I hate waste.   Specifically I hate food waste for obvious reasons.   To name just a couple, there are far too many people in the world with food insecurities which is indeed a tragedy and also the price of food has sky-rocketed.   Because of my aversion to food waste, I try to repurpose food as often as I can.

Sometimes I look in my fridge and see a carton of heavy cream sitting there that was originally intended for a batch of ice cream or a bread pudding that I didn’t get around to making.   In fact just last week I offered you a recipe for flaky pastry dough which uses only 4-6 tablespoons of heavy cream.   Unless you borrow just the required amount of cream from your neighbor (does anybody do that anymore?), you’ll likely have leftover cream!   So the question arises what to do with that cream?   I have a suggestion for you.

Repurpose it into homemade butter.   Making butter is super simple and it’s oh so delicious.   And bonus – the byproduct of making butter is buttermilk.

Here are the steps for making unsalted sweet cream butter.

• Pour your leftover heavy cream into a stand mixer with a whisk attachment.
• Turn the mixer on high and “churn” until the solids, the butter, separates from the liquid, the buttermilk.
• For 1 cup of heavy cream the “churn” time is about 10 minutes if your cream is cold when you start.
• You’ll yield roughly a quarter pound of butter and a half cup of buttermilk.
• Word to the wise: keep an eye on the “churning” process because the separation of solids and liquid happens in the blink of an eye and suddenly you’ll have buttermilk splashing out of your mixing bowl!
• It is important to squeeze the excess buttermilk out of the butter to avoid souring.
• After squeezing out the excess liquid simply press your pale yellow buttery goodness into a bowl or crock and that’s it.   You’ve made unsalted sweet cream butter.   Easy-peasy huh?

Don’t worry if you don’t have a stand mixer.   You can accomplish the “churn” with a hand mixer or by placing the cream in a jar with a lid (if you want to make a sport of it) and shaking vigorously.

Most recipes I’ve read will have you put the butter into a double layer of cheese cloth and plunge it into an ice water bath but frankly I don’t think that’s necessary.   (I mean think about it… what butter churning pioneer had an ice water bath standing by!)

If you find yourself with leftover cream and a smidgen of yogurt or sour cream (natural without thickeners or other additives), now is your chance to experiment with making cultured or European-style butter.   Cultured butters have a pleasant slightly tangy flavor and are made by adding live cultures via say sour cream or yogurt to the heavy cream (1 tablespoon of ‘culture’ per cup of cream) and allowing the combined ingredients to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours. After the “sit” time, follow the same “churning” process as for sweet cream butter.   Fortunately this is not an exact science so don’t worry about exact measurements.   Remember we are repurposing leftovers.

And since this post is about wasting not and wanting not… please do not discard the buttermilk that resulted from you butter making adventure!   With the buttermilk may I suggest making buttermilk biscuits?   Biscuits are forgiving… so if you don’t have quite enough buttermilk make up the difference with some sweet milk.   Top your biscuits with a schmear of your freshly whipped butter and perhaps some savory strawberry preserves made with cracked black pepper and balsamic vinegar, sit back and revel in the fact that your effort to avoid waste resulted in a delightful taste treat!

Waste not want not… thanks for visiting palatable.life.

Be inspired,
Diane

P.S.  What a fun experiment… Butter taste test anyone?  Oh yes we did!Notes from my experimentation!