Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (2024)

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Homemade Cultured Butter has only 2 ingredients and is easy to make at home! If you’ve been interested in learning how to make butter from scratch, keep reading!

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (1)

I’ve been off of refined sugars and carbs for about 9 days and I have to say I’m surprised at how sluggish I still feel. Well, I’m surprised and not surprised at the same time.

Sugar is powerful stuff and it’s not shocking that it’s making a powerful statement as it works its way out of my body.

Staying away from sugar has caused me to get a bit more creative with my recipes recently. I’m still doing quite a bit of experimenting from one of my favorite cookbooks,The America’s Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with homemade cultured butter. I always find it fascinating to make store bought staples at home and butter was no exception.

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (2)

How to make homemade cultured butter

This homemade cultured butter only has two ingredients, cream and yogurt. And it makes a butter that tastes equally as smooth and rich as anything I’ve ever bought from the store.

It does have several involved steps but none of them are difficult and the results are just plain fun. There is something so immensely satisfying about holding a lumpy stick of butter in the air and proclaiming to the stars, “I made this!” Or maybe that’s just me…

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (3)

Also, buttermilk. One of the byproducts from making homemade cultured butter is real, old fashioned buttermilk like grandma used to make on the farm.

Not the curdled stuff you can make by adding vinegar to milk and letting it sit. Most likely not even the stuff you buy at the grocery store.

Real buttermilk is a byproduct of butter creation. It’s liquid gold in your baked goods.

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (4)

A very important note about the recipe: one of the final steps involves pressing and washing the butter in ice water to remove any traces of buttermilk. If you don’t wash the butter very thoroughly it has the potential to go rancid quickly.

This happened to me the first time I experimented with making homemade butter. I rushed through the process and my gorgeous stick of butter began smelling sour after a week.

If you wash the butter thoroughly it will last in the refrigerator up to a month or in the freezer for four months.

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (5)

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (6)

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Homemade Cultured Butter

Homemade Cultured Butter has only 2 ingredients and is easy to make at home!

Course Condiments, Drinks

Cuisine American

Keyword Cultured Butter

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Inactive Prep 2 days days 2 hours hours

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 12 ounces butter + 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Calories 279

Author Jennifer Farley

Ingredients

US Customary - Metric

  • 4 cups pasteurized heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized or UHT), room temperature
  • 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt, room temperature
  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt, optional

Instructions

  • Combine cream and yogurt in a 2-quart jar or container with a tight-fitting lid, cover, and shake to combine. Remove lid, cover with a clean kitchen towel, butter muslin or triple layer of cheesecloth, securing in place with a rubber band. Place jar in a warm place, preferably 75 degrees F, and let sit until thickened to the consistency of yogurt, 18 to 48 hours. (If temperature dips much below 75 degrees, culture may take up to 60 hours). Once thickened, remove the kitchen towel, cover jar with lid, and transfer to refrigerator until mixture registers 60 degrees F, about 2 hours.

  • Place 4 cups of ice water in the refrigerator. Line a fine-mesh strainer with a butter muslin or triple layer of cheesecloth and set it over a large bowl. Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and covered with plastic wrap, whip cream on high speed until cream separates into buttermilk and small clumps of yellow butter, 2 to 5 minutes. Strain butter through prepared strainer for 1 minute. Gather edges of muslin and twist to squeeze butter until buttermilk no longer flows freely from pouch. Remove butter from muslin and transfer to a clean, large bowl; reserve buttermilk for another use.

  • Pour about 1/3 cup ice water over the butter. With butter resting in water, use rubber spatula to fold the butter against the side of the bowl, letting water wash over the butter to rinse off any remaining buttermilk. Discard milky liquid, and repeat washing process until water remains clear, about 6 washes. After the final wash, discard any water in the bowl and continue folding butter to squeeze out any remaining liquid; discard liquid. If you want to really get in there, squeeze the butter with your hands at the end. Sprinkle butter with salt, if using, and fold into butter. Divide the butter in half, transfer to parchment paper, and roll into 2 logs or desired shape. Butter can be refrigerated for up to 1 month for frozen for at least 4 months.

Notes

Shared with permission from ‘The America’s Test Kitchen DIY Cookbook’ by the editors at America’s Test Kitchen

Please read my full post for additional recipe notes, tips, and serving suggestions!

Nutrition

Calories: 279kcal | Carbohydrates: 2g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 29g | Saturated Fat: 18g | Cholesterol: 110mg | Sodium: 34mg | Potassium: 75mg | Vitamin A: 1175IU | Vitamin C: 0.5mg | Calcium: 64mg

Recipe Troubleshooting

For immediate help troubleshooting a recipe, please email me using the form on my contact page. I’ll try to respond to urgent questions as quickly as possible! For all general questions, please leave a comment here :)

Homemade Cultured Butter Recipe - Savory Simple (2024)

FAQs

What makes cultured butter? ›

When it comes to butter, “cultured” refers to cream that is allowed to ferment or has live bacterial cultures added to it before churning. (Yogurt is a common example of another food that is cultured.) All butter used to be cultured.

How do you make homemade butter taste better? ›

After making the butter, put it in a large bowl and add honey. Once the butter has solidified and been rinsed in ice water, place it in a large bowl to mix in added flavors with a spoon. I used 1 ½ tablespoons of honey, but feel free to use more or less depending on your personal tastes.

How to make butter like a pioneer? ›

During pioneer days making butter was primarily a child's job. They would milk the family's cow and let the milk sit in a shallow pan overnight in order for the cream to rise to the top. The next morning they skim the cream layer with a wooden ladle and leave it out to sour.

What is the difference between churned butter and cultured butter? ›

Sometimes referred to as “European-style butter,” cultured butter is treated with live cultures and allowed to ferment before it's churned. This results in butter with a stronger, more lactic flavor. Cultured butter generally has a higher butterfat content (typically 82–85%) than standard American butter (80–82%).

Is cultured butter healthier than regular butter? ›

Cultured butters contain probiotics, live microbes with proven health benefits. Standard butters, known as 'sweet butter', do not. Cultured butters taste AMAZING! Most people with lactose intolerance can tolerate butter because it contains only trace amounts of lactose (<0.7g/100g).

What is the best cream to make butter with? ›

Always buy heavy cream or whipping cream for churning butter. Any brand will do. You need the higher fat content. Heavy cream is approximately 40% butterfat and 60% milk solids and water.

Is it worth making homemade butter? ›

Homemade butter is best used as a spread or a finishing ingredient, such as added to a pasta dish, rather than in baking, however. That is because stick butter purchased at the store is more consistent and with baking, consistency and measurements matter.

Why does homemade butter taste bitter? ›

The cream might be very old, because if it is the taste of butter turns a bit bitter. Add some fresh cream or hung curd to it salt to taste . It might help to remove the bitter taste. But first try with just a spoon and see the difference.

Is it cheaper to make your own butter or buy it? ›

Butter isn't that expensive — it's about $3 per pound at the wholesale level. Cream costs roughly $3.50 for 16 ounces, or less if you buy a larger carton. That means the price of making your own butter isn't much more than buying it in the store, and often you can get organic cream cheaper than organic butter.

How is Amish butter made? ›

Amish butter typically only has two ingredients: pasteurized cream and salt. However, it can be found in both salted and unsalted varieties, just like stick butter. Its slow-churning method creates a creamy and rich flavor. Amish butter is low on carbs, vegetarian, and gluten-free.

What is the best milk to make butter with? ›

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.

What is village butter? ›

A smooth rich tasting butter made the way it was done during the time of our grandparents in Galicia. The heavy cream used in making this butter has been fermented for 7 days with a special bacterial culture.

Is European-style butter the same as cultured butter? ›

European-style butter refers to a cultured butter that has been churned longer to achieve at least 82 percent butterfat. Traditionally the butter is allowed to ferment to achieve a light sour taste, but you're more likely to find butter made with added cultures. Either way, you still end up with a tangy butter.

Is cultured butter made from sour cream? ›

Although the cultures in buttermilk, crème fraiche and sour cream are the ones that are traditionally used to culture butter, yogurt also works surprisingly well and is widely available. Full fat, low fat, or nonfat yogurt will work in this recipe, as long as it has has live cultures.

Is cultured butter the same as ghee? ›

As implied by the name, cultured ghee is cooked from cultured butter. Dairy butter is used as the raw ingredient in regular ghee, but manufacturers use cultured butter in the cultured ghee-making process. Cultured ghee contains lactic acid instead of lactose in milk.

Is cultured and clarified butter the same? ›

Cultured butter is butter that contains bacterial cultures. Generally it just tastes better than plain old salted butter. Clarified butter is made by melting butter, then separating the butterfat from the milk solids (look closely at melted butter.

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