Raw Milk Turns Into Many Homestead Products

As I sit here this evening, while the cool fall air swirls around the trees to pull off the dead leaves and floats them to the ground, today was a good productive day.

You might remember the other night I went to a secret location and got some raw, right from the cow, milk. Now before you start posting your thoughts of how bad raw milk is for you, I will not listen to your nonsense. Your wasting your time preaching to me about all the things bad with raw milk, and if I wanted to waste my time I would combat and debate the issue with you. But I am not going to do that.

As I used a method taught to me by my Mom, I had confirmed the technique of separating the cream from the top of the milk. So out of the milk I got I ended up with enough cream to make nearly three pounds of butter. You see I dodged that "how much cream did you get" bullet? I didn't measure my cream as I should have because I forgot to and just moved into butter production first thing this morning.

So, I know your ready to get into the whole butter production, but I wanted to let you know in my useful gadgets I have a Mixer Stand like the one I used to make my own butter. One of these days I am going to blog a list of stuff I make with my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

So I started out by allowing my cream sit overnight and then just chilled it a couple hours. I added some into the stand mixing bowl, and kept adding until the mixer was going on high and I always make a foil bonnet around it to keep it full.

 So as it starts to churn, it will thicken up and the milk and as you can see in the photo below, the level of milk has dropped compared to the one above. Generally I just keep adding cream until I get enough where I know my machine can handle the butter.

So by adding foil around the edge, tucking it in, I can fill my mixer up pretty full without spreading milk all over the kitchen.

Taking a peek in, can you see the noticeable change it texture and color?

Well it won't be long until my butter starts to clump and balls together. When it is at this point it is time to take it out and strain it.

Now it is time to start cutting the butter, if you don't cut it, it will become rancid very soon and you have wasted all your cream, time and effort. Cutting the butter with a pastry cutter and cold water will clean out all the residue milk that has been collected during butter making process. Ice cold water added, than cut it for a couple minutes, strain add new cold water, and repeat until your butter cuts clean in water. I use 1/2 cup cold water during my first cut and mix that with my buttermilk. The remainder several batches after the first one I toss out.

This is my last cut, clearly from the first photo you can see the water color get much clearer.

Now I will strain the butter one last time and begin to press it into containers for long term storage. Notice the water coming out?

Don't be afraid to poke your fingers down into the butter to remove the air pockets and the water will also continue to come out. Now it is time to smooth it out for long term storage...

Some advice, never share your source for raw milk by bragging about it, share with people you know if the farmer allows it. Make sure to visit your farmer and make sure they are a clean milker. If your lucky as I am, mine doesn't use hormones and mine grazers and produce organic milk for the market.

So tomorrow for breakfast I will have homemade buttermilk (made from my by product from butter production) pancakes with my homemade butter covered in my homemade maple syrup.... I feel pretty proud to say all those homemade words in one sentence....