Real Food Friday Feast - How to make butter (yes, it's actually good for you!)

I love being able to make things at home that I've always had to rely on a grocery store to supply me with! The problem with buying from a grocery store is that you never really know what you're getting. Making it at home means you can control exactly what goes into it.

Butter was something I'd been wanting to tackle for a while but I needed to collect enough cream first. That's because butter is actually just cream that has been whipped into a frenzy;) How did I collect my cream? Well, I've been buying us raw milk from a local smallholding for the last few months. I don't know if you've had raw milk before but it is EXCEPTIONALLY creamy. If you leave it to sit for a while, all of the cream will rise to the top and you will end up with a layer of cream about 5cm thick in your milk bottle.

Some people live for that layer of cream. GLM doesn't. She actually hates it. So, every time she drank a glass of milk, she would scoop the cream off the top and add it to a container in the freezer. We collected cream over about 3 months. I wasn't in a rush to make butter obviously;) To be honest, I was a bit nervous that it wouldn't work so I kept putting it off but, eventually, I had a good amount of cream and I decided to bite the bullet and try.

Before we go any further, perhaps I should deal with the myth that butter is really bad for your heart.

That's what I think about THAT!

Butter is incredibly GOOD for you. It's margarine that is going to kill you. I just wish I could find a way to make the world believe that. I know how hard it is to break out of a mindset. I used to be just like you. I avoided ANY saturated fats. It took me months to come around but, once I did, I was happy to admit I was wrong. Thank goodness, in all my years of not eating butter I didn't touch margarine either because I just lumped it into the same category as butter and classed it as unhealthy.

It IS unhealthy. But not for the reason I thought it was at the time. The sad truth is that, for decades, the world's morning slice of toast has been completely ruined by replacing good, wholesome butter with chemical-laden, man-made, toxic margarine.

The great BUTTER VS. MARGARINE debate

For the last 5 or so decades, the food processing industry has used advertising campaigns to, very successfully, lie about the urgent need to replace “unhealthy” butter with “healthy” margarine. Ironically, it was science that started the problem by incorrectly suggesting butter MIGHT be the bad guy. Now, it's science we can thank for finally coming forward and admitting that this teaching was nothing more than made-up.

Amazingly, even back in the 60's and 70's there was more than enough scientific evidence to prove that butter was way better than margarine for your health. Unfortunately it was too late. Someone had already put it out there, the industrial fake food industry had cottoned on and started putting money into an alternative and they began to relentlessly convince the world to eat margarine for health reasons. If they didn't do it, someone was going to lose money and isn't that what it always comes down to?

It's scary how prophetic this 1970's advert actually was. Mother nature got shafted while the fake food industry actually managed to convince all of us that fake was better. And we bought into the propaganda.

Here is some info on margarine:

The main ingredients in margarine are vegetable oils like soybean or safflower oil. The problem with vegetable oils is that they are mostly unsaturated, and unsaturated oils are liquid at room temperature. Makes them pretty hard to spread!

But the fake food industry came up with a solution to this problem: They subjected the vegetable oils to a hydrogenation process. This process had two advantages for the manufacturer: it prolonged the shelf life of the margarine and it made them harder at room temperature. Basically, the process of hydrogenation made unsaturated fats resemble saturated fats.

You may be unfamiliar with the term, hydrogenated fats. Let me put it in a language that you'll understand: They are also known as trans fats. These days very few people HAVEN'T heard of trans fats and they KNOW that they are highly toxic. Margarine has always been chock-full of trans fats but these days you do get some that profess to be trans fat-free. However, you should be aware that manufacturers can label their products trans-fat free as long as there is less than 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving. If you are unsure, get to know your terms. If it says hydrogenated anywhere on that label, stay away. Trust me when I say that even small amounts of trans fats can lead to heart disease.

Here's what trans fats do to you:

Partially hydrogenated fatty acids damage arteries and blood vessels. They lower good cholesterol, and raise blood levels of triglycerides and lipoproteins which damages your heart and cardiovascular system. They also raise something called C-reactive protein which is an inflammatory and cellular dysfunction marker. They actually prevent your body from using essential omega 3-fatty acids and prostaglandins, which are needed to get rid of blood clots. What's even worse is that a diet high in partially hydrogenated fatty acids will eventually lead to heart disease, insulin resistance and type 2 Diabetes.

As if that isn't enough, it isn't only the trans fats in margarine that could be harming you. The soybean and safflower oil used in margarine, can be seriously harmful on their own. These types of oils are the biggest sources of polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acids. You may think that's good but it's not. We are already eating TOO much omega-6 fatty acids in our diets. It's a real problem because several studies link excessive consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils with cancer and the very thing margarine is supposed to prevent: heart disease. Strangely enough, it's also connected to excessive violence.

But back to margarine: 

Here is the whole process of making margarine:

• Vegetable oils are extracted from corn, cottonseed, soybeans or safflower seeds. Hexane, which is an organic compound commonly used as a solvent, is used in the extraction process.
• The oil is steam cleaned to remove most impurities. Steaming also destroys vitamins and antioxidants.
• Hydrogen gas is bubbled through liquid oil in the presence of a catalyst (usually nickel). This forces unsaturated fatty acids to become saturated and solid. The more complete the hydrogenation process, the firmer the finished product. Margarine undergoes partial hydrogenation, to make it semi-solid. Partial hydrogenation produces a lumpy grey grease and results in the formation of trans-fats. (Can anyone say blegh!?)
• Emulsifiers are added to remove lumps and bleach is added to get rid of the grey color.
• Then it goes through a second steam cleaning to remove chemical odors.
• Synthetic vitamins, artificial colors and a natural yellow color are added.

And all of this is healthy how exactly? Knowing all this, why would anyone choose to eat this poison?

In case you aren't convinced as to why butter is better, I'll give you 5 reasons why:

• Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) - Raw organic butter has loads of anti- tumor CLA. It prevents the growth of cancer cells in the skin, colon, breasts and lungs. It’s anti-fungal and it stimulates muscle growth while at the same time preventing weight gain.
• Butyric Acid - Butter contains 4% butyric acid – a short chain fatty acid that can prevent the growth of tumors. It also signals the immune system to start working when an infection is starting in the body.
• Vitamin K2 - Raw, organic butter and cream contains vitamin K2 which is necessary for vitamin D synthesis. K2 also moves calcium out of your blood stream and into your bone cells which increases bone density instead of calcifying arterial and heart tissue. You can read this article on vitamin K deficiency symptoms for more info.
• Fat–Soluble Vitamins - Butter is a great source of the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and E. It also does a great job of helping your body to assimilate them.
• The Wulzen Factor - Raw, unpasteurised butter, cream and milk contain something called the “Wulzen factor” which protects against calcification of the joints, or osteoarthritis. It also protects against cataracts, and the calcification of the pineal gland. Pasteurization destroys the Wulzen Factor so you need to eat raw butter to get this benefit.

There is basically NOTHING negative about eating butter. In fact, your body NEEDS it to function properly. Your lungs, heart, immune system liver, bones, hormones and cell membranes all need high quality saturated fats for healthy cell membranes, hormone and vitamin D production, and the transport and utilisation of important vitamins and minerals.

The good thing about using the cream from the raw milk to make my butter is that it also contains the Wulzen Factor. It's very hard to get your hands on raw butter. You won't find it in any shops and even farmer's markets seem to only stock pasteurised butter.

It was quite a process making my butter but it's not alway that complicated. I'll give you the basic rundown and then I'll give you some options for troubleshooting your butter making.

How to make butter

Ingredients

Cream (if you want it to be extremely healthy, use raw cream but, at the very least, use organic)

Method

• Make sure your cream is room temperature before you even start (this is very important and I'll explain why later)
• Place cream in a glass jar and seal the lid
• Shake the jar for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes (this is a great arm workout too;) )
• You'll eventually notice that there is a hard lump in the jar and some milky liquid
• Place a cloth over a bowl and pour the contents of the jar onto the cloth
• Gather up the ends of the cloth and let all the liquid drip out. Give it a while to drain.
• Place the solid lump of butter in a bowl and pour some ice water over it
• Using an electric mixer, beat the butter with the water for a few minutes
• Repeat the process of pouring the butter and liquid onto a cloth covering a bowl
• Gather up the ends of the cloth, tie a piece of string around them and tie it from the handle of one of your kitchen cupboards with the bowl underneath to catch all the liquid
• Leave it to drip for several hours. You can even squeeze the lump of butter to speed up the process.
• Open up the cloth and, voila, you have butter! It should keep in the fridge for 2 weeks (if it lasts that long!)

Finally! I made my own butter!

Troubleshooting

So, my first mistake was not waiting for the cream to warm up to room temperature. 

My second mistake was using my electric mixer first off.

Basically, if the cream isn't warm enough, it won't thicken AND, if you mix it too fast, it breaks down the fat instead of thickening it. After about 30 minutes of beating my cream to death, it was still completely liquid! I put it back in the container and in the fridge and did some research to see where I went wrong. 

The next day I took it out of the fridge and allowed it to warm to room temperature and then I used the shaking method and shook it in my jar for 20 minutes.

It did separate but it was essentially STILL just thick cream and some liquid... I wasn't beaten yet! I separated the liquid and cream and placed the thick cream in a container and back in the fridge and went back to my research!

The next day I placed the cream (which was pretty rock hard by now) in a bowl, added some ice water and mixed it with my electric mixer. Within a few minutes I had butter! The advantage of the water was that it cleaned off the last bits of liquid. The liquid is actually buttermilk and it's quite sour so it will ruin the taste of your butter and it will make it spoil faster.

I don't think it always has to be such a process. Every site you google tells you it happens pretty much immediately. You can't go wrong with shaking it. It is the best way to get it to separate and it really isn't as hard to do as it sounds! I thought it would be exhausting. It actually happened so fast I was completely taken by surprise. I'm sure I probably could have just used my electric mixer then and there with some ice water but, frankly, I needed a break;) My research had also told me that, once the cream was thickened, it seemed to turn to butter faster if it was cold.

All of the hard work paid off. The butter we have is so sweet and creamy and, even better, it's raw so it's loaded with all sorts of yummy goodness!

You may not end up with a LOT of butter but hey, I can say I made my own butter! And that, in itself, is quite a thrill:)