Homemade butter

I'm new to the butter making world and certainly haven't settled on a 'best method' but I thought I would share my experience so far.

It was about 45 minutes with the whisk.  And I didn't let it get to room temp before starting.  I hadn't seen that recommendation for any of the stand mixer recipes, but it's always suggested for hand churning.  So if I had done that, it probably would have taken less time.  For the paddle though, I let the cream sit for 4 hours before making the butter and it still took 2 hours.  I was determined to see if it would work though, so I let it keep going!

I was planning on trying to make some cheese, so the other day I grabbed a 1/2 gallon of what I thought was whole milk, but I didn't look close enough. Turns out it was heavy cream. So rather than waste it, I figured I'd try to make butter out of it. I had read your post here Marissa, so I was dreading standing over the kitchenaid for 45 minutes, but much to my surprise I had butter in about 5 minutes.

I had left the cream out of the counter to get warm and got side-tracked so it was out at room temp for about 3 hours when I got around to making the butter. Using the whisk attachment I slowly worked up through the speeds to not-quite top speed. Within about 3 minutes I had whipped cream and about the 5 minute mark it collapsed and turned to butter and buttermilk.

I did have a heck of a time getting all the buttermilk out of the butter though. I read somewhere that it's easier to just pour off the buttermilk and add ice water to the mixer and let it mix the buttermilk out of the butter, repeating until the ice water doesn't get cloudy. But the butter kept sticking inside the whisk, and if I turned it up enough to keep it from doing that it made a huge mess. Next time I'll probably try the technique of kneading it in an ice water bath instead of in the mixer.

Also, I'm not sure how you go about getting all the water out of the butter when you're done? I read to try kneading it on a clean towel, but it seems like the butter just melts and I can't get any water out without having the whole thing melt away. So I ended up making a ball out of it and wrapping it in paper towels and then sort of squishing and massaging it to get out what I could. I think there's still a fair amount of water left in it though.

I think I got most of the buttermilk out eventually, but it sure was a pain in the you-know-where. I'm curious about the water in the butter though. I took some of it to grease my skillet to sear some steaks with last night and as it melted it sure seemed like there was an awful lot of water coming out as it melted. Do you find that also?

I will definitely be doing it again, now that I know how easy it is.  Probably try a couple different variations of compound butters.

Marissa--excellent post and I loved the pictures.

When I made butter, I let the cream sit out at room temperature for at least 24 hours to give it some flavor and tang. Then, shaking it in a jar, it took less than an hour. Then we poured off the liquid and added some salt.

I haven't found it to be cost saving but it sure is fun. Thank you for your excellent post w/pictures. ~Feather