Homemade Cultured Butter

Makes about 4 ounces butter and 4 ounces buttermilk

You can make any amount you like, so adjust ingredient amounts in proportion. Each cup (½ pint) of heavy cream will yield about 4 ounces ounces of butter and 4 ounces of buttermilk. Look for heavy cream (a.k.a. heavy whipping cream) with a single ingredient on its label: cream. In the Bay Area, Berkeley Farms, Clover and Straus brands meet that

low-bar challenge. 1 cup whipping cream, without

additives 1 tablespoon yogurt with active cultures, creme fraiche or sour cream( without any thickeners or preservatives ½ teaspoon fine sea salt,

optional

Instructions: Gently heat the cream you’ve decided to churn over lowheat until it’s warm to the touch, around 90 degrees. Whisk in the yogurt, creme fraîche or sour cream. Cover the creamand set aside, at warm room temperature, overnight or up to two days. The cream will thicken and take on a tangy edge. The cultured flavor intensifies the longer it sits.

Chill the cultured cream before beating it. Then all you need to do is that: Beat it. Just beat it. You can use a standing mixer, an electric mixer or just arm power.

If you have a standing mixer, cover the mixer with a clean kitchen towel to minimize the splattering. Use the paddle attachment, which is easier to clean than the whisk. If using an electric mixer, be sure to use a large bowl and set it in the sink to contain the splattering a bit. A large jar, shaken, makes no suchmess, of course, but it will require some serious elbowgrease. Consider having a teammate or two to take turns if you choose the manual route.

Start on a slowspeed to minimize splattering, then increase the speed as the cream thickens up. If you prefer salted butter, sprinkle in the fine sea salt. The cream will become whipped cream. Keep going, and eventually it will stiffen and start to look like the stuff froman aerosol can. Keep going. It will start to look dry, like crumbled Styrofoam. Beat on. Finally, and quite suddenly, the whole breaks apart, with the fat coming together in little bits and the buttermilk separating out so that you hear a liquid thwack in the bowl. Reduce the speed or it will splatter. When the clumps pull together into iceberg-like blobs, stop beating.

Line a colander with several layers of cheesecloth or a clean flour sack towel. Set it over a large bowl, and

drain the beaten cream to separate the butter and the buttermilk (see Note below).

Lift up the cloth and use it to squeeze the butter into a single mass. Twist the cloth down to squeeze as much buttermilk out of

the butter as possible.

Some people wash the butter by squeezing it under cool running water or putting the butter into a large bowl of ice coldwater, squeezing and working the butter until the water is cloudy, and repeating until the water is clear. I find that by draining it in the cheesecloth or towel and squeezing hard, there isn’t much buttermilk left to wash out.

Transfer to a bowl or other vessel and serve, or cover and chill for up to several days.

Note: If you’ve never tasted freshly rendered buttermilk, one sip of this elixir may well be the best reward for this project. Drink it straight, like farmers used to in order to beat the heat, or use it to make biscuits (recipe at: http://bit.ly/1lUoOYH) or killer pancakes (recipes at: http://bit.ly/1AwlpA8 and http://bit.ly/1seTjJc).