Making Homemade Butter from Our Cow's Milk

in Homesteading11 months ago (edited)

We have a milk cow for various reasons. One of the main ones is the cost of milk here in Panama. It's usually more than $6 a gallon. Butter is also really expensive as well as yogurt and cream! All this from the location in the country where most of the dairies are!

Because of the high cost of dairy products, I make good use of the milk we get from our cow. I just finished making a gallon of yogurt overnight and also made some fresh butter this morning. Check out the process.

First I take the cream off of the top of the milk. If it sits in the fridge overnight, it collects a nice bit of cream - enough to make a good amount of butter!

The cream goes directly into the food processor or blender. If it's been sitting on the counter for a little while, it processes quicker than if it comes straight out of the fridge. The only difficult thing with that is the butter is then super soft after it separates.

After a few minutes on high, the color of the milk starts to turn a little yellow. I love this part because you can actually hear when the butter and the milk separate. The machine starts making a different sound and you know it's almost done!

The next thing you notice is little yellow chunks inside the container! Wahoo! The butter has started to clump together and it is done. The blender is turned off and it is time to see what you have!

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Then I scrape everything out into a bowl and you can see the butter has separated from the milk! What you have left is some amazing tasting butter and some pretty tasty buttermilk. I use it usually for making biscuits or bread. None of it goes to waste either!

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The next step is to squish, squish, squish out all of the buttermilk from the butter. This will take a few minutes to get all of it out. I just basically fold the butter back onto itself over and over again until nothing comes out when it is squished.

What is left is some amazing butter! Tastes great on bread, in cookies, or with biscuits! Yummy!!

Have you ever made butter? It's the same process if you use cream from the store - might be a fun project to try!

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I remember making butter in kindergarten and being entranced at the magical appearance of the butter from the milk. It was a formative memory, perhaps why I live in dairy country today. Much of my diet, and most of my favorite foods, either is dairy, or I can not enjoy fully without dairy.

I did work on a commercial dairy, and I remember being absolutely gobsmacked when I learned that the best of the dairy cows could produce over 200 lbs of milk a day. I recall there are 8 or so of you in the household, but I am pretty sure that 200 lbs a day is more dairy than even 10 people could consume. That would be 20 lbs each! Even I do not consume half that much, LOL!

I am also familiar with some of the issues with cattle, the space they need, feeding them, the equipment and structures that are necessary, as well as that cows only produce milk ~2 years after birthing calves, and that requires the help of a bull somewhere along the line. I am very impressed and happy, even elated, that you manage all these for that beautiful blessing you have showed you gain from it.

Thanks!

Wow!! That is a lot of milk that the cows can produce! Our cow produces about 2 gallons a day which is perfect for us. We usually drink 1.5 gallons a day between the 8 of us and then use the rest for yogurt after a few days of it piling up. Ha! We have a few acres here in Panama and our cow is happy during rainy season. She does ok during dry season as well, but thankfully it doesn't last too long. We have the help of a local farmer if it is something beyond what we know about cows (which isn't much). My husband does all the milking and I do all the washing of the milker after and dealing with the milk. It works well! Ha! I tried in the US to have the kids shake a jar with cream in it, but it took forever. There were multiple sites online how to do it and each said a different thing - freezing cold cream or lukewarm cream. I think we finally ended up with some butter, but they never wanted to do it "by hand" again. ;)

Butter from raw cow milk will be very sweet 🎂, Cow milk swee add to butter sweet, everything sweet 🧁, remember to cutter my own share of butter.

Yes, it's really good butter! We enjoy it.

Yay! 🤗
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This is amazing.
What is the name of this machine.
Having people make their own domestic butter will be very economical.
Thanks for sharing this with us.