Buttercup

Buttercup
Matriarch of the King Farm!

Monday, September 28, 2015

Butter!

I usually make ghee from most of the butter I make.  I guess I just haven't gotten the hang of getting the butter rinsed properly or maybe I don't get enough of the water out because it always starts changing flavor within a day or two of being made.  And I prefer the flavor of sweet cream butter.  I have tried cultivated cream butter and it is okay, but it still turns cheesy in flavor within a few days.

Yesterday I decided to store my butter in the freezer to make it less likely to change flavor on me.  So once I had it shaken up and washed/rinsed, I laid out a piece of waxed paper and made a slight crease halfway down the length of the paper.  The I plopped out portions of approximately 1/4 cup each.  I then folded over the other end of the waxed paper to cover the butter and placed it in my freezer.  It took three pieces of waxed paper to portion out all the butter I made from 3/4 gallon of rich cream and I gently stacked them up.

Once frozen, I placed the butter, waxed paper and all, into a Ziploc freezer bag for storage.  I kept out about a quarter cup of butter in a small plastic container with a lid and am keeping it in the refrigerator.  This morning, I actually remembered to take it out early enough so that the butter was nice and soft when I made my toast.

I'm really hoping that this method works because I can't stomach paying $4 per pound for butter.  Yikes!

A couple of weeks ago, I found some cream I had frozen up and decided to use it to make some butter.  I also had a half gallon of fresh cream, so I made each batch of cream into butter without blending the creams together.  Here's a photo of what the resulting butter looked like:


The fresh cream butter is on the left and has a lovely, deep yellow appearance, which means it has a lot of beta carotene in it.  The cow gets the beta carotene from eating fresh grass.  It is good for us, too!  The frozen cream butter is on the right and was from cream frozen (and milked out of the cow), in March.  Her diet at that time of year mainly consists of hay.  She also gets grain and I grow fodder - grain seeds grown hydroponically until they have a nice root mat and the tops are 3-4 inches tall.  I've found that the fodder makes her milk, thus the cream, even whiter.

I blended the two together to cook down into ghee, and it is as delightful as ever, I'm happy to say.  I took the picture because I've always "known" that there was a big difference between summer and winter milk/cream/dairy products, but I wanted the evidence before my eyes.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for showing the dramatic difference in the butter colors! I've noticed it too, but of course you normally only have one kind of cream at a time so it makes it hard to compare. You're making me hungry!
    Zephrhillsusan

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  2. The difference was pretty amazing and I'm glad I got a picture of it.

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