Easy Butter
One of my best kept kitchen secrets. Well, obviously up until now. Do you know how ridiculously easy it is to make your own butter?
Not saying I bought a cow, tied a red bandana around my head and got up in the wee hours of the morning to milk the animal and churn the butter. No, no, no. Even I have my limits. But really, all you need to quickly whip up a genuine, fantastic home-made butter is heavy cream and a food processor. That's it.
I don't use butter in large quantities -never have and never will- but even I can't pass up a warm, toasty piece of bread smeared with a little bit of heaven.
The flavor is so light, delicate and fresh (so unlike anything store bought) I promise you'll be hooked after just one bite. It's quite an experience. When serving this at get-togethers I'm constantly asked where on earth I buy my butter. I just mumble some vague non-existing company name, throw in a charming smile, take another bite and keep them guessing. That's the fun part!
Ingredients:
2 cups heavy cream
salt
pepper
Optional flavors:
red chili pepper
spring onion
chives
garlic
Directions:
Pour 2 cups of heavy cream in your food processor. The fresher the cream, the better the butter will turn out.
Pop the lid on, blitz, sit back and watch the show. It's quite entertaining, really, but then again, I'm easily amused
The cream will go through different stages. Left you see it turning into a soft, silky whipped cream. A little later it's turning into a really firm cream. In the photo on the right you can tell where we're slowly heading towards, the structure and color is changing.
Then all of a sudden it happens. You hear a 'slosh' (can you tell I'm all excited? I just have no life:) and the grainy, yellow butter has separated itself from, what is now, nothing but buttermilk. This is what we wanted! Eureka!
All that's left to do is drain the buttermilk and there you have it. Butter. If you are going to use it all up, you're good to go now. If you want to keep the butter longer, you'll have to rinse the butter curds with cold water.
Press it down with a spoon and stir it to get the excess liquid out. Told you it was easy!
While the butter is draining I grated the garlic, chopped the chives, spring onions and chili pepper. When it comes to flavored butters, the sky is the limit in my kitchen. I often go crazy. You can literally add any herb you like, spike it with lime or orange zest, add some ginger, a pinch of ground cumin. Anything goes. Just play around with ingredients a bit, you can't go wrong.
Once the butter has drained, transfer it to a bowl, add your chopped ingredients, a good pinch of salt and pepper and mix everything up. I just love how this looks, I really do. You make it, so you know exactly what goes into it. No artificial ingredients, no E-G-Z numbers whatsoever. Pure food.
Get yourself some crunchy bread, slice it, spread some of this delicious butter on top and get hooked!
