When Will You Need Pioneering Skills?

For those of you who have read The Duchess of Idaho, you know there’s a scene where Grace is both baffled and amused when her grandmother Annabelle teaches her how to churn butter. Annabelle has a feeling that Grace will need such a skill. It’s a skill Grace will be thankful to have when she’s homesteading in the 19th century without a grocery store in sight.

While researching food on the Oregon Trail, I learned that the women didn’t need to churn the cream to get butter during the 2000-mile journey. The wagons, bouncing over rugged terrain all the daylight hours, did the work for them. The women would hang buckets of cream inside their wagons and when they stopped for the night they had fresh butter.

Learning How To Churn Butter

As I was reading some recipes for making butter, I realized that the process didn’t look too hard so I thought I’d try it myself. As a wannabe food historian, this was right up my alley!

There are several ways to make butter. You can simply pour the cream into a mason jar and shake until the butter forms. You can use your stand mixer or even a hand mixer, pour in the cream, and let the mixer do its thing until the butter separates from the buttermilk.

Since I was doing this for research purposes (and, again, scratching that food historian’s itch), I wanted something reasonably close to the churns they would have used during the 19th century.

Butter churns came in many shapes and sizes during the 19th century. However, something like the barrel above wouldn’t work in my small apartment. I opted for something that worked in the same way but was easier to handle.

I found this handy-dandy mason jar with paddles that spin when you crank the side handle. The top handle makes it easier to hold onto while you’re working. I poured the cream into the jar and started churning. That’s it!

Watch Out, Arms: A Lot of Churning Ahead!

Well, that’s it except for the fact that it took me about 25 minutes of churning to make butter.

The cream will become butter more quickly if it’s not cold from the refrigerator, so leave the cream out at room temperature for a bit. Then, after a fair bit of churning, the cream will become whipped.

It’s a little hard to see here, but the cream has become whipped. You could stop at this point if you were in need of some whipped cream. For my homemade whipped cream recipe, I whip the cream until it’s nearly finished and then I add 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon of powdered sugar. Then I whip the cream until it has the medium peaks I like. Trust me, the vanilla adds great flavor to whipped cream.

If you’re continuing until you get butter, keep on churning. Not long after the whipped cream stage, you’ll start to see the butter separating from the buttermilk.

After the butter has separated from the buttermilk, place a sieve over a bowl. Pour the butter into the sieve and allow the buttermilk to drain into the bowl. Keep that buttermilk! There are a lot of great ways you can use it. Remember, the people traveling the Oregon Trail and then homesteading when they reached their destination had to use everything. Nothing could go to waste.

You want to make sure you get all of the buttermilk out of the butter, and there are a couple of ways you can do that. I’ve read that you can pour cold water over the butter and then you can squeeze the butter through a clean dish towel or a cheesecloth to make sure all of the liquid is out. I squeezed my butter through cheesecloth and then I used paddles to press out any remaining liquid. Using paddles with homemade butter is more of an old-fashioned way of doing it, which is why I wanted to try it.

Pressing and Shaping the Butter

Before I paddled the butter into the round shape I wanted, I added 1/4 teaspoon of salt because I like my butter lightly salted. You could also add herbs of your choosing at this stage.

After the butter was ready, I stored it in the refrigerator in this handy-dandy butter container. There are many cute containers on the market, including butter molds with different scalloped and flowery shapes. I may try one with scalloped edges next time.

As I was churning away for nearly a half-hour, I realized how disconnected we’ve become from our food sources. Our ancestors had to work hard for every morsel they ate.

Churning for 25 minutes was boring at first, but as I became mindful of what I was doing I felt a connection to everyone who has churned butter in the past since that was their only means of having butter. The experience came with a reminder to be thankful for everything I eat.

Whether you use a mason jar with paddles or your stand or hand mixer, making homemade butter can be a rewarding experience. It’s a simple way to experience fresh, homemade food.

I think I’m going to bake some strawberry scones. I need something to go with my fresh butter!