Culture Club!

Cultured butter cooling in the fridge.

Yay! I now have two large ramiken of Butter++^† chilling in the fridge.

Here’s how I made it:

1) Put a pint of heavy cream in a clean container.
2) Stir in a large spoonful of fresh, plain yogurt.
3) Cover and let it sit at room temperature for ~24 hours.
4) Put the cultured cream in a water-tight container and shake the container until solid butter forms.
5) Pour the butter / buttermilk mixture into a bowl and work with a spoon until as much buttermilk runs out as possible. Pour the buttermilk off and save it for pancakes.
6) Fill a large bowl with a mixture of ice and water.
7) Spoon the butter into the bowl in clumps.
8) Break the chilling butter into smaller clumps with your fingers.
9) Stir the butter around to wash it.
10) Form golf ball sized clumps of the cold butter with your hands, ring it out, then put it back in the water. Repeat until all the small clumps are in larger clumps and generally rung out.
11) Take a larger clump out of the ice water, shake it off, then squeeze it a few times to remove any remaining water.
12) Pack the cold butter into a ramiken.
13) Invert the ramiken on a pad of paper towel on a place and place in the fridge.
14) As the butter is chilling, occasionally press on the butter to squeeze out more water / buttermilk. Change paper towel if necessary.
15) After the butter has chilled, cover tightly and use lovingly.

I have no idea how long this keeps for, but I figure that it’ll last for about two weeks if tightly covered. If you salt the butter (after step 5) it’ll keep for a bit longer.

Any flavoring (herbs, honey and cinnamon, etc) can be stirred in after step 11. Oh, and Danielle first told me how to culture butter, and since I love making butter I thought I’d give it a go. I also read that washing butter is common in commercial production, so I tried that as well.

^† Cultured butter.