Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Butter Business


It's been awhile since we went to the store and brought home margarine. I really never did a whole lot of research into butter or margarine. I just know that butter is more natural and tastes better. That was good enough for me. 

Recently I've been reading a few articles though about margarine and they made me sick to my stomach to think that I was ever regularly eating this 'plastic'.

I think this article does the best job of explaining in pretty basic terms.
You can just Google 'butter vs. margarine' or 'truth about margarine' and find all kinds of enlightening articles.

"However, margarine often contains poor-quality, refined, artificially saturated vegetable oil.  It also contains harmful trans-fatty acids, and often residues of toxic metals such as nickel and cadmium.  It does not contain many nutrients at all.
                  Butter, by contrast, is a natural food and one of the best sources of important fat-soluble vitamins.  You will pay more for butter, but nutritionally and for its purity, it is well worth it."

 Most store bought butters are just fine (I always read the label just in case) but I decided to try my hand at making butter this weekend and it turned out surprisingly well. 

So well in fact, that I will be making our butter from here on out! This was seriously one of the easiest things I have ever made. I do have a kitchen-aid mixer that we got from my in-laws which may be a huge reason why this was so easy.But still, I felt like a pioneer woman!

This is the recipe I used. 

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream (I used organic whipping cream)
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)

Directions
 Pour cream into a food processor or blender. Process for 10 minutes, or until the butter separates. Strain off the liquid. Season to taste with salt if you like. Press butter into a small bowl with the back of a spoon to further remove liquid. 

It really was that simple. I do have a few tips if you do decide to make your own butter though. The mixture will start to get really thick right before it separates. That's when you should watch it closely because once is separates the liquid (buttermilk) will start to jump out of the mixing bowl as the butter curds form. And I didn't use a spoon to remove the liquid. I just used some cheesecloth and wrapped the butter curds in it and squeezed out all of the extra buttermilk in the sink. 

It's true. Everything is better homemade. The taste of this butter was amazing! You can also add any spice you'd like. You could make a cinnamon sugar butter or garlic butter, which I will probably do next time. :)