Hand Squeezed Butter

I know that when you hear "hand squeezed" you usually think of orange juice but I'm not kidding when I say hand squeezed butter. I know, don't fall out of your chair yet, but I'm churning my own butter. I realize that I risk losing some readers at this point who think I've crossed over the edge! But, bare with me a minute. I've been reading about which foods are the most important to eat organically and yes, dairy is at the top of the list. So, I want organic butter but guess what, it's expensive. So, I thought I'd experiment and see if I could make it cheaper than buying it. It's super easy to churn your own butter with the modern tools of today, the true question was "is it cheaper?"

So, I bought organic whipping cream and set to work last week. Actually, set my mixer to work. After measuring the before amounts, the cost of already made organic butter (unsalted) and then calculating the resulting measurements and comparing the price, it actually didn't save me that much money. Here's the deal, the butter part was cheaper store bought from where I get it, BUT it did yield 2 cups of buttermilk which was "free" so to speak. So, if you count the free buttermilk, well, then it was cheaper. Organic buttermilk cost me about $2.75 for a carton so I got about $1.37 worth of free buttermilk. Doesn't sound like such a good deal but here's the kicker.....my family went nuts for my homemade butter and homemade buttermilk. I have to admit the buttermilk was amazing! It made buttermilk pancakes like we've never experienced! It was seriously shocking. So, even though it doesn't save me a whole lot of money, the quality was well worth the time. Considering it doesn't take all that much work, we'll be making this from time to time. Now, if you are still with me after this lengthy post, I'll share with you the steps.

Ingredients:
2 pints heavy whipping cream
(you can add salt if you want but we use all unsalted butter)

Tools:
mixer or food processor
strainer (optional)

Whip the whipping cream through the many stages till you get butter. That's pretty much it. So, it turns first into fluffy whipping cream, then it gets really thick, then it starts to condense and turn yellow.....then it starts to separate and the yellow turns to little pea chunks and milk starts to come out of it. Keep whipping till you get a hard butter and lots of milk.

Now is when you want to strain the buttermilk and put it into a jar and refrigerate it to use in pancakes or recipes that week.

Now you can take the butter and with very clean hands, squeeze it. Yep, go right ahead and start wringing it out. Press it into a butter dish or mold it if you desire. I'm always amazed how soft my hands are after hand squeezing butter!

Now, you might think I'm totally nuts but seriously this wasn't that hard. =0)