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Back to: Don't be afraid to try this at home"
Okay, so a somewhat insouciant title for this item but here's what I mean:
There is a very very simple way to make your own butter, which saves a bit of money (I guesstimate about 40%) and winds you up with a very pleasant, fresh-tasting, easily spreadable butter.
It also saves a little on the wear and tear on the planet (as do all the ideas I'll be featuring in this section) in so far as making your own obviates the need for shipping the ingredients to a factory, storing then processing them in whatever machinery is needed, storing the finished product, packaging (including the making of the packaging and the making of ink and machinery for the printing of the labelling etc etc) delivering the packaged butter to a store nd so forth. In fact it even, if you wish, cuts out the need for any machinery at all as you'll see below. And it is very very simple, as follows.
To make your own butter:
Take one 600ml tub of double cream. Use organic if you prefer although, whilst optimum, this makes the organic butter that results a bit pricey.
Pour the cream into a bowl.
Whisk the cream using an electric whisk and keep on whisking until it thickens and then go right on whisking until the solid butter separates from the liquid buttermilk.
Pour the liquid buttermilk into a container through a muslin cheesecloth in a fine-mesh sieve.
To make sure you've squeezed out all the liquid buttermilk, wrap it in the muslin cheesecloth and squeeze until every last drop is removed. What you'll be left with inside the cheesecloth is butter.
Keep the buttermilk and use it for instance to make pancakes, porridge etc. Thus there is absolutely no wastage.
To wash out any residual liquid, put the butter back in the strainer and run it under the tap for a bit, then squeeze again but this time just letting the liquid that comes out run down the plug hole and not into your buttermilk.
For our needs we found that this makes a week's supply of fresh butter for about two quid.
If you don't want to use any machinery or electricity at all, instead of whisking the butter do this:
Put your cream in a jar with a screw top.
The jar needs to be big enough to give the cream room to slosh about.
Make sure the lid is on tight.
Shake the jar and keep on shaking it for about 15 minutes. The shaking does not have to be overly vigorous, merely enough to keep the cream in motion.
You will find that the butter and buttermilk will separate out inside the jar, so you can the pour the buttermilk into a container nd squeeze out every last drop as above.
I found that I could churn my butter in this way whilst watching TV or even working on an article.
Then I had an idea and wondered if it would work as follows:
I took my jar of fresh double cream as above, put it in my backpack and carried it with me whilst I was out dropping leaflets for my daughter's business for a few hours.
I found that the constant motion of walking was enough to churn the butter as above. So put you jar in a rucksack and carry it with you whist, for instance hiking or jogging and you should wind up with freshly churned butter for absolutely no extra effort.
Good, eh?
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Back to: Don't be afraid to try this at home"
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