My friend from home likes to do a lot of the same things I like to do and we were talking about making buttermilk the other day. I was telling him that I use kefir grains and make mine and he said that he made it with 3 cups of milk and 1 cup of buttermilk and just sits it on the counter for about 24 hours. He started with store bought buttermilk but now that he’s been making his own, he just keeps using his own buttermilk as the starter. OK . . I can do that. Then he asked me if I had ever tried to make cultured butter or sour cream. No! We use Greek yogurt that I make for our sour cream but I’ll try anything once.
Laboratory
Yesterday my kitchen counter was beginning to look like a laboratory! You may see that I even have notes to myself on some of the coffee filters that I use for covers.
Left to right:
- 3 cups whipping cream/1 cup buttermilk. This is to be sour cream.
- 3 cups whole milk/1 cup buttermilk. This is to be buttermilk.
- 4 cups whipping cream/1/4 cup yogurt. This is to be sour cream.
- Whole milk with kefir grains which is how I’ve been making my buttermilk.
I left all that sitting out for about 24 hours.
- The jar on the left that was to be sour cream made the best, creamiest sour cream ever! I gave Vince a taste on a spoon and he wanted more — just plain sour cream!
- The buttermilk worked. It’s chilling overnight in the fridge and tomorrow we’ll have a taste test with the jar on the far right and see which buttermilk we like the best.
- The third jar from the right – it was a bit later in thickening up so it’s in the fridge and we haven’t tasted it yet.
The purpose of the two sour creams was to make them into “cultured butter”. I’ve done a bit of research to see if there are health benefits to eating cultured butter over regular butter and as far as health benefits, all I can find is that the cultured butter is more digestible. I can’t prove that . . I’m just passing along what I read.
Cultured Butter
From 3 cups of whipping cream and 1 cup of buttermilk, I got 9.56 ounces of butter and it still needs to drain a bit more so I’m going to say 9.5 ounces.
If you’re interested in the cost, it was $2.58 for the ingredients, which makes the butter about $4.58 per pound. That’s not bad at all for cultured butter. I can probably buy whipping cream for way less at Aldi. Maybe tomorrow I’ll run to town and see what the price is there.
Tomorrow I’ll make butter from the sour cream that was made with yogurt and report back on those results.
I’d hate to blow my diet but I do believe I need a piece of toast with butter from each batch so I can give an accurate taste test! 🙂
Clara says
For flavor purposes, do you add a bit of salt to your butter?
JudyL says
Not this batch. I wanted it to be unsalted. I mostly buy unsalted butter.
Pat says
I enjoy your adventures. Is your homemade buttermilk thick? All we can purchase in the area that we live in now is so thin Love a thick glass of buttermilk I grew up on a farm so was use to real buttermilk nice and thick.
Jeri Niksich says
Years & years ago hubby & I were watching a program on TV about real Butter vs. Oleo. The program put a pat of Butter and a pat of Oleo on a sidewalk, even the bugs wouldn’t eat the Oleo! Since that day it’s been nothing but Unsalted Butter in our home and we are Not health nuts, nor are we on diets ect. Just seeing that a gross bug won’t eat Oleo is enough for me to change. Besides there is NOTHING BETTER than real butter on toast or plain bread & butter!
Jeri Oldtisme@aol.com
JudyL says
My parents used oleo forever (may still). I’m not sure I’ve ever bought it. It’s real butter, most always unsalted, for us too. Probably too much but I do love butter. When I was a kid, to keep me busy, my grandma would give me a Mason jar with a lid full of cream and I’d “churn”/shake the jar til we had butter and then she’d make biscuits so I got my love of butter a long time ago!