Making Butter Basics

One of our goals in having Icelandic sheep was utilizing their milk for our family. I'm here to tell you that has not gone quit as well as one would hope. Of no fault of the sheep I've found the more I take on with kids, my home, the farm and now at least one other business my milking dreams are definitely on the back burner. But that's just how it goes sometimes. In the meantime until I can buckle down and get back to it we are a part of a local raw milk herd share and I'm sharpening my dairy skills in the kitchen that way.

One of the ewes we milked this year... Reba

The easiest thing to start with is making butter. This is an endeavor I have done with our sheep milk and adored the results. Now I'm teaching my kids and making butter with cows milk.

First a hand or stand mixer is going to save your life and your patience. If you can focus on one monotonous task for hours by all means get a butter churn... or ya know have more kids.

It will get everywhere wether you or the kids are mixing unless you have a guard on your stand mixer

You're going to whip and mix your heavy cream; typically at least 4 cups worth to fill our mold. And keep mixing until you start to see the obvious separation between butter and butter milk. It sort of "breaks".

The butter having broken away from the buttermilk

Once this happens you're going to rinse and squeeze out the butter under cold water until it runs clear. I actually do this by plopping the clump of butter in a bread pan to use later.

yay! Can't believe it's butter!

Once it runs clear you can pat it into a round or whatever shape or press it into a seasoned and chilled butter mold.

I like to seal it in our Foodsaver bags and refrigerate or freeze it once it's my desired shape. And this is how we make butter!