Homemade butter in a dish | Making Butter in a jar

Making Butter In A Jar In 7 Easy Steps

Making butter in a jar is a great way to make homemade butter on a small scale. We’ll walk you through everything you need to know about making butter from scratch and guide you step by step to making your very own butter. 

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Making Butter In A Jar Tutorial

Making butter in a jar is a great project if you have extra cream, it’s a great one to work on with kids. Growing up mom would give us a canning jar filled with cream and we would sit on the porch and shake it while she read Little House On The Praire to us. It was always such a wonderful time and to this day I love making butter in a jar.

Can You Make Butter Out Of Milk?

No, you can not make butter out of milk, butter is made out of cream that’s been skimmed off of the milk. 

Can You Make Butter In A Plastic Jar?

Yes, you can absolutely use a plastic container to make homemade butter, this is a great option if you want to get children involved in the process of making butter from scratch. 

Can You Make Butter In A Ziplock Bag

Yes, you can use a Ziplock bag to make homemade butter, just as you would a plastic container or glass jar. 

Is Homemade Butter Healthier Than Store-Bought Butter?

Is homemade butter better for you than what you can buy at the store? The answer is going to depend on the butter you are buying at the store and where you are sourcing your cream from. When we aren’t making homemade butter from farm-fresh cream, we buy organic or grass-fed butter at the store. Store-bought butter is often overly salted which can be bad if you have high blood pressure. 

Is Homemade Butter Worth Making?

If you have the time and a source for cream, making butter in a jar is absolutely worth it!

Is It Cheaper To Make Butter At Home?

Making butter in a jar is cheaper if you can find a good source for cream. 

What You Need To Make Homemade Butter

Making butter in a jar is a really easy process, that being said you are going to need a few things:

  • Whole cream or heavy cream preferably straight from a farm store-bought cream has fillers that make it thicker.
  • A clean quart canning jar & lid
  • Ice and cold water
  • Plastic wrap
  • Something to use as a mold (you can use a small bowl or buy a mold specially made for butter)
  • Fine Ground Sea Salt (Optional)
 
 

Making Butter In A Jar Tutorial

Making Butter In A Jar Step 1: To make homemade butter pour your cream into a quart-size canning jar. I only filled mine halfway but you can fill it up almost to the top. Just make sure the cream has enough room to move Secure the lid tightly to make sure it doesn’t leak.
 
 
Making Butter In A Jar Step 2: Shake it! Shake it, shake it, shake it. And shake it some more. Making butter in a jar takes a lot and lots of shaking, it helps to have a partner to trade back and forth so your arm doesn’t get absolutely tired. The closer to room temperature the cream is the faster it turns to butter. (If you have little kids who like to help you can have them roll the jar back and forth on the floor and make a game out of it). Making butter in a jar can take between 5-20 minutes. 
 
 
Making Butter In A Jar Step 3: Finally, after all of your shaking it should look like this. The next step for making butter in a jar is to strain off the buttermilk, (you can reserve the buttermilk and use it in baking, one of our favorite ways to use this is when making biscuits, another great option is pancakes.) Use a spoon to press as much out as possible, then dump the butter into a bowl.
 
 
Making Butter In A Jar Step 4: Next you want to “wash” the butter. No, you aren’t shoving it in the dishwasher or underwater in the sink. Just pour some very cold water into the bowl with the butter and add a couple of ice cubes. Use the spoon to press and stir more buttermilk out of your homemade butter. 
 
 
Making Butter In A Jar Step 5: Drain off the water and ice in the bowl without losing the butter. Use the spoon to press all of the water back out of the butter. Once the water is pressed out of your homemade butter you can salt it. Salting your homemade butter is optional, so you can leave it out if you don’t want salted butter. 
 
 
Making Butter In A Jar Step 6: Pick what you want to use as a mold. I used a small ramekin that we use for shepherd’s pies, I line it with plastic wrap. You can find beautiful molds for molding your homemade butter, these are a couple of my favorite butter molds: Rooster Butter Mold, Chick Butter Mold.
 
Butter being molded in a small bowl

 

Making Butter In A Jar Step 7: Spoon the butter into the mold and smooth. Slip into the refrigerator until hardened. Remove it from the mold and wrap it tightly in parchment paper or more plastic wrap. Or you can skip the wrapping and go for a pretty butter dish, but storing it in the refrigerator will make it last longer. 

Can You Churn Butter To Long?

Yes, over churning your butter when making butter in a jar is possible. Doing this can cause you to lose the yellow color of your butter. 

Farmhouse Kitchen Cooking

How Do You Make Homemade Butter Last Longer

If you want to store your homemade butter for later or at the very least make it last a little longer there are a couple of ways that you can prolong the shelf life of it. When making butter in a jar it’s very important to do the rinse step. This will help your butter last longer without going bad. You can also freeze your butter but you’ll lose the flavor in your butter when you do this. You can also try canning your homemade butter.


 

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