Butter up to quality

The reputation of a cultured butter from a small factory in Launceston is spreading around the world

When he was here in March for TasTAFE’s Great Chefs series, world renowned French chef Alain Passard held a big block of butter from Tasmanian Butter Co and theatrically put a big smear on each side plate.

It was, he said, “the best salted cultured butter in the world”. Surprisingly, the maker of that butter, Olivia Morrison, thinks to tell me that story only at the end of a one-hour interview.

The recommendation of another chef — Paul Wilson of Wilson & Market at Prahran Market in Melbourne — and then the approval of five Tasmanian judges, has made the butter a Tasmanian winner in the delicious Produce Awards.

Wilson says the butter’s flavour “enriches your palate with savoury herbaceous lactic acid” and that the addition of Tasman sea salt from Swansea “completes the perfect farmto-table terroir of this delicious delicacy”.

Not too shabby for a producer with not quite a year’s experience making butter commercially.

Olivia and her husband Rob moved from Sydney to a house in Trevallyn in Launceston four years ago. Just about the only downside was finding good cultured butter, so Olivia began making her own.

They both worked from home in IT, but after daughter Minnie was born two years ago Olivia wanted a change, but to still be home-based.

She set about filling that gap in the market for proper cultured butter and asked the Tasmanian Dairy Industry Authority if her concrete-lined basement on a hillside might be suitable. It was, and away she went. True cultured butter involves naturally fermenting and ageing the cream. Olivia’s 42 per cent fat pure cream arrives on a Friday. She inoculates it with a mesophilic culture and leaves the cream to “ripen” for 18 or 26 hours, depending on the time of year.

During this time, Olivia checks the cream every six hours to check the flavour, by tasting it, and the acidity, by testing it.

Once the correct level of

acidity is reached some time on Saturday, the cream is kept under refrigeration until Tuesday, which is the ageing process that gives the bacteria time to consume the lactose in the cream and fully develop the flavour.

On Tuesday, and for the next two days, Olivia and her employee make the butter, beginning with churning 20 litres at time in a commercial mixer. Then muscle takes over, as they knead the liquid, or buttermilk, out of the butter.

At the end, the salt is added, some of which is milled down but some left as flakes.

“I quite like to have some crunchy bits in there for texture,” Olivia says.

Rob is also part of the butter business, but his day job is to work from home as a web designer. When Olivia and her helper make butter his role is to provide “cups of tea and cake and make lunch for us”.

The Morrisons believe they are the only ones in Tasmania making butter this traditional way, and one of only three or four in Australia. And in a business where 5000kg a week is considered a small run, at 80kg a week they probably will go unchallenged as the smallest producers in the country.

They also bottle and sell the buttermilk. When used in baking it activates baking powder and soda so that scones and pancakes are fluffier. The gentle acidity is very good for marinating and tenderising meat, and its tangy flavour can be a basis for a salad dressing.

Some of the butter is simmered for six hours to make ghee. The moisture evaporates and the milk solids stick together and go the bottom of pot.

“We caramelise them and get almost a brown-butter, nutty flavour, which is pretty gorgeous,” Olivia says.

The solids are filtered out but flavours stay in the pure fat, which has a smoke point of 250C.

Olivia sells her products every Saturday at the Harvest Market in Launceston, and every other Sunday at the Farm Gate Market in Hobart (next on July 9 and 23). The buttermilk and ghee are sold only at the markets, but the butter is sold in Hobart at “perfect match” Pigeon Whole Bakery in Argyle St and Hill Street shops. It is used in table service at Saffire, Stillwater, Peacock, and Jones and Landscape.

“I quite like to have some crunchy bits in there for texture”

OLIVIA MORRISON ON USING SALT FLAKES