clump of butter.

Strain the buttermilk out and save that for other yummy uses. (hmmm, pancakes, biscuits...a soak for pieces of chicken destined to be battered and fried)
My hands were too buttery to photo this part...

Rinse your butter with very cold water until all the buttermilk is out- or the buttermilk will spoil and make the butter taste rancid.

Taste it and salt lightly if you like.

Cultured butter and buttermilk.... Now those radishes need to grow!!!

Since its another cool day, i'm going to be making beef jerky with ground beef.  I use ground beef because it is so much cheaper than any steak i can get, even chuck and london broil are ridiculously expensive.
But that isn't really an exciting or unusual enough activity to blog about. But that is the activity of the day.
I'm too achy to plant corn like i wanted to.

2 comments:

Faith said...

Cultured butter. I'm wondering if that is also pretty much what our ancestors did when they let the milk and cream sit for a week before making butter out of it? Basically in both cases you are allowing natural beneficial dairy bacteria grow before churning.

You sure whipped that up quick!

~Faith

icebear said...

Probably is. I imagine more foods back then were more along the lines of probiotic by necessity.
If it could possibly be left 'till later, it was.

It was easy to make, i like these type of *put it together and leave it* activities.

I really want to learn how to make Skyr next. That stuff looks so yummy.