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Your Own Butter

Source of Recipe

From "Old-School Comfort Food" by Alex Guarnaschelli


Recipe Introduction

"I love making my own butter and jams for toast. This butter is also great for spooning over cooked meats or fish to add a finishing touch of richness. I don't use it for cooking, though; it's too delicate for that. I have found it's very important to use a natural sour cream that doesn't have any thickeners (like guar gum) when making this recipe; otherwise, the butter doesn't come together. It's amazing to me that just whipping cream creates something that looks like it took hours and a degree in food science to make. This butter will keep, covered in the refrigerator, for up to a month but is best within a few days. (Dairy acts like a sponge in your fridge, absorbing the aromas of the foods around it.) If you want to make less, cut the recipe in half. Use some of the buttermilk that results from this recipe (about 1 � cups) to enrich or add tang to tomato soup."

List of Ingredients

◦ 2 � cups heavy cream
◦ 1 cup sour cream (without any thickeners or additives, such as guar gum)
◦ 1 teaspoon kosher salt


Recipe

Prepare an ice bath: Fill a medium bowl halfway with ice cubes and add some cold water. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream and sour cream together on low speed for about 2 minutes. Cover the space between the mixer and the bowl with plastic wrap. Increase the speed of the mixer and sprinkle in the salt. Whip until the cream separates and the mixture thickens.

Finish the butter: Use a rubber spatula to gather up the butter and remove it from the bowl. There will be some liquid, which is actually buttermilk, at the bottom of the bowl. Gather the ball of butter together into a double layer of cheesecloth or a thin kitchen towel. Squeeze it to remove excess buttermilk and plunge it into the ice bath to rinse any buttermilk off the surface. Pack the butter into a bowl or roll it into a log shape using plastic wrap.

Makes about 10 ounces butter






❧ Old-School Variation:
For other butter flavors, stir in smoked salt and/or cracked black pepper. If you want added texture, use a coarse sea salt in place of the kosher salt. Bear in mind, though, that flavors intensify over time. So if you refrigerate the butter for a while, the flavors might get stronger than you like.