Butter. What a staple, am I right? Spread it on toast, melt it on pancakes or bake it into chocolate chip cookies. There’s few things that butter doesn’t improve — and did you know that you can make it at home, using only whole milk, salt and a food processor? There’s no better way to use up milk that’s about to go bad, saving you both from food waste and the cost of buying butter at the store. The process is super simple and only takes about 20 minutes.
Laura Tucker / Daily Nexus
Ingredients:
- Whole milk (any amount), preferably at room temperature
- Salt, to taste
Directions:
- Pour milk into a food processor and process until you see clumps of yellow (the butter) forming; this should take about 10 minutes. The rest of the substance in the food processor should be a creamy white color (the buttermilk).
- Place a cheesecloth over a bowl and pour the contents of the food processor over the cloth. The buttermilk should flow easily through the cloth while the butter solids remain trapped inside.
- Gently squeeze the butter into a ball shape while it is inside the cloth to get rid of the excess buttermilk.
- While still in the cloth, run the butter under cold water from the sink. Remove the butter from the cloth and rinse under cold water again.
- Place the ball of butter in a bowl and begin to fold it onto itself using a spoon. You should see a milky-white substance seeping out of the butter — this is just the excess buttermilk that wasn’t removed in the earlier stages. Keep folding the buttermilk and draining the butter until you see little to no liquid coming out of the butter.
- Store at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
This homemade butter is wonderfully smooth and spreadable, especially if you store it at room temperature. And make sure you don’t throw the buttermilk away — you can use it to make the most delicious pancakes you’ll ever have. Just make sure that you don’t squeeze the butter in the cheesecloth too much or it will begin to seep out of the cloth, and nobody wants to waste butter!
