Cultured Butter Recipe

Tara Carpenter, NC.

Nutrition Consultant specialized in helping people regain natural gut microbiome after yeast, bacterial, and viral infections.

Originally published on November 6, 2018.

I make cultured butter a few times a year; mainly late summer into early autumn and late spring into early summer when I can easily source fresh, raw pastured cream. That gets turned into crème fraîche and then churned into sturdy, golden mounds of delicious probiotic-rich butter “a.k.a. cultured butter” (see beginner recipe below).

People with dairy and/or fat sensitivities’ often find this way of preparing and eating butter to be easy-to-digest. See for yourself. I find the hardest part to getting in the kitchen with this recipe is sourcing full-fat cream (preferably raw) and culture starter.

Cream sourced from cows grazing on fresh, green grass in sunshine will contain more essential fatty acids which can help lower inflammation in your body once you enjoy eating that butter. I shape the butter with my hands and wrap each in parchment paper. A small amount from each batch go into Ziploc bags that are placed in freezer for coming winter when the deep gold color is a sight for eyes surrounded by white, white snow.

If you have kids like I do, offer them the fine-mesh strainer used to strain the fatty butter from whey …. my boys loved to suck out the tiny butterfat remnants with glorious happy sounds, music to a mama’s ears 🙂

Cultured Butter

Yields: ¼ lb. butter* and 1 cup buttermilk

Ingredients

1 pint grass-fed, full-fat cream (raw will give most flavor/enzyme activity)

1 packet of starter culture** OR 2 Tbs whey or buttermilk

Instructions

Bring cream to room temp.
Place in a clean glass jar.
Whisk in culture starter.
Cover and allow to sit for 12-20 hrs. at 72-75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Refrigerate the slightly thick cream for 2-3 days (optional but allows cream to “set” which helps butter to churn faster).
Remove from fridge and let it come to 55-65 degrees.
Pour into a food processor with steel blade or a stand-mixer with a whisk, or a blender. You can also churn with an electric or hand-crank blender if you have one.
Churn slowly at first, graduating to high speed, until butter forms (cream moves through 3 stages: whip cream, stiff whip cream, then splits into butter/buttermilk).
Drain through fine-mesh sieve over a bowl to catch the buttermilk (save for later).
Transfer butter to a small bowl, pressing out any remaining buttermilk with a spoon.
Add cold water, wash the butter, and press until no more buttermilk is released.***
Form butter into a ball and pat dry with a paper towel.
Season with ¼-1/2 tsp fine ground sea salt, herbs, garlic or Herbamore (if desired).
Wrap in wax paper, store in fridge (freeze for long-term storage).

Tips & Ideas

Reserve a small amount of the thick cream each time to use as the starter in the next batch. Like a good sourdough, the flavor will continue to develop as time goes on.
Make a bunch at once and freeze. I do this every year when the cream is at its richest from cows grazing all summer long. Making cultured butter is greasy business; I like to make a lot when I do.
Don’t cook cultured butter because it has live beneficial bacteria (probiotics) inside. Heat kills/destroys good flora.
Butter and other fats (duck fat, pumpkin seed oil, coconut oil) are great for teeth, joints, and bones. Fat carries nutrients from food you eat into your cells.

*Actual amount of butter you get depends on fat content of the cream used. Holstein cows produce milk with the least amount of fat, while Jersey cows produce a fattier milk.

**I use this culture starter; with 6 packets per box, this high quality one as contains Lactobacillus plantarum, which research suggests may help gut dysbiosis, like IBS, Crohn’s Disease and Colitis.

***Butter that is washed tends to store longer than unwashed butter.

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