Homemade Butter: The Best You’ll Ever Have

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Spring and summer pastures yield the most delectable homemade butter — if cows get to eat the grass!
Spring and summer pastures yield the most delectable homemade butter — if cows get to eat the grass!
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Once you start using homemade butter, you won't look back.
Once you start using homemade butter, you won't look back.
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Cream skimmed from fresh milk is the starting point for homemade butter.
Cream skimmed from fresh milk is the starting point for homemade butter.
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Fresh pasta tossed with richly flavored cultured butter and Parmesan cheese is a dish of elegant simplicity and memorable flavor.
Fresh pasta tossed with richly flavored cultured butter and Parmesan cheese is a dish of elegant simplicity and memorable flavor.
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Shape and mold your homemade butter if you wish. This step is optional, but fun!
Shape and mold your homemade butter if you wish. This step is optional, but fun!
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You want to remove as much buttermilk as possible to prevent your fresh butter from going rancid.
You want to remove as much buttermilk as possible to prevent your fresh butter from going rancid.

Of the sweet cream homemade butter I’d churned earlier in the day, my Italian visitor said, “It tasted heavenly.” Sweet cream butter is made from cream that has not been acidified by the conversion of milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid by lactobacillus bacteria. Think of it as butter straight from the cow. The butter I served my friend was unsalted; so, in the slightly confusing language of butter, it was sweet sweet cream butter (not salted and not acidified).

Sweet Cream Butter

Sweet sweet cream butter is the purest butter — it most cleanly expresses the essence of the underlying cream. It was April when I made dinner for my friend, so the cows were eating from spring pasture. Spring pasture butter is more delicately flavored than the rest of the year, and more yellow because spring and early summer grasses are the most nutritionally complex, containing the highest levels of beta carotene. Indeed, the butter I made for my friend was sweet and bright yellow.

Prior to the industrialization of butter manufacturing in the late 19th century, butter sales were local, and butter customers were connoisseurs in a way that we are not. Early spring butter commanded a higher price than any other. Modern dairy practices ignore seasonal differences by feeding cows an unnatural diet of year-round grain. If you often make butter from good cream, you will notice changes as the seasons progress.

Cultured Butter

  • Published on May 1, 2009
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