Making butter the new old-fashioned way!

Making Butter on the Urban Croft

We are URBAN - meaning the livestock we have is restricted to some probiotic bugs and one very spoiled cat who doesn't really earn her keep but is very cute!

But that doesn't mean that there aren't times when I can reap the benefit of an unexpected harvest and use a few old-fashioned skills to make the time really work the investment!

My lovelies - I give you the Colliar Butter Mountain ...

AND IT WAS ALL FOR FREE!

From Waste Food to Bars of Gold!

I am a Food Waste Hero on an App called Olio - and a few evenings per week I collect a boot full of soon to be out of date waste food and list it for collection in my community - OMG there are so many stories of when the bag of random bits have been such a godsend when life has hit someone a curve ball!

Christmas means CREAM - and lots of it!

Too much in fact - and after I have given away literal bathtubs of the stuff I have still been left with crean that is strictly speaking out of date yesterday and so I can't legally pass on to anyone.

Doesn't mean that I can process it and use it for my own family though - right?

Especially when it passes the "sniff test"

Today I am going to channel my inner "Tess of the D'ubervilles" and play Milk Maid in converting 32 cartons of cream into butter that can be stashed in the freezer for my family to use in the months to come!

So I pulled out my ancient Kenwood Chef - in the tradition of all things crofting this was of course bought for £8.00 several years ago from a charity - and it is A BEAST!

The engine in this thing will run to Armageddon -and I have my fingers crossed that running at at a medium speed for long periods through the day will not cause it too much stress (she is an old lady after all)

Tipped two cartons of cream on in there and clicked in the balloon whisk!

And run for about 4 - 5 minutes (at least on this machine). You may need to stop partway through to scrape down the sides like I did.

You whisk up to the fluffy stage - through the "top of the trifle" stiff stage and out the other side.

Within a few seconds, you will KNOW that something is up.

The machine sounds different and all of a sudden you will see a lump of yellow butter around your whisk and a puddle of watery white liquid in the base of your bowl. Your cream has "split" and when you are making butter this is a good thing.

Splitting means that the butterfat is now separate from the buttermilk.

So separate them my friend - pour the buttermilk into a jug for later ( you can make scones, muffins, pancakes, and all sorts of good stuff with buttermilk and it will keep in the fridge until tomorrow for you to use for sure!)

Now you need to clean the rest of the buttermilk from the butter solids.

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that I have tipped my yellow butter into a LIDL reusable fruit and veg bag.

You can of course use a piece of muslin - or an old cotton pillow case - or even buy an expensive nut bag online (as long as you clean and sterilise everything with boiling water it really doesn't matter)

But these mesh veg bags are BRILLIANT (and cheap), with drawstring tops that work perfectly too!

You need the butter contained in something so that you can rinse and squeeze and rinse until very cold (even iced) water runs clear.

Yup! Sorry - this is the stage when your dreams of being a milkmaid in a pique frock and apron head south - it's COLD and it's pretty miserable.

The good news is that if you are doing a whole batch then your hands end up coated in butterfat and that protects them a little from the cold water.

Bars of Gold!

Once your water runs clear you can turn your butter onto a chopping board and season it with a quarter teaspoon of table salt per 118g (that's 4 oz to those of us who still think in old money too)

Just sprinkle the salt on and smoosh the butter through your hand a few times to incorporate - and you will find that clear water also dribbles out of the new butter too. The less water the longer the butter will keep.

Shape into a brick of butter - I know you see them on the telly with wooden paddles - but clean cold hands work just as well!

Then set them in your fridge overnight to let them firm up and leak any more water that they are minded to!

Now is the sucky stage - you have to go wash up all the stuff you have used in masses of hot soapy water.

I recommend finishing your working day with a handful of soda down your drain followed by a couple of kettles of properly boiling water - after all, you don't want to be saving money on the butter and losing it on a plumber bill cos you have clogged your outside drain!!!

Zero Spend But Massive Satisfaction!

Yeah, Baby!!

I mean for me it was pretty much a whole afternoon's work - cos I had a LOT of cream to process for sure .. but for a carton or two you can be done and cleaned up in about fifteen minutes for sure!

Tomorrow I will wrap each of these golden bars in greaseproof paper and stash in my chest freezer in a lidded box.

It's pretty cool walking into a new year with lots of butter to cook and bake with in the weeks to come I can tell you!

Was it worth the effort? I would say so - after all the machine does most of the work even though a whole afternoon of the noise just about drove me bonkers.

But most importantly I took something that was destined for waste and repurposed it into something useful - and that is the crofting way and totally worth it for sure!

Love you lots
Elaine XX