Simple and easy recipe with video tutorial on how to make butter from raw or pasteurized cream to enjoy the ancestral health benefits of this nutrient-dense traditional food.
Ah, homemade butter. Has there ever been a more perfect food?
To the Traditional Swiss living in the isolated Loetschental valley early in the last century, raw butter made from unpasteurized cream was a sacred food. No pale supermarket butter, but a golden alpine butter made from the rich, beige raw cream of cows grazing on thick grass.
The children raised on this nutrient-dense, raw butter had strong physiques, and wide faces with plenty of room for their teeth. They also had high resistance to disease. There wasn’t a single case of TB in the Loetschental Valley despite this illness raging elsewhere in Switzerland during the early part of the 1900s. At that time, the Swiss villagers still existed on foods grown or sourced themselves in the valley. Only salt was brought in from the outside.
The young men raised on this nutrient-dense traditional diet with plenty of raw, deep yellow butter were so perfect and pleasing in physique, strength, and character that the Vatican favored them over all others in Europe to serve as the Papal Guard.
The Loetschental Swiss knew that it was this nutrient-dense, raw butter that was responsible for their robust health. The indigenous Swiss would put wicks in bowls of the first spring butter and burn it in their Churches!
We now know that this sacred food contained ample amounts of true Vitamin A, D, and K2. When sufficient amounts of these fat-soluble vitamins are present in the diet, they work synergistically to produce a level of health unknown in modern civilization.
The Importance of Raw Butter in the Diet
When I first became knowledgeable on the subject of Traditional Diets, obtaining plenty of raw, grass-fed butter for my family became a primary goal.
The problem was that raw butter was not available anywhere near where I lived. I couldn’t even find raw cream or unpasteurized milk for that matter!
Determined to have this sacred food for my husband and me (I was pregnant at the time) and for my oldest child who was a young toddler, I sourced quarts of frozen, raw grass-fed cream from elsewhere and shipped in 9 or more quarts a month for my family’s use.
With some of that beautiful beige, grass-fed cream, I would make the most tantalizing, golden butter for my family. I continued this habit for many years.
I am fortunate that now I am able to obtain raw, grass-fed butter locally so I rarely have to make my own raw butter anymore. However, I thought it would be helpful to show you how to make this sacred food for yourself in case some of you are in the same predicament that I was many years ago – desperately wanting raw, grass-fed butter but unable to find any!
How to Source Grassfed Cream
The only thing you really need when making butter is quality pastured cream. Don’t use anything else or your butter will turn out white or at best pale yellow. A light-colored butter indicates a low amount of fat-soluble vitamins.
The easiest route is to buy quarts of raw, grass-fed cream from a local farm. If you don’t have a local grass-based dairy farm nearby, you can request your local health food store to stock a pasteurized cream.
Natural by Nature is a good brand as is this pastured A2 cream.
This brand of Devon cream is excellent too and can be mail-ordered to your door.
Be sure to avoid UHT pasteurized cream by Organic Valley as it is too overly processed.
If you can obtain raw, pastured milk but not cream, you could also take the cream off the top of a gallon or two of the milk using a turkey baster and make butter with that cream.
The key is to get creative!
Don’t take no for an answer if you can’t find quality cream where you live. Figure out where to get it whether it be sucked off the top of a few gallons of grass-fed milk or shipped in from another place. A great way to find farms that will mail order cream to you can be found in the Weston A. Price Foundation Shopping Guide.
Can’t Tolerate Butter?
If due to allergy or availability, you are unable to enjoy the benefits of pastured raw butter on a regular basis, it is very important to be sure you’re getting sufficient Vitamin K2 (called the “X-Factor” by Dr. Price) in the diet via a whole food derived K2 supplement (as MK-7, the fermented form). Another dairy-free option to obtain K2 (as MK-4, the animal form) is Australian emu oil.
Both forms of Vitamin K2 synergize with Vitamin A and D obtained in the diet and/or via high vitamin cod liver oil for maximum absorption and effectiveness. The three together are particularly effective at maintaining the health of the teeth and gums.
Homemade Butter
The recipe below details the instructions demonstrated in the video tutorial. You may use either raw or pasteurized cream, preferably from pastured animals.
Note that once you make the butter, you can easily take it one more step to make homemade ghee, which is shelf-stable. Both ghee and raw butter oil are concentrated forms of all the goodness of butter!
How to Make Butter
Recipe for homemade butter using pasteurized or raw cream. Super easy and when sourced from pastured cows, is one of the healthiest foods on the planet.
Ingredients
- 1 quart cream preferably raw and grassfed
- 1 large glass bowl
- 1 hand mixer
Instructions
-
Pour cream into the bowl and let come to room temperature.
-
Turn on hand mixer on medium speed and mix until the cream turns into butter. You will know this because suddenly, the butter will separate from the buttermilk in the bowl and change color to yellow. This takes about 3 minutes.
-
Add 2 cups ice cold water and remix for a few seconds. Pour butter mixture into a fine mesh cheesecloth, gather up the ends and squeeze bag to strain out the water mixed with buttermilk. Repeat this rinsing process one or two more times as desired to make sure all the buttermilk is removed for the sweetest tasting butter.
-
Scoop the butter into a small container with a lid. Refrigerate.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
If you use slightly soured cream in this recipe instead of fresh cream, you will have cultured butter!
Reference
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price
Never mind, just read the reason in your post – I knew that they weren’t 100% grass fed. Should I still be drinking the raw milk even if they aren’t 100% grass fed?
I just bought raw butter from the same farm I buy the milk from but it’s white. I thought all butter was yellow. What makes other butters yellow?
Every time I’ve made raw butter, it has taken on a funny taste the second day. I’ve been thinking its spoiled, and I’m just not working it enough. Any experience or insight on this?
You’re probably not getting all the butter milk out. Rinse and squish it some more until the water is clear.
Yay! I’ve attempted to make raw butter before and it took forever. I can’t wait to watch the video and see how you do it. Thanks for making this video!
You read my mind. Thank you so much for posting this. I am trying to fix my one 11/2 year old daughters cavities and this in one of the things I am making from quick growing grass grazing cow’s milk! wow that is a tongue twister:)
Incidentally, once in a while the cream just will NOT turn into butter. If I have the cream a week or so in the fridge before making butter….I believe this is the result of cream that just too old (not nearly fresh. enough).
Suzanne
That was a scene in the movie ‘Tess’: Tess and Angel – the boy she has her sights on – are laboring on a dairy farm.
The foreman and some others are looking at the butter churn working – but nothing is happening. So he straightens up and says, “Someone is in love”.
What charming folklore I thought, and I always remembered it.
I make my own butter every week and here are my observations-
My butter does not last nearly as long as store-bought (even organic). This is why I am CONVINCED that there is more than meets the eye of any srote-bought butter.
It only lasts about a week or so.
When I make it, I knead (or squish) it in my hands to get as much white-milky liquid (buttermilk) out as possible. (This buttermilk is not the stuff you add to pancakes…you’ll want to culture it first) The less buttermilk in the butter, the longer it lasts becasue the buttermilk will sour.
This is why when I am making it, I send it through “one-go-round” with cold water. It helps rinse the buttermilk out.
I can add salt or not- it just depends on my wants and desires.
Buying a quart of raw cream is $12- this makes one pound of butter….not cheap. Ordering cultured butter from the farm here is just as expensive. I make my own- so I know whats in it.
I make 1/2 pound at a time and use the rest of my cream for making ice cream 🙂
Heres how I make it:
Dump 1/2 quart of raw cream right out of the container in the food processor. Push the on button. When the cream gets hard and yellow (about 3 minutes or so) dump the buttermilk out. (or save it for cultured…) Run the food processor again to get it to work up another batch or buttermilk on the bottom. Dump or save it. “Rinse” the butter with cold water by pouring a bit of water right into the food processor and running again for 30 seconds. Dump the liquid out and squish in your hands to eliminate excess liquid. If the liquid is still whiteish, rinse under the water for a second and squish again.
You can eat it right away! Thats it! Put it into a container and refridgerate.
This butter can stay out on the counter for a day or two if you want soft butter. I put out a few tablespoons in a small bowl each day. Otherwise it keeps in the frdge for about a week. When it smells sour, email Sarah- I can imagine she would have some great uses for it! (I just compost it, but we rarely have any left!)
Suzanne
It’s also worth mentioning that just before the cream hits the butter stage it first hits the whipped cream stage! Delicious! I always have to pause a moment and dip my finger in. No need to ever buy whipped cream either since you can make that, too.
Oh yeah!!! 🙂 Love that whipped cream.
We can get raw butter but the first time I got some it smelled so appalling we had to pitch it right away. An elderly friend (my age!!!) frantically said “Get that out of here!!” the minute we opened it.
I remember eating butter on a farm in Massachusetts (where I grew up) in the 30’s and I thought it was too strong and cheesy then but it was all that was available. Because of that I was leery of trying it again and sure didn’t get miy mind changed. This stuff was much, much worse than the earlier experience.
I told the woman at the farm we order from and she seemed puzzled but then said the problem might be the season – winter, spring, I don’t remember. I now order butter from another farm and it’s pasteurized – and quite pale – but tastes good at least.
Had always thought of making my own and may yet – maybe the same day I make kombucha and saurkraut and all those wonderful things I can’t fit into my ultra-complicated schedule. Glad to see how all of these are done – and some day – some day!
Thanks, Sarah.
Perhaps the farm just didn’t wash its butter. Washing butter makes it taste soooo much better and it lasts longer with no sour taste.
Wow best video ever! So easy that I’m on my way to buy raw cream and enjoy my raw butter later today! Thank you so much Sarah!
Thank you! Actually that video took a lot of editing .. it was far too long and my teenager who is quite proficient with editing kindly chopped it down to the desired length. I can get a little too chatty on camera sometimes 🙂