A Journey With Butter!

Butter is one of the most used basic ingredients because of its properties of good flavor and being slippery enough so your food doesn’t stick to the pan. Today I will be showing you how to make real butter homemade, how to make compound steak butter, and how to make clarified butter to use for cooking. These are actually very easy processes in comparison to what you may imagine. For example, to make butter you just need heavy cream and salt.

The Basics:

To begin we will start by making our own butter from scratch with our ingredients and materials.

• Step 1: To begin, start by measuring out 1½ cups of heavy whipping cream and ½ tsp of salt.
• Step 2: Set your food processor up with the blades inside.
• Step 3: Pour the heavy whipping cream and salt into the food processor before turning the processor on.
• Step 4: Set the food processor to a low-medium speed and let it whip your cream for around 8-10 minutes.
• Step 5: After the processor is finished you will get butter and butter milk, drain the butter milk out through the sieve/strainer as you spoon the butter out. (You could keep it for a later date if you wanted.)
• Step 6: Put butter into container of choice.

Results: You should end up with 1 cup of butter and ½ cup of butter milk when done right. Also, the butter will be strong and well kept together if you’ve gotten rid of some of the milk. You can choose to not pour all the butter milk out and it will be a real smooth and spreadable version of butter as well. The picture of the butter in a square container is how I store my butter and what consistency you should be looking for.

Making A Compound Butter:

Compound butter is a type of butter that you can make when you plan on basting
something with you butter. It adds flavor to your food as it helps cook it up to the right temperature. Most compound butters are used on steaks and other hearty meats. I’ll be showing you how to make a pickle tasting compound butter. You generally want the butter to be stored tight and close with the spices you add to it.

• Step 1: First begin by taking a quarter of your butter and putting it down on your plastic wrap or container.
• Step 2: Take your dill sprigs and place them on the cutting board and cut them to small little pieces, do this with the thyme as well.
• Step 3: After you have cut up your spices put them in the container or on the plastic wrap with butter in it.
• Step 4: Carefully put the 2 tsp of vinegar on the butter and spices.
• Step 5: Place the rest of the butter over the vinegar and spices and combine them together. If you’re using a container you can mix them normally with a spoon, otherwise; you can take the plastic wrap by its sides and roll it into a log of butter compound that you can use.

Results: After you combine the butter you should have some butter with spices and vinegar that looks roughly like mine. Make sure to combine the spices well as that will hold in more of the flavor of the spices. If you’ve made a big enough batch of compound butter, you can use it multiple times. In our case this butter can be used once for a well sized steak I found.

Clarified Butter:

Clarified butter is the hardest butter to make out of the three shown in my guide. Clarified butter can be used as a substitute to olive oil or other base oils when made right. It works best if placed in a squeeze bottle after heated so you can squeeze it out onto your cooking surface to use. Most of the time clarified butter is used on cheeseburgers or other burger kinds. To make clarified butter, you get rid of its impurities to just collect part of butter that is without fat.

• Step 1: Take the 2 cups of butter and place them in the small pot.
• Step 2: Turn your stove top on low heat and let the butter melt.
• Step 3: After your butter has melted down you will need to take out the little white/foggy pieces of the butter and place them in a separate container. This can be the hardest part, make sure you do not burn yourself.
• Step 4: After you get all the impurities out, place the butter in a container of your choice, I used an old mason jar.

Results: You should have a mostly light-yellow chunk of butter that you should keep in your refrigerator after cooling. My jar is not filled as much as it should be since I spilled a little bit while pouring. This is good butter cold or hot, its best used while heating the pan up as a healthier alternative to normal butter or olive oil.

The ingredients and materials to make butter: Food processor, measuring cups, spoon, metal sieve/strainer, storage container/plastic wrap, 11/2 cups of heavy whipping cream, and 1 - 1/2 tsp salt.

Thje ingredients and materials to make clarified butter: small pot with low edges, spoon, stove, two jars or containers of your liking, and 2 cups of butter.

The ingredients and materails to make a pickle-like compound butter: Plastic wrap/storage container, kinfe, cutting board, 1/2 cup of butter, 2 diced sprigs of dill, 1 diced sprig of thyme, and 1 tsp of distilled vinegar.