How to Make Butter

Most folks think making butter is a time-consuming chore requiring a lot of muscle.

Well, it used to be. It still is if you use the pounding in a butter churn method, or the shake it in a mason jar method.

However, I'm lazy. I prefer this method - I'm all about making the appliances do the work.

This usually takes me 20 minutes to make, from the time I start pulling ingredients out to the time I put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Don't let the number of steps fool you - most of that time is spent waiting, not working.

Cost: $5 for a quart of cream, of which we used half (one pint), so the portion used here was $2.50, which made about 8 ounces of butter.

Step 1: Gather Ingredients & Equipment

Heavy whipping cream - this says minimum 36% milk fat on the label
If you buy a pint of cream, expect to make about a cup of butter.

Salt, optional

Blender

Measuring cup, optional

Not shown:

Spatula / scraper for blender

Plate

Small container to store butter

Comments

[falvarez7]

Agree with the comment about high powered blenders. In five minutes on hogh, my Vitamix had the raw cultured cream I started with heated up to 155F. Guess it's dead now! Cooling it down and the fridge to practice with anyway. Maybe a lower setting?

[Subconscionaut]

for the absolutely have-to-have yellow butterers anatto is a naturally occurring color additive . yellow, just not yellow #5.(it's actually an orange color, but diluted it's a yellow. )

[CyberBill]

Just made some tonight. My girlfriend wants to marry me now. THANKS!

[kreuzberg]

I just tried this with my blender. I had it set on food processing speed. I got to the point where I had made whipped cream and kept going...it got grainy, but then it turned into really thin liquid with no solids at all. Did I do it too long? I started out with "whipping cream" (not heavy whipping cream, if that matters). I plan to try it again tonight or tomorrow.

[bagladyish1970]

Herbed and/or garlic butter should be just as easy to make me thinks

[col1999]

Very cool! Thank you for sharing this!

[pyroelfears]

why did you dump the buttermilk!!!!!!!!You threw the best part(besides the butter)!! you could have used the buttermilk in buttermilk pancakes, my favorite.

[ixovaldes]

This was the coolest thing! I needed unsalted butter for a cake mix. I only had salted butter, but my wife always keeps heavy whipping cream.......Bammmm! 10-11 mins later it was Butter. I would suggest you drain it as best you can. switch to a small tuperware and start squeezing with a large spoon and the liquid will ooze out and then keep draining.

[Texas Nana]

My Mom use to make butter with my kids (now 27 & 30) when they were little They used a mixer.One Christmas my son wanted to make it green, so my Mom added green food coloring. They made butter lots of other times , too but my kids, Dad and brother still talk about the green butter when we get together. My Dad always says "if you're making butter don't add food coloring! " My Mom's gone now. It's a good memory for all of us. : ) Here's making some butter and memories with the little one in your life.

[nerdmom920]

Delicious!!!!!

[shooby]

Wait, you drain the buttermilk. So tasty! If you like sweet tasting milk, drink the buttermilk, it's the best.

[Derin]

everyone gets the point! in a good way

[rsrwright]

I think you should mention that liquid that you drain off is buttermilk. I save mine for pancakes. Fresh butter is the best, thanks for the how to.

[Derin]

buttermilk is delicious

[Thoth]

Though this buttermilk (aka taditional buttermilk) is more akin to whey than buttermilk you buy from the market which is a cultured milk product similar to yogurt.

[darrylfraser1961]

If you continue to run the mix in the blender it will turn yellow. The butter needs to be rinses to remove the buttermilk, otherwise it can turn rancid Good instructible

[Derin]

when i drank homemade buttermilk it had small butter particles in it

[Derin]

The liquid you drain is awesome to drink just salt it its a waste draining it when you can drink it

[Derin]

the liquid is called buttermilk if its made this way(by churning) there are churning machines out there for this purpose the other way to make the liquid(no english term for it) is mixing with yogurt and shaking well

[wasabi32746]

I use to have the same exact blender. Never thought I would see one again.

[Dandy in the Ghetto]

That's what i was thinking!

[I_am_Canadian]

Looks like whipping cream...

[wilsonzone]

I made this last Friday using a food processor since we don't have a blender. It took a while (about 15 minutes, but watching it makes time drag) and I was starting to doubt it would work, but all of a sudden everything thickened up and I had butter. We try to stay away from salt so this is perfect for us. Only problem we had is keeping it in the fridge makes it too hard to work with. We take it out of the fridge an hour before we need it and it's perfect. My wife loved it and said I will be making butter from now on instead of her buying it. Great, now I have another chore to do around the house. ;-P

[mozelda]

how long will it stay fresh in the fridge

[Jesus Christ]

oh my dad that was delicious!

[SillyWillyGilly]

Butter butter I like butter Better butter I like even better But beating better butter is best in a butter blender

[monsterousible]

Um, U R silly! LOL! good comment to break the monotony and wake my mind up a bit. heehee

[feeshy]

Having a go at the minute, trouble is the blender is getting pretty hot and it doesn't seem to want to start solidifying. I've put it in the fridge to cool it down for now, hopefully it will work afterwards.

[SFHandyman]

Don't cool it down, warm it up. For fastest breakdown it should be about 60 to 65 degrees.

[yankeedudle]

Neat! Can I use lowfat milk instead of cream?

[klynslis]

Butter is just the coagulation of the fat in the cream, so no, it wouldn't work. You would just have milk.

[SFHandyman]

About a year ago on a cooking site somewhere, there was a post that went something like this "I love this, I can't wait to make butter. I'm going to use Soy Milk". All questions are good though! It was a good question yankeedudle. Soy Milk was just funny to me.

[GiveGreenBagsDotCom]

I tried this and it was so easy! I'm glad i found this instructable.Thank you.

[Cake4UsAll]

What a great idea. This will be very useful to me.

[BaileyBoo2]

Yum! it worked.

[AidanG]

I always use hand mixers, the kind you usually use to mix batters or make whipped cream. Just keep whipping the cream, and eventually it will "break", and voila, butter! Then you just put the beaters in the dishwasher, and you're done - even easier to clean than using the blender.... Good instructible! I hadn't thought of using a blender.

[stasterisk]

AWESOME!!! Thanks! I used heavy whipping cream and a normal blender, and it took about three minutes. The butter is delicous. I ate some superb fried eggs and ham made in my new homemade butter.

[inquisitive]

MMmmmm...Butta! That is great to know if I run out too. I try to have heavy whipping cream on hand for lots of calorie killing delectables, so thanks!

[Patrik]

Quick note of caution - most blenders aren't made to run continuously for 15 minutes straight. So make sure to keep any eye on the temperature of your blender motor along the way! Of course, there are also some high-powered blenders (Vitamix etc) that run at a high enough speed that whatever you're blending will heat up significantly due to friction (kinda cool - you can make hot soup, starting from cold veggies). I would guess that would be detrimental to butter making, but you'd probably know if you have one of these blenders...

[EbolThrax]

I would have never thought that making butter was this simple... I can't wait to put this on some popcorn.