Homemade Butter

All the ingredients needed!

It’s not uncommon to see my girls and me watching Food Network. I love to take recipes from the professionals and try them. Now, I’m not a great chef, but I haven’t killed anyone with my cooking either. The other day we saw a chef make homemade butter during a timed competition and I was way impressed. So, I wanted to try it out. Can it really be as easy as it looks? Well, yes. It is super easy!

You really only need three things: stand mixer or food processor, heavy whipping cream, salt. And that’s it, unless you want to make some fancy compound butter. Which of course I ended up doing as well. But, I’ll get to that later.

Looks like whipped cream

Pour your heavy whipping cream into the stand mixer or food processor and set to high. I wanted to see which one worked best so I used one cup of heavy whipping cream in each. The food processor was faster, but harder to strain out the buttermilk in the end. The Kitchen Aide took longer but easier to strain and easier to see when then the butter was ready to strain. When I make some more, I will be using just the stand mixer.

Strain the buttermilk

The whipping cream will first look like whipped cream. Then you will see it start to separate out and look clumpy. Once the solid is separated from the liquid, drain the liquid buttercream to use for later. Rinse off the butter in cold water. Add a pinch of salt (or whatever other ingredients you chose) and mix thoroughly. What you see in the pictures is cilantro lime butter which I will use on chicken strips for our fajitas tonight.

You can shape the butter, put it in parchment, make it look cutesy. Or you can be like me and put it in an air-tight container to be used.

As easy as this was to make, why have I not been doing it? It tastes better than anything I have bought at the store and I can customize my flavors.  

Here are a few flavor options:

Honey Butter – Great on yeast rolls (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ¼ teaspoon salt, ½ tablespoon honey)

Thyme and Rosemary Butter – Top a piece of steak with this and you’ll thank me later (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ½ tablespoon fresh chopped rosemary, ½ tablespoon thyme, ¼ teaspoon salt)

Cilantro Lime Butter

Cinnamon Butter – Have on hand to make cinnamon toast in the morning to add to a sweat potato for diner (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ¼ teaspoon sugar, ½ teaspoon cinnamon)

Garlic Butter – I dip fries or drizzle this on potatoes (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 clove crushed, roasted garlic)

Lemon Butter – Perfect for seafood (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ¼ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon lemon juice)

Jalapeno Butter – melt it and spray on popcorn (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon diced jalapeno)

Cilantro Lime Butter – Great on chicken for fajitas (2 cups heavy whipping cream, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon cilantro, ¼ teaspoon lime juice)