How To Make Cultured Butter

Make delicious European cultured butter in your own kitchen. This simple process yields both cultured butter and cultured buttermilk for your eating pleasure. Yields around 200-250g of butter.

Course Condiments

Cuisine French

Keyword Condiment

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 0

Fermentation Time 2

Total Time 2 15

Servings g approx.

Calories 2052kcal

Equipment

Large Jar 1L is perfect
Digital Scale
Stand Mixer or Thermomix
Ultra Fine Cloth cheesecloth, muslin or nut milk bag

Ingredients

600 mls Heavy Cream must not be ultra pasteurised or contain any gums or thickeners (see notes)
70 g Plain Unsweetened Yogurt with Live Cultures (see notes)
5 g Sea Salt you can add less if prefer it less salty
2 L Water must be icy cold

Instructions

Place the natural yogurt in the base of a large jar (I use a 1000 ml jar for this recipe). Pour the heavy cream over the top of the yoghurt and gently stir the two together using a clean spoon.
Place the lid onto the jar and put it somewhere relatively warm for 24 hours. I put my jar in a yoghurt maker set to 25C. See notes for ideas of how to keep your cream at the right temperature.
After 24 hours, you will have a jar of thick, cultured cream. You should see a few bubbles and the cream will look like it's been whipped.
Place the jar (with lid on) into the fridge for 24 hours.
Once the jar of cream has been in the fridge for 24 hours, remove it and empty the cultured cream into the bowl of your stand mixer or Thermomix. If you are using a stand mixer, you'll need to use your wire whisk attachment.
Please note - if using a stand mixer, you'll need to use the stand mixer at full speed for the next few steps. If using a Thermomix, don't go above speed 4.
Whip the cultured cream for a few minutes, until the cream separates into butter and buttermilk. It will take up to 5 minutes for this to happen (it takes a little longer because the cream is so cold). But just be patient, it will happen!
Place a piece of fine cloth in a bowl and pour the buttermilk over it, adding the butter on top. If using the wire whisk attachment on your stand mixer, you'll need to knock the butter out of here.
Using your hands, squeeze as much of the buttermilk out of the butter by wrapping it in the cloth and squeezing as hard as you can. Put the strained buttermilk aside (it's liquid gold) and add the butter back into the bowl of your mixer.
Cover the butter with at least 1L of icy cold water and use your stand mixer or Thermomix to wash the butter. Don't worry, you won't ruin your beautiful butter - the icy cold water prevents it from being mixed up with the water.
Now, place the cloth over another bowl and pour the water and butter out into it. Use the cloth to strain out the butter by wrapping it and squeezing it as hard as you can. Toss out the water.
Repeat the washing of the butter one more time, straining it again through the cloth and squeezing out as much water as you can.
Clean and thoroughly dry the bowl of your mixer and return the clean butter to the bowl.
Add the sea salt and whip the butter until it's pale and creamy.
Transfer the butter to a clean butter bell or jar for storage.

Notes

MEASUREMENTS - I have used 600 mls of cream for this recipe because it is the standard size carton of cream in my part of the world. It is equal to 20 fluid ounces of cream.

The basic rule for making cultured cream is to use 10-12% culture to cream. This means that I've used 70g of yogurt to 600 mls of cream because it's around 12%. If you had 200 mls of cream, you'd use around 24g of yogurt. You can easily work it out, just multiply the amount of cream you are using by 12%.

YOGURT - Depending on where in the world you're from, you might say yo-gurt or yog-ert or even spell it yoghurt (like me!). Just make sure you use unsweetened, plain yogurt. It might be called natural unsweetened or even pot set in your part of the world.

CREAM - You need heavy whipping cream that has not been ultra pastuerised. You do not have to find unpasteurised cream (which is near impossible). So the whipping cream you find in the refrigerator at the store is fine. You cannot make cultured butter with UHT cream or ultra heat treated cream.

Nutrition