How to make butter from cow's milk?, Mollie, any others.....?

I am SO excited. My MIL searched high and low for an organic farmer who has organic unpasteurized cow's milk and she found one!!!!! She wanted it for the butter, since she drinks goats milk, but decided to switch to the cows milk once she found the guy. Dh and I were over there last night and got to taste the cow's milk and OMG, it tastes so good!!! The butter is out of this world, too! So we told MIL to get us 3 gallons every two weeks. It's a bit pricey at $7 a gallon, but we are paying almost $6 now and this stuff is obviously healthier than what we were drinking before.

SO, how do you make your butter? MIL kind of gave me a crash course in it last night, but it seems so...hmm...what's the word? TOO MUCH WORK. I'm hoping someone has a simpler way of doing it.

I can't believe how excited I am about the milk! DH was, too.

I used a mason Jar, and heavy cream, but Mollie has a way of extracting the cream from the milk. I just put the cream in a mason jar with a marble and had the kids shake it /kick it around for a while. The butter milk comes out, and it leaves a lump of butter in the jar. You need come cheese cloth, dump the butter into the cheese cloth to drain the butter milk off, squeeze the butter a bit to get the buttermilk all out of it, then I just put the butter back in the jar. We have done it a few times, very easy.

How many times did you have to do "strain" to get the butter milk off? It seemed like my MIL had to do it many times. If it's once - it's easy. More times, not so easy. The butter was fantastic, though. My MIL basically did it how you described it, too.

How many times did you have to do "strain" to get the butter milk off? It seemed like my MIL had to do it many times. If it's once - it's easy. More times, not so easy. The butter was fantastic, though. My MIL basically did it how you described it, too.

I just dumped the whole thing into a towel over the sink squeezed it out a few times and plunked it back into the jar. so, once? I read that if you don't get all the milk out it can go sour after a few days, but we used ours all in one sitting, (for big thanksgiving dinner, and christmas dinner, then mac and cheese after) so it wasn't sitting around.
Mollie makes hers in a kitchen aid mixer.

Congratulations!!

You only use the cream to make butter, not the milk. I let the milk with cream still in it sit in the fridge for a day in a gallon-sized wide mouth jar to let the cream rise to the top, then I use a soup ladle to skim off the cream into a smaller jar. I use the cream off of 2 gallons of milk to make about 1 lb. of butter.

Here's a great link on how to make it when you shake it: http://www.geocities.com/scalaska1/butter.html .

I remembered that you separated the two, but couldn't remember exactly how you went about it.

Thanks ladies!!! I can't believe I'm going to make butter. I would have never thought.

LOL! It's pretty exciting to do it, like a big accomplishment or something. I'm still proud of myself whenever I do it .

LOL! It's pretty exciting to do it, like a big accomplishment or something. I'm still proud of myself whenever I do it .

You were also right about the taste of the milk, it tastes great!!!

Hey Mollie, do you make ALL the butter you use? Or do you use some sore bought too? I was thinking about it, and we use a LOT of butter, you know in like baking and stuff, How much time do you have to devote to it?

LOL! It's pretty exciting to do it, like a big accomplishment or something. I'm still proud of myself whenever I do it .

You were also right about the taste of the milk, it tastes great!!!

We LOVE it too! Congrats on getting good milk!

I'd say I make about 75% of what we use. I do buy butter from the store to have on hand when I know I'll be doing a lot of baking & such.

It really is a minimal amount of time, especially when I use my mixer. I turn it on & leave it, & check it every 5 minutes or so. From start to finish, it takes maybe a 1/2 hour or 45 minutes from when I pour the cream in the mixer until I put the butter away.