MAKING BUTTER by Jim Fleming

One of my fondest memories of my grandmother and I have many, is when she would make fresh butter. I always thought what an amazing process butter making was and how great fresh homemade butter tasted. She would take a mason jar and put about a pint of fresh cow's cream in it (back then it was raw unpasteurized milk products). Next she would cover the mouth of the jar with a piece of wax paper and screw the lid on over that making a leak proof seal. Most of the time she would sit in her favorite chair in the living room and shake the jar while bouncing it on her knee. This process causes the butter milk to separate from the milk fat and form a ball of butter in the jar. It would take about 15 to 20 minutes of shaking and bouncing the jar to form the ball of butter. Once the butter formed, she would pour off the butter milk and add about 6 – 8 ounces of cold water to the jar and shake again for a few minutes. This would wash the remaining butter milk from the butter as well as cool the butter making it more firm. She would then pour off this water and add a nice pinch of salt (maybe ¼ teaspoon) to the butter in the jar and shake again for few minutes. The remaining water could then be poured off and she would pour the ball of butter into a crock that held it perfectly. The butter was ready to eat on toast, hot biscuits, or any other food that called for butter and man was that some great tasting butter! You can make your own fresh butter at home as well using heavy cream in a mixer, blender, food processor, or a mason jar. If you have access to the Internet you can go online to Youtube and watch dozens of videos that show you step by step all the ways to make fresh tasty butter at home.