"Seems safe"

My husband, who eats fermented meats, was a little wary of the cultured cream I had going on the counter. "Seems safe!" he said nervously. "Of course it's safe! I asked two food goddesses how to do this!" I suspect, though, that if I had asked my mom who has a master food preserver certification, she would have words with me. Do you know what's not fun? Eating at a restaurant where you can see the kitchen with my mom. "That's not sanitary!" I still think she got my fav sushi restaurant in Reno shut down a long time ago, but whatever.

Watching Tudor Monastery Farm, I learned a lot about dairy safety and how to clean my equipment.

• hot water in the churn to break up the fat
• scouring, maybe with salt
• let dry in the sunshine

I learned a bit about butter too. The culturing would have just happened because nature, so I think it's a process we modernly have to jump start. You can Google how to make it, but the recipes I found said to use packets of starter. I did not want to buy this, so I asked people! Yes, people! Pie goddess Eulalia of Medieval York: Eulalia Hath a Blogge posted a little bit about the process on facebook and I asked about it, and I also asked dairy goddess Juana per Gianetta's suggestion because I wanted my bases covered. Juana suggested getting the good stuff, Straus in this case, and said she used 1-2 tbsp of active culture buttermilk per pint of cream and let it sit out until it got all creme fraiche like. I went to Sprouts and found two brands of buttermilk, so I had to message Eulalia and say "Is this active culture?" to which the answer was basically "yes. I've never found one that isn't." But it's not going to say that on the side of the carton. 

I need to clean and reseal this grout, but I live in a rental. My motivation to do that is low.

All mixed in! What's not entirely evident from this picture is that the two ingredients could clearly be seen and distinguished.

So I stirred it up!

I then covered it with saran wrap. I filled my churn up one more time with water and went to bed.


When I ran downstairs the next morning to check on my little dairy production, I noticed a difference in the appearance of the mixture. It was just as bubbly but had a decent thickness to the top it didn't have last night. It was definitely cold downstairs last night because the windows were open in an effort to cool down the house so I'm hoping the heat of the day will speed this up so I can churn this stuff this afternoon! It doesn't usually top 70 in the kitchen which I believe is what I want to aim for temp wise.

My churn was looking good. About 2/3 of the water had slowly leaked out overnight but the leaking has definitely slowed. I filled it up with water again.

I then went out to get my hair done because you have to look good while churning butter. I came home and this is what greeted me.

Definitely like creme fraiche

So I dumped the rest of the water out of the churn and got churning!

Even though my churn still leaks water slowly, it does not leak cream. I think viscosity might play a role but I'm not a scientist. Either way it works.

Just dumped in the churn

after 10 minutes. I can't believe it didn't take longer.  

I did read that it is possible to over churn butter, so I only went for another 10 minutes.

Soon this will be clogging my arteries

I pulled the butter out using the dasher and put it in a Pyrex bowl for a rinse.

This is a lot of butter.

You really want to rinse the crud out of your butter otherwise it goes rancid. Use cold water, and manipulate the butter with a spatula or your hands to make sure you're getting out as much as possible.

You can see how cloudy the water is.

rinse #3

At this point you can salt your butter so it will keep longer, according to the internets. I used a bit of salt because I'm giving a lot of this away. I do not eat butter very often, to be honest. I just wanted to know what I was in for if I ran this as a kid's activity.

salt, coarse.

I mixed the salt in and I put the butter in it's final home, a 3 cup Pyrex dish.

About 2.5 cups of butter, I think.

Eulalia told me it can also be frozen. 

All in all, I think I could have used 4 pints total in my churn (1.8 liters, roughly) and been fine. I didn't have any cream explosions or other mishaps. If I were doing this with kids, I would not culture the cream (Eulalia said cultured cream churns faster, which I didn't know because it's my first time) but I would let it come up to room temp, which according to the internet also makes for a faster churn than fridge cold cream. Basically the cost for this experiment was $16.50, $4 of which I will get back when I return the Straus bottles for the deposit. If I could have found a smaller container of buttermilk, it would have cost less.