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comrade1234 · 3 days ago
This is really funny. My wife and I watched all of New Scandinavian Cooking over a few months and there was an episode where he made butter. It blew our minds at how simple it was. We had no idea!

So we bought a couple of liters of cream (35% fat), put it in the stand mixer and made butter. There's a Serious Eats page about it.

The butter we made was better than what we normally buy. We live in Switzerland so the normal grocery store butter is very good. Our butter had less water in it (you can tell in a frying pan) and more flavor. Plus we take the resulting buttermilk and make ricotta cheese and then we take the leftover whey and make Norwegian cheese (more like fudge). So we get three products from one batch of cream. The butter comes out to be about 20 cents cheaper per 250g than store bought and then the ricotta and "fudge" are free, so financially you come out ahead. The cleanup is a bit of a pain though.

We've also made cultured butter from crème fraiche. It's tasty but even when the crème fraiche is on sale it's still like 2x the cost of using cream so probably not worth it other than gifts and special occasions. We made mandarin sorbet with the sour buttermilk after the crème fraiche butter and that was excellent.

When I tell old Swiss people (people in their 70s/80s) that we make butter they think it's hilarious. They tell me about how when they were kids their parents made their own butter and also at parties/gatherings the parents would give the kids a jar of cream and it was their job to shake it and pass it around until it was butter.

If you have an hour on the weekend and if you have a stand mixer I suggest just trying it. Start with the balloon whisk and when the peaks start forming switch to the paddle watch it because when the butter forms it happens quick and you get a big clump of butter rattling around in the mixer knocking it off balance. It takes maybe 25 minutes and then you have to wash it in ice water, mold it, then clean up. About an hour.

darreninthenet · 3 days ago
My wife and I have occasionally made our own butter for years now... one thing people always forget to mention is that it goes bad really quickly. The trick is either to cut it up into chunks and freeze most of it and the remainder you keep in the fridge/defrost later will last about 3 days. Or you can add salt after you've done the separation but this does of course mean you now have salted butter... this will last up to two weeks usually.
clickety_clack · 3 days ago
Do you mold it with your hands under running water to wash away the remaining fluids? Doing that and salting it makes it last for many weeks for me. I don’t even know how long it actually lasts, I’ve always eaten it all before it’s gone bad. Making butter is a way of preserving milk, so it should last more than a couple of weeks.
Wowfunhappy · 3 days ago
Why does the homemade butter spoil so quickly?
MisterTea · 3 days ago
In preschool our teacher brought in a jar of cream that was passed around and everyone took turns shaking it. Then we had buttered bread. I believe this was done for thanksgiving.
carabiner · 3 days ago
Ok we did this in elementary school. They gave us crackers and let us spread the butter we made on it and we ate them. I still have no idea as to the purpose of this exercise.
gus_massa · 3 days ago
> It blew our minds at how simple it was.

It's a problem when you are making whipped cream. You start as usual and decide to keep whipping just a little more, then suddenly your whipped cream get's transformed into butter.

EdwardDiego · 3 days ago
Roughly how much butter do you get from a certain amount of cream?

Our butter prices in NZ are ridiculous right now (as our domestic prices are driven by export prices), so I'm wondering if making it from cream would be slightly more cost effective ( assuming my time has no value lol).

comrade1234 · 3 days ago
If it's 35% fat in the cream then 350g per liter, theoretically. There's usually a few grams left in the buttermilk after so maybe 300g. Which is fine because the ricotta is better with some fat in it.
themafia · 3 days ago
We get non-homogenized milk. You get a nice fat layer of super heavy cream on the top of the bottle. It's ideal for tons of things. I mix it directly into my oatmeal and my mashed potatoes.
Induane · 3 days ago
Buy some goats.
lanfeust6 · 3 days ago
I've read (but have not tried) that it's possible to ferment cream with kefir grains, or yogurt, and use the resulting ferment to make cultured butter. There are creme fraiche recipes that are just cream and buttermilk also. For clarity: by buttermilk, I mean the fermented stuff that is found in stores, not just the leftover liquid from churning unfermented cream.
comrade1234 · 3 days ago
I've fermented milk with yogurt and crème fraiche but this was for something else - a type of cheese. If you're making butter you have to look at the fat content. Butter is milk fat. So you can directly calculate how much butter you can get from the starting product based on the fat %.
joshu · 3 days ago
i've made cultured butter. you want to use the correct strain. i buy a buttermilk culture specifically
KempyKolibri · 3 days ago
“So, are you exercising much?”

“Oh yes doc, I get out for a run most days of the week.”

“Wonderful news, got to look after your heart.”

“Yeah, and with my new butter churning bags, not only do I get to stay fit, but I also consume ungodly amounts of butter!”

“Sorry what”

taejavu · 3 days ago
Eating butter is good for your heart. As long as your triglycerides and HDL (AKA "good cholesterol") are low, elevated LDL (AKA "bad cholesterol") is associated with lower all-cause mortality.
KempyKolibri · 3 days ago
Maybe in some cross sectional or cohort studies with poor adjustment models we might see such a signal? Several states of poor health drive LDL down because of those diseases (e.g. having cancer can result in lower LDL, having a heart attack can massively lower LDL), so if we look at study designs that don’t take this into consideration, it can appear that high LDL is protective because of reverse causation.

However, I’m not aware of any evidence that takes this into account showing higher LDL associated with lower ACM. What’s your evidence for such a claim?

fwipsy · 3 days ago
I think you got that mixed up.
teach · 3 days ago
This is amazing but even as a runner who loves to make my own "processed" food this really reads like a submarine article for the dairy industry.

"I used to be vegan, but you know I just can't liveeeeeeee without that real butter!!!!!!!"

wilg · 3 days ago
The idea of butter being good doesn't strictly seem like it demands a conspiracy theory.
ssgodderidge · 3 days ago
The implication is that the lack of good butter made someone abandon veganism … while possible, it seems unlikely?
tonyedgecombe · 3 days ago
Butter is high in saturated fats which are bad for you. It is also very calorie dense. Eating a lot of calorie dense foods makes it difficult to control your weight.

It's probably better than margarine but I wouldn't describe it as a health food.

ok_dad · 3 days ago
Some people call themselves vegans but will still use animal products that they feel are ethical. Also, some vegans do occasionally use animal products just because they want to.

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy but it’s weird that the vegan topic even came up in this article because it is immaterial to the main topic.

SunshineTheCat · 3 days ago
I think about 90% of the time veganism has come up in conversations I've been a part of, it's been unrelated to the main topic being discussed.
lbeckman314 · 3 days ago
Good competition for Fatih Karakaya (@runners_pie)!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DCuSImnocL7 (November 23, 2024)

> Fatih is a master pastry chef and marathon runner, and he baked a Sachertorte during his marathon at the Ring Running Series at the Hockenheimring.

> Fatih ist Konditormeister und Marathonläufer und hat während seines Marathons bei den Ring Running Series am Hockenheimring eine Sachertorte gebacken.

bitwize · 3 days ago
Of course she's from Oregon. This is close to the most Oregon activity imaginable.
SunshineTheCat · 3 days ago
You know, I don't mean this to be rude in any way, but what kept going through my mind as I read this was "I wonder if they drive a Subaru Outback."

And then I clicked the Instagram link and I'm almost positive that is a hunter green Subaru Outback.

madaxe_again · 3 days ago
This is probably how butter was invented in the first place - some herdsman in the Neolithic who ran somewhere with a skin full of milk, and went “hey this ain’t bad” at the resulting product.
whycome · 3 days ago
Also yogourt. And cheese. And alcohol.

Are there other cool things to discover?

benj111 · 2 days ago
"Jacob Arnold, 30, a sterile processing tech"

Is his ability to bear children important to the story?

AlexErrant · 3 days ago
Heh, I roll my natural peanut butter jar on my treadmill to mix it (when the pace is slow.)