Doris has been making butter for over 30 years, she loves making butter but it is a labor of love.

Tools needed:

• 1 qt cream
• An older blender that does not heat up the cream
• Bowl
• Spatula

Directions:

• Set out cream about 2 hours before you plan on making butter. It will make butter if it is cold but it takes longer, the ideal temperature is about 60 degrees.
• Pour cream into blender and start blending
• Cream will become whipped cream and then will start to coagulate into butter chunks.
• if air pockets form and the blender doesn’t seem like it is doing anything stop the blender and use a spatula to clear the air pocket.
• Once butter is formed use the spatula to press the butter chunks together and place it into a bowl
• Pour the buttermilk/whey that is left after making butter into a pan to use for making buttermilk or yogurt.
• Press the butter together and add cold water into the bowl. Continue pressing and dumping out the water into the sink until the water is clear, it can even be pressed and kneaded under cold running water. If the butter starts to melt or gets too warm you can add ice to keep it cold.

Do you like cottage cheese, cheese curds or feel adventurous enough to press your own little bit of farmer cheese? Or are you completely out of ideas of what to make with all your left over buttermilk after making all that delicious butter? Just make it into curd! All it takes is a little souring agent, like vinegar or whatever you desire, and heat. Simply place your soured buttermilk in a pan and heat it up while stirring and you can see the magic happen. Once the curds developed, they can be strained in a colander with a cheese cloth (or a cotton cloth will do) and rinsed with water. Add cream and salt to desired taste, if your goal is cottage cheese, and you are done!

*The picture above is just the curd after being rinsed, and maybe pressed a little too much but can still be crumbled for cottage cheese.

Instructions for making
Butter
(As Suzanne Mortimer does it.)
Hard copies available in our store.

Use two Daloris Jersey Dairy bottles(one gallon raw milk).
1 – Let the cream rise to the top of the bottles in your fridge. It should only take a couple hours before you see the cream line near the top of the Daloris Dairy label.
*You may also pour the milk into your own large mouth jar. This may be easier to scoop the cream off the top.

2 – Using a turkey baster, suck the cream off of the top and put it into a mason jar. There should be nearly a quart of cream from a whole gallon of milk (or two Daloris Dairy bottles). It is okay to suck up some milk, it will not affect the butter making process.

3 – Once you have the desired amount of cream, set it out until it has reached room temperature. Butter won’t be able to stick together if it’s too cold, and if cream is too warm the butter will melt into the cream and won’t coagulate.
*Note: There is no set time it takes for your cream to warm, it all depends on the temperature of your kitchen.

4 – Place your cream in the blender and blend on medium for several minutes. The amount of time needed will vary depending on how fresh your cream is and the temperature of the cream. The older the cream, the thicker the consistency the faster it whips into butter. Most cream will become thick like whipped cream before it separates into butter and buttermilk. The sound of the blender will change and you will notice light yellow clumps spinning in off-white buttermilk. Stop the blender.

5 – Strain the butter out of the buttermilk by pouring out the buttermilk and hold back the butter with a spatula, or pour all blender contents into thin strainer.

6 – Rinse butter with cold water to remove all droplets of buttermilk. The buttermilk gives the butter a cheesy taste that isn’t preferred by those that are wanting just pure and simple butter. After separating the butter from the buttermilk, you can pour COLD water into the blender and blend again for a few seconds to agitate the buttermilk droplets out of the butter. That opaque water will need to be poured out, and new cold water poured in, and repeated until the water is clear. This may only take two rinses.

7- Mold the butter into a ball. Knead that ball of butter under cold water for one final rinse. If you want to add salt, add now by sprinkling the surface of your butter ball with salt and kneading it in. It doesn’t take much, unless you like very salty butter.
Yields approx one cup butter.

Feel free to call Suzanne Mortimer at (208)313-0816 or Doris Mortimer at (208)745-7779 with any questions. Both Mortimer’s welcome anyone who wants to come and be shown how to make butter at anytime. If you are coming for milk, feel free to give Suzanne a call and she can set out some cream and have it ready to show the process from cream to butter in just five minutes. Doris also holds classes for making butter, yogurt, and kefir. Information on those will be posted on our website, www.dalorisdairy.com

Helpful references:
http://www.cheesemaking.com/Butter.html
“The cream from Jersey cows produces the best butter because of its higher fat content milk, plus the fact that their fat is dispersed in larger globules than milk from other types of cows and tends to churn into butter more easily.”