How to Make Butter: Homemade Cultured & Sweet Cream Butter Guide
Making butter at home is a simple process that can yield either cultured or sweet cream butter, each bringing its own subtle flavor. Cultured butter has a slight tang from natural fermentation, while sweet cream butter is milder. You can easily make both types right in your kitchen using raw or pasteurized cream. This guide will walk you through each method to enjoy fresh, homemade butter.
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All that is required to make any butter is just one ingredient — cream or milk that hasn’t been homogenized.
Cultured butter is made from fresh cream allowed to culture (ferment) at room temperature for about 24 hours. It is traditionally made with raw cream.
You can make cultured butter with pasteurized cream, but you must add a culture to it to do so safely (more on that below).
Sweet cream butter is made from fresh cream that is churned or whipped/mixed into butter. It can be made easily (and in the same way) with raw cream or pasteurized cream.
Most people in North America are familiar with sweet cream butter. Your grocery store may not even have cultured butter, which is much more common in Europe.
I will show you how to make both cultured and sweet cream butter using raw or pasteurized cream.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments section as well.
You can also check out my guide on how to make sour milk and use your fresh butter in my sweet and savory butter board.
For more recipes, check out my raw kefir smoothie and my traditional recipe for Irish soda bread, which uses the buttermilk leftover from this recipe. You may want to try that one out, as you will have buttermilk to use up!
How To Make Butter From Milk
If you have fresh raw or pasteurized milk that is not homogenized (the cream has risen to the top), you can skim the cream off and use that.
However, you can’t make butter from milk or homogenized milk, which has no cream to skim.
Butter is fat, and the fat from milk is primarily in the rich cream.
You can use a spoon to skim the cream off milk. Don’t worry if some of the milk below gets into it.
Equipment
You can choose from one of these options to make butter:
- Hand-mixer | My personal preference and the easiest way.
- Blender | not my favorite, but I have made butter in my Vitamix blender before.
- Butter Churn | You can buy old-fashioned and modern butter churns.
- Jar | Literally, just shaking your cream in a sealed jar will eventually make butter, although I do not recommend this as it takes too long and is kinda rough on your poor arms.
How to Make Butter Instructions with Step-by-Step Photos
To Make Sweet Cream Butter From Raw OR Pasteurized Milk:
Step 1:
Start mixing your cream. Whether you are using a hand-mixer like I prefer, a blender, a traditional butter churner, or shaking a jar vigorously — the process is the same.
The agitation of the cream will cause the fat to separate from the liquid. This can happen as fast as 5 minutes or may take longer than 20 minutes. Usually it takes about 10-15.
Step 2:
See that? It’s whipped cream.
On the road to making butter, you will first make whipped cream and then keep going until that whipped cream breaks.
Step 3:
Eventually, your whipped cream will break and start to look like this.
Step 4:
This is butter and buttermilk, sometimes called whey, too.
You must now separate the buttermilk from the butter. Save the buttermilk.
Using a silicone spatula, butter sticks, or just your hands (rinse your hands under cold water so that the butter doesn’t melt), start squeezing the butter fat and wringing out the water.
Step 5:
There is a lot of liquid, but you don’t want to waste the buttermilk, as it can be used in many baking recipes or even just drank.
Step 6:
When you have squeezed out as much buttermilk as possible, add a pinch of salt (or more if making salted butter) and work it into the butter.
Step 7:
It is now time to wash the butter. Get a bowl of cold water. You can also place a bowl under the faucet in your kitchen sink and use constantly running water.
Step 8:
Wash your butter under the cold water until the butter runs clear. If you neglect this step and leave the liquid in, your butter will spoil very quickly.
How To Make Cultured Butter From RAW Cream:
- Take your raw cream and leave it out at room temperature (covered) for 24 hours.
- After that time has passed, proceed with the instructions below to turn the cream into butter.
How To Make Cultured Butter From PASTEURIZED Cream:
- Take your pasteurized cream and add live cultures from kefir or yogurt into it.
- Cover the cream and put it in your refrigerator overnight or up to 4 days to culture.
- Allow this cream to come to room temperature for 30 minutes before proceeding with the instructions below on turning it into butter.
- This is not true cultured butter but it is the closes you will get with pasteurized cream.
How To Make Butter In A Blender
- Pour room-temperature cream into a blender.
- Blend until the cream separates.
- This can happen in a minute with a powerful blender like a Vitamix, or it can take up to 10 minutes in an older or slower blender.
- If using this method, I recommend blending on low (if possible). The hand mixer is much simpler, easier to clean up, and easier to get the butter out, especially as it does not have sharp blades.
Making Cultured Butter With Pasteurized Milk
You can use kefir or yogurt to culture pasteurized cream and turn it into a sort of copy of cultured butter. But you cannot leave pasteurized cream out at room temperature for long periods of time.
See the recipe card below for detailed instructions and quantities.
Butter Variations
- Salted Or Unsalted: Make unsalted or salted variations. This information is in the recipe card at the bottom.
- Herbed Compound Butter: Add fresh or dried herbs. This is a great way to preserve fresh herbs by making compound butter you can freeze and use throughout the year as needed.
- Butter Of The Gods: Mix roasted or smoked bone marrow with your fresh butter in a 50/50 ratio and use it on steaks, roasted potatoes, roasted vegetables. Herbed butter works really well in this preparation, especially parsley, and I recommend adding salt or even smoked salt (recipe). I have a recipe for roasted bone marrow you can use.
FAQ
I would not recommend using UHT milk or cream. If you need to use it in a pinch, the UHT cream will make butter, and I would recommend culturing it with kefir or yogurt to bring back some life into what is a dead product. Culturing the UHT cream might also make it easier to digest.
To store homemade butter, keep it in an airtight container in the refrigerator, where it will stay fresh for up to two weeks.
If you make a large batch or want to keep it longer, freezing is a great option. Divide the butter into smaller portions, wrap each tightly in plastic wrap or parchment paper to prevent freezer burn, and place them in a freezer-safe bag or container.
Frozen homemade butter lasts up to six months. When you’re ready to use it, thaw the butter in the refrigerator overnight for the best texture and flavor.
Cultured butter is simply butter made from cultured cream, giving it a tangy flavor and containing naturally occurring probiotics. In cultured dairy, lactic acid-producing bacteria break down lactose and casein, which can make it easier to digest.
True cultured butter comes from raw cream. Most store-bought versions are made with pasteurized milk, where live cultures are added back in to replace what pasteurization killed off.
This method likely began by accident, perhaps by European housewives. Even in my mother’s and MIL’s time, butter was often made this way. After each morning’s milking, women would skim a bit of cream from the top once the milk had settled, setting it aside and adding to it daily until there was enough to churn into butter.
Without refrigeration or an understanding of bacteria, this natural process was simply how it was done—and it led to the first cultured butter. Leaving raw cream at room temperature for about 24 hours allows the beneficial bacteria to thrive, resulting in a tangy, probiotic-rich butter that’s as nourishing as it is flavorful.
Sweet cream butter is made from fresh, uncultured cream, which gives it a mild, clean flavor without the tang of cultured butter.
Unlike cultured butter, sweet cream butter skips the fermentation process, so there’s no time for natural bacteria to develop. It’s the standard butter you’ll find in most stores, typically made from pasteurized cream, and it’s perfect for recipes where a pure, creamy taste is the goal.
Equipment
- Hand Mixer (or blender or butter churn)
- Bowls
- Silicone spatula
Ingredients
- 1 litre cream raw or pasteurized, preferably not UHT, but it will do in a pinch.
- teaspoon fine sea salt not iodized, optional
Instructions
For Making Raw Cultured Butter From Raw Cream
- Leave your cream out on your counter at room temperature, covered, for 24 hours before proceeding to the following steps.
For Making Cultured Butter From Pasteurized Cream
- Add 1 tablespoon of kefir or yogurt (any kind) for every 1 cup of pasteurized cream. Stir and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours and up to 3 days before proceeding to the next steps.
For Making Sweet Cream Butter From Pasteurized OR Unpasteurized Cream
- No special preparation is required. Proceed with the following steps to make butter.
- Allow your cream to come to room temperature, or close to it, about 30 minutes to 1 hour. This makes the butter easier to mix and separate.
- Take your cream and place it into a large bowl.
- Start mixing your cream. Whether you are using a hand-mixer like I prefer, a blender, a traditional butter churner, or shaking a jar vigorously — the process is the same. The agitation of the cream will cause the fat to separate from the liquid. This can happen as fast as 5 minutes or may take longer than 20 minutes. Usually it takes about 10-15.
- You will eventually (10ish minutes) get whipped cream, keep going.
- After about 10-15 minutes, the whipped cream will separate into yellow fat butter globules and a milky-yellow liquid. Keep going for a couple more minutes until the fat is well separated.
- Using a colander, strain out the buttermilk from the butter into another bowl. Using a wooden spoon or silicone spatula (or your cold hands), continue to get out as much of the buttermilk as possible.
- When you have squeezed out as much buttermilk as possible, add a pinch of salt (or more if making salted butter) and work it into the butter.
- Using either your hands or a wide silicon spatula, wash your butter well under cold running water, or directly in a large bowl filled with cold water, kneading and squishing it well.
- The cold of the water will firm up the butter making this part easier, and eventually, your water will run clear and not cloudy, meaning that the buttermilk has been well and properly extracted. (I prefer to do the washing in another bowl under constant running water.)
- Store butter refrigerated for up to 3 weeks, or frozen for up to 1 year.
Notes
- Pour room temperature cream into blender.
- Blend until the cream separates and watch the entire time.
- This can happen in a minute with a powerful blender like a Vitamix, or it can take up to 10 minutes in an older or slower blender.
- I recommend blending on low (if possible) if using this method. The hand mixer is much simpler, easier to clean up, and easier to get the butter out, especially as their are no sharp blades.
