Making butter is actually very easy. All you need is whipped cream, a clean jar, and a little patience. Homemade butter usually tastes better than store-bought butter. It is therefore very nice to try it out. You can then spread your own butter on your bread, but you can also bake with it. To bake hot with butter you can clear the butter yourself.
To make regular butter, use a clean jar, fill it for a quarter with fresh whipped cream. It is best to take a jar with a screw lid. The pot must in any case be properly closable. Proceed as follows:
- Start shaking the jar. You will then hear the cream sloshing. If you no longer hear a sloshing sound, the cream has turned into whipped cream.
- If you no longer hear anything sloshing in the jar, the cream has become whipped cream. now continue to shake, until the whipped cream starts making sloshing noises again. This means that you have shaken until the cream has separated from the moisture. The moisture is buttermilk. This has to be poured off
- Place a sieve on a cup and pour the liquid and butter into the sieve. The butter remains, the buttermilk sinks into the cup
- Even though it looks like butter now, the butter isn’t quite ready yet. This must first be washed to rinse out the buttermilk residue
Wash butter
- To wash the butter, transfer the drained butter from the strainer to a clean bowl
- Then you pour a splash of water on the butter. Push the water through the butter with the back of a clean ladle. This makes the water cloudy. You drain this. Then you add clean water to the butter again. This should always be just a splash of water. Push this again with a clean spoon through the butter. When the water becomes cloudy again, drain it again. Repeat this procedure until the water is no longer cloudy. Drain that water too
- Your homemade butter is now ready for use
What can you do with homemade butter?
Cream butter is a popular product. You can of course spread it on your bread, but you can also roast meat in it and make a nice gravy. Butter is also suitable as an ingredient for many products that you bake in the oven, such as cake and cookies for example. You can also make herb butter from your fresh cream butter.
How can you make salted butter?
Salting butter is not difficult. Dissolve salt (to taste) in a tablespoon of warm water. Let the water cool until it is lukewarm and then toss it over the butter with the dissolved salt. Mix it through the butter (kept at room temperature) with a mixer or manually with a fork. Then put it in the refrigerator
Herb butter ingredients
To make herb butter from your homemade butter, you need the following ingredients:
- homemade butter
- juice of half a lemon
- some garlic cloves
- a few sprigs of parsley (regular parsley is fine, curly parsley is also possible but requires more cutting)
- some fresh chives
- salt and pepper or Aromat
- possibly a tablespoon of mayonnaise
Make herb butter
It is best when the butter is at room temperature. Place the butter on a clean plate or bowl and squeeze the garlic cloves on top with a garlic press. You can also cut the garlic very finely with a sharp knife. You need to peel the garlic first, then squeeze or cut it into small pieces.
- wash parsley and cut into small pieces
- wash the chives and cut into shreds
- add the spices to the butter
- add 1 tablespoon lemon juice to the butter (the lemon juice may also come from a bottle)
- Add salt and pepper to taste. It may also be Aromat and pepper
- you can choose a mixer to mix the herbs through the butter, but a fork is also fine. Also very tasty: add a tablespoon of mayonnaise to the herb butter. This makes the butter more spreadable and the taste goes well with herb butter
Clearing butter
Butter is known for being good for baking, but butter also burns quickly in the pan. To prevent butter burning, you can clear butter. Clarifying butter is therefore a method to process butter in such a way that you can bake it hot without burning the butter. How can you clear butter yourself?
- To clear butter you need a pan of water with a smaller pan in it. You melt the butter Aux bain-marie, so that the water in the bottom pan boils
- The melted butter in the top pan turns a dark yellow color. On the surface you can see small white particles floating carefully and scoop them out with a slotted spoon
- When the butter is clear and completely melted, you can use this melted clarified butter for hot frying. The creamy taste of butter is then not lost
