I chose to use raw cream for this episode as it is the main thing that makes recipe “historical”. When making modern butter, I always used Pasteurized cream. The process has saved countless lives and I think it might be a good topic for a video!
It would be a good topic. We take our food safety for granted these days, it would be good to have a reminder of how good we have it compared to our forebears.
Agree Miller. Sweet butter tastes brighter than salted, but salted tastes more unctuous than sweet. Perhaps mention some of the storage containers used over the generations, such as the butter bell, and the seemingly more recent phenomenon of spreadable butter, which is very easy to DIY while controlling the quality of the ingredients. Many store brands include water, which makes toast soggy. I look forward to you sprinkling in even more of your acting / comedic takes like you used to. Paz y salud.
When I was in elementary school I had a teacher who would tie food to history lessons when learning about pioneers she had us all learn how they made butter by passing around the butter churn jar until it became butter. We then got to eat the butter we made on bread she had baked at home. It’s one of my favorites memories from elementary school. I credit that teach with starting my love of history by making it come alive rather then just facts on a page.
I had a teacher who did the same thing, kinda. She gave us a baby food jar and with cream. We shook it until it became butter. We made Johnny cakes, and she brought in 3 sisters stew and we had a little 5th grade feast!
A core memory is in highschool where our history teacher Mr.Booker made us pancakes so sad he left before we graduated he was well loved by all the students who set foot in his class I hope he's doing well now
We had a similar lesson, everyone was split into groups and each group shook cream in a jar with marbles to churn it. Then everyone's "butter" went into a bowl and got salted, and we spread it on bread. I can't recommend salted whipped cream on bread.
Fun fact about butter: In Medieval times, butter was used to pack breakable items like glass and crockery. The items were packed in crates and warm, liquid butter poured over them. Once the butter solidified again, the items could not move in the crate and where thus safe from breaking. This practice is the origin of the German idiom "alles in Butter" (literally: "Everything in butter"), meaning "everything is allright".
That's a bit genius. Probably worked best in winter though - it would be a bit of a tragedy in 30⁰ heat. I wonder if there was butter that was kept for the purposes of shipping -spoilt in some way perhaps or if it was just so cheap.
This is so interesting! I knew the saying but I never knew where it actually came from, so this was very much a "oh that makes so much sense" moment for me! (under 30 btw and I know for a fact that several of my younger friends know it too. although I can imagine the younger generations genuinely not knowing it anymore).
The tall butter churn actually only takes 30 minutes or so if you take turns with excited children! I used to work at a historical museum, and it's amazing how fast it can happen when that's all the kids want. 😂
My mom loves to tell a story about me as a toddler where she found me in the fridge, stick of butter in hand, just munching on it like a candy bar. Nearly 3 decades later, I gotta say... the urge is still there. Loved this video!
one of my little brothers was the pickiest eater growing up, but would always eat the butter off his bread and ask for more butter to be put on it. i also saw him just munching on a stick of the stuff too. my hypothesis was 'he's not getting enough calories, and butter is basically raw calories, ergo his body would love the stuff'
Literally the same with me. My mother caught me snarfing down an entire stick of butter. But the opposite happened to me. Growing up and even today 5 decades later, I can only stand butter if the recipe absolutely needs it.
My mom said that when I was little, she would catch me taking bites out of the butter in the fridge, and when she asked me why, I told her, "It's my candy bar."
My sister was trying to make whip cream, but she processed it too long and made butter. So, for Christmas, she made small loaves of bread, homemade jam, and home made butter. All 3 in a basket( each basket from dollar store) and gave as gifts. BEST Christmas present ever!
I’ve always wanted to do this but didn’t know if people would like it. Good to know they were a hit! I’ve seen them called ‘homestead baskets’ or ‘farm baskets’. Fresh bread, homemade butter, garden flowers and herbs, fresh eggs or cheese, handmade soap or candles, whatever you produce can go inside!
I remember my mother making butter from our “top cream” in just the way you describe. We salted our butter. As an adult I made gee. I was born 77 years ago when we made our own soap from ashes and fat and of course our own milk,butter, butter milk, cream, soft and hard cheese. Thank you for bringing back this “lost lore”
For what it's worth, I'm 44, and I do all of what you describe in my kitchen. And I've made sure my daughter learned how to as well. It's a survival thing for us. Groceries are really expensive and it's cheaper for me to just buy the cream top milk and use that cream for things. LOL.
Ghee is excellent, truly a brilliant way to make butter last longer without refridgeration. Great to cook with, too. I make popcorn with ghee, it gives amazing flavour without smoking the kitchen out.
My Newfie great granny was the same as she lived in a small outport in Newfoundland, she made butter from freshly milked cows. There was no shopping centre from the time when she was a small girl & she was born in the 1890's. She had made her cloth woven from sheared sheep wool onto her spinning wheels (she had 2, a small & large 1) & loom.
We use the top cream to make natural yoghurt! It's nice and tart, you get a lot of whey, and I can never ever have flavoured/artificial yoghurt because this is what I grew up eating.
Such a wonderful episode! We can all relate to butter. 😄 I grew up on a farm and we had a single milk cow (Molly). During early spring when all of the wild green onions would sprout up in the pasture, Molly would just gorge herself on these. She loved them! While this made her happy, it made for terrible milk. It became undrinkable. BUT, it made for wonderfully flavored butter that was excellent on a baked potato or in mashed potatoes. My mother would label it as green onion butter in the fridge lest we accidentally put it on toast with jam. 😄
My mother grew up in the time of local dairies and milk men and she says the taste would change throughout the year as the diets of the cows changed and in the spring, the milk often had a slight garlic taste. Molly wasn't alone in her preference!
Laura Ingalls Wilder devoted a section of her "Little House in the Big Woods" (the first of her "Little House in the Prairie" series) to how her mother Caroline would make butter, from start to finish. Look it up and it's pretty detailed. Includes how Caroline would color the butter with carrots, to give it extra sweetness and yellow that the milk may have lacked. (And added salt as needed.) It's a great description of how rural Americans in the 19th c. made it.
I think it was in the winter months when she added the carrot juice because there was no grass for the cow to graze on. I love all of the food preparation sections from the Little House books. Even the description of popcorn as a luxurious Christmas treat.
I loved the idea of the rocking horse butter churn in Little Farmer Boy. It's exciting to have it just rocking back and forth over lifting the butter churner repeatedly.
My grandmother, born in 1914 in Scandinavia, would use unsalted butter on her face every day as a moisturizer. In her 90's, she still had phenomenal looking skin!
Here in India, I have seen ghee (clarified butter) used as a face cream and lip balm by "ye olde folks" - and I always wondered if Europeans used butter the same way! Now I know. So thanks for sharing your grandma's story!
I grew up on a farm. We had gurnsey cows. My mother made butter that was a bright yellow. She beat the cream with an egg beater, when it turned, she washed it as you did by hand, and she had wooden butter molds that she packed it in. She always made bread to go with it. My father sat in the kitchen, waiting for that bread to come out of the oven. He just loved homemade butter on a chunk of warm bread. And so did we - my brother and sister. It was a wonderful life.
"Golden Guernseys" give yellowish milk high in butterfat, about twice as high as those omnipresent Holstein cows' milk. Unfortunately the higher production of (watery) milk from Holsteins means that guernseys and jerseys are now only a tiny minority of our dairy cattle. A hundred years ago it was different. Guernseys were the mark of quality, dairy-wise. If you were going into the ice cream and butter business today, using Guernsey milk and cream would enable you to produce a gourmet product that the commercial lines couldn't compete with.
@@AlbertPaysonTerhune I am 76 years old and live in Connecticut. When I was a kid northeastern CT was all farms. Now some of the best farmland in the state is developed - houses like boxes many times all the same color sit on land that was farmed with pride for generations. It makes me so sad!
Max, clarified butter is made by melting the butter at a relatively low temperature and separating it from the milk solids without letting the solids "brown". Ghee is made by heating the melted butter to a higher temperature so that the milk solids start to brown, then separating them from the melted butter. Slightly browning the milk solids gives ghee a slightly nutty flavor you don't get with clarified butter.
@@Mila-Rosa The browning of meat or butter is the maillard reaction, which is the caramelization of proteins. The milk solids are only slightly browned for ghee . For browned butter you let the maillard reaction goes further for a stronger taste that is good for sauces for browned meats and some baked goods, but you can't let the cooking temperature get too high or the milk solids will burn, with a resulting in a bad taste. Regular butter burns and smokes at about 163-191 °C or 325-376 °F so it isn't very good for frying meat unless you want browned butter. Clarified butter and ghee are very good for frying since they have a high smoke temperature (about 252 °C or 486 °F) because the milk solids have been removed.
Dogs are such amazing creatures. The idea of the family dog working to make the household butter is adorable. I hope those dogs got to taste some of their work as a treat.
I used to work as a historical interpreter in a living history village in Florida. The first time I made butter was outside during peak heat in the middle of Summer, and it was an incredibly smelly, greasy, and frustrating mess. We kept having to run inside to the air-conditioning and sit it in a bucket of ice to get it to do what we needed. Definitely makes you appreciate (most) modern amenities. I can't wait to watch this!
Historically most butter in europe and north america was made during the spring when pastures are at their best and recently calved cows produce the highest-fat-content milk. In spring the weather is cool enough to make butter and summer and autumn were for making cheese. Sometimes butter could be made again in autumn if the pastures were good.
Your empression of Julie Childs is on point. I cant count the number of times my dad and I laughed about her. At the same time she changed the kitchen game for all generations. Im so glad we have her recorded for all time.
For a time when all my kids (6 kids) were young, a litre of whipping cream was less expensive than a pound of butter, so being a poor, homeschooling family, I turned butter making into a history lesson and we made our own butter. Just used a large glass jar, took turns shaking it till the butter came, washed it, squeezed out the buttermilk (which made great pancakes or biscuits), salted it and we had our butter. I don't think any of the children regret those times now that they are grown.
We lost one of our home incomes so for for Christmas last year I made a collection of flavored butters and gave everyone a loaf of sourdough. Turned out a lot cheaper than trying to buy flavored butters. I need a shield for my stand mixer though lol. Made a total mess with the first batch. I do not have kids or I totally would have put them to work lol.
Yeah! Not the same at all but in kindergarten we used to make butter the same way. I don't think any of the kids had the patience to shake all the way from cream to butter but I remember a clump of butter finally appearing inside the jar!
What a charming story. We did the same thing (four children) for similar reasons: less expensive, more tasty, and the entire process helped to occupy and tire-out my mother's "wild animals".
Little tip on making your own butter: You don’t have to buy a hand-cranked butter churn. A regular jam glass will do the trick as well. I’m making home-made butter with those, but instead of a cranking motion you just shake that glass samba style while watching an episode of Tasting History with Max Miller. Personally, I prefer the shorter glasses with a wider lid diameter then the taller glasses with a smaller lid diameter. It is easier for me to get the butter out later through a larger diameter. I usually choose a 350 to 400g standard glass size they use here everywhere to sell confiture in it. Once eaten empty, clean the glass (after every use) properly with scolding hot water. After it cooled down, fill the glass up to 1/4 or 1/3 with cream. Personally, I like that ratio since there is enough space for the cream to really flop and smash around that glass when I shake it. I’ve done it with a half full glass as well, but it took a bit longer for it to turn into butter. If you want more butter, I would suggest to use a larger glass instead but keep the ratio below 1/2. It is that smashing against the glass bottom and the metal lid on the top which turns the cream into butter, and this needs space. Just make sure you have a glass that allows you to properly close the lid. Else it will get really buttery around you.
I did something like this when I was in 3rd grade, as part of a homeschooling lesson. I remember using carrots to help give it more of the classic yellow tint.
AWH HELL... Around here, the flea markets still have the occasional electric churn... It's usually an old pickle jar (yeah, up to the gallons, depending on size of family or batch)... with an electric fan motor on top of it, to spin the shaft instead of the hand-mixer type that Max showed in the video. I think I've still got an old one I bought for about $5 back in the 90's when my last one died... or... well... it kinda got killed... glass jars and jugs only take so much, but my brother's story was "The move killed it dead"... I think more folks in the last 10 years or so sell them as "Curios" though... Doesn't stop 'em from working... Of course... It ain't like you can't find a decent little electric fan motor, a dowel, and cut apart 3 or 4 spatulas (bamboo or rubber work) and cobble your own together out of a pickle jar or whatever else... just get a sturdy lid so it'll take drilling a hole through it for the dowel... Might want to shop around for an appropriate adhesive, but I've always done my repairs with J.B. Weld and given at least 2 days to cure "to be sure"... It's not like we're building a g** d*** Rembrandt or trying to do the work of a Lambo' or nothing... AND I'm not spending a half-hour chanting and cranking when I can just plug it in and come back in about the same time to check on it... It'll work itself out. ;o)
This reminds me of how we made butter as a kid but what we did was just put the cream (fresh from our cows) straight into a mason jar, about 3/5ths full and seal the lid with a little plastic wrap, and then we just shook it but not in a violent back and forth motion, it was more of like a rowing motion where you'd dip the lid end down and then sort of scoop it up. Anyways you do this for like 15-20 minutes and one hell of an arm workout later you'd have a smooth ball of butter in the jar (depending on how good your motion was, if you just went violently back and forth it would all be little clumps that would have to be strained). We boys used to have contests of who could make butter the fastest and still in a smooth ball. Lots of memories and basically no equipment other than a mason jar and some elbow grease! Thanks for the video, many fond memories.
When my daughter was little, I was a library worker at her school. I used to read to the kids Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One of our year-end projects was making butter. I put the kids in a circle and then had a jar half filled with cream. The kids were told to shake it until they got tired and pass it to the person next to them. When we were finished, I rinsed and salted the butter, gave whoever wanted to try a taste of real buttermilk, and served the butter on some homemade bread. They loved it!
This!! I was looking for someone to mention the Ingalls book, because those are authentic instructions if any. Using carrot squeezings to make winter butter yellow stuck vividly.
I done the old fashioned way with the plunger style... My Great Grandmother would always con me into doing when I was down there for the summer in rural Western Virginia (no not West Virginia). Essentially she'd call me inside saying she had some errands to do and she wanted to me keep churning the butter. Well after about a few times I realized she wasn't doing any errands and she was just buggering off to my Aunt's down the road about 1mile to chat for a while and left me to do the work. I think she was doing it to be funny cause that was her personality. I caught on and told I knew what she was doing. I still did it anyways cause it was better than cleaning out the hen house or herding cattle on my uncles farm. I miss her.
My great grandmother lived with us when I was a kid, and she said the one invention that really changed everything was the refrigerator. It was lovely to hear that echoed in your video.
I'm 64 and my grandmother taught all her grandkids how to churn butter with nothing more than a mason jar with a lid you shake till you have butter she made butter about twice a week and it was always so good that is about how long it lasted lol it was used in and on everything
I ask my grandmother about making butter in a mason jar and she said “ no sane person would make their butter by shaking a mason jar , It just takes too long, it was a way to keep rambunctious young kids occupied for a couple hours, you’d give a child a jar of cream and tell them not to stop shaking that jar till it was butter”
Fun fact about the several millenia old bog butter- there's a charity dinner at one of the Smithsonian museums in dc every year, and if you're willing to pay an extraordinary amount of money you can sample a tiny fraction of some foods that have been preserved and discovered from various areas (like honey from Egyptian tombs, or Bog butter. etc) Supposedly it's quite earthy.
I have fond memories of helping my maternal grandmother churn fresh raw cows milk to produce butter, then packing in a wooding butter mold to make a large block pf butter. She used a traditional stoneware churn as well as a large hand-cranked churn. Then she saved the buttermilk for my grandfather.
I used to work for a small local dairy in the UK and we made our own butter using cream from Jersey and Guernsey cows. The butter was so rich and yellow and just delicious, perfect on top of a scone with a cup of tea.
Max talking about how butter became a staple that was in *everything* in European cooking, made me remember what my grandmother (who was an _amazing_ chef) used to say; that back when she was young, no matter what you were making, if it didn't taste good you just threw in more butter and/or cream until it did!
I work at a pioneer village, and we make butter every day! We use our 102 year old cast iron wood cookstove to bake scones (and the buttermilk goes in the scones) and the butter goes in a dish to put on top!
I live in Brazil, and I am old enough to have been lucky to taste home made butter, made by my grandmother. When I was very little she used to buy milk in glass bottles, sold directly from a farm. I still remember the consistency, the taste of this butter... so good.
I grew up on a small farm, and making butter was an everyday thing for us. Loved seeing this video. Here's a couple of tricks that will save you some trouble: put the cream in just a regular wide-mouth mason jar, or a half gallon jar if you can find one. No paddles or churn. Just shake it like shaking a mixed drink. Not too fast, but not slow either. You want the cream sloshing in it. Then as it starts to thicken/separate, slow down to a back and forth "rolling the cream" motion to gather it. It will collect in a ball as it separates and starts to stick together. Takes about 15 mins. No straining in a cloth or scraping needed. Then dump it, pour out the buttermilk, and wash it by working it with a spatula in cold water, drain it, work out any water in the butter, and work in your salt. Then mold it/press it, and refrigerate. The whole process takes maybe 30 mins. Mmm. Oh, and Max.....the "music for churning" - no. Just, no. 😂. Oh, there is one other thing. You mentioned the sweetness of the butter. There are two kinds of butter, sweet cream and sour cream. Most people are used to commercial butter which is in the middle. You can put your cream in the fridge until it sours, and then make butter, and it will taste a little bit more like what you're accustomed to. Fresh cream butter, or sweet cream butter, is going to be milder and a little more...bland. I personally love both of them, just for different uses.
Ahhhh! You described it so much better than i did! I left out the speed cuz i couldnt describe it. "Sloshing" is exactly right. Thats how my mom made it.
I've made butter this way when I have cream that's near its expiration date and I won't use it up in time. It's tiring, but it works. Watching an episode of Tasting History helps pass the time.
2:22 My Grandad had one of those. But with whipping paddles that was for whipped cream! Every Thanksgiving he would make a big production of making whipped cream for dessert. He made a fuss about keeping his recipe "secret" even though it was only 2 ingredients. Thanks for sparking those fantastic memories!
I remember making butter in second grade. The teacher put the cream into a jar, we all took a turn shaking the jar until a blob formed in the jar and then she took that out and finished it. We put it on bread and had a real treat. Since I am now in my 60's it was obviously a memorable learning experience.
I grew up very poor and real butter was something we only had on holidays. Even to this day my favorite indulgence is just a slice of good quality bread (toasted or not) with a bit of quality butter spread over it. It's crazy to think that and realize how easy butter is to make! 😆 Thanks to my ADHD, I have an extra quart of heavy cream in my fridge that I was wondering what to do with. Then this episode came out! Guess I know what I'm doing with it now! 😊
Its really interesting that geography really affects what people considers as cheap or expensive ingredients. In my country, butter is considered as high tier ingredients, especially unsalted ones, so its mostly just used for cakes and toast (which is not a food people eats regularly in my country), or simply replaced it with margarine, which is cheaper. Vegetable oils like palm oil or coconut oil, however, are even cheaper.
@@Hongobogologomo Having ADHD means I do stupid stuff like spend an hour going through my kitchen and making up a grocery list of things I need to buy, only to forget that list at home and find myself standing in front the dairy case wracking my brain to remember if I have heavy cream at home already and ultimately buying another quart because for the life of me I cannot remember.
Max, I don't normally comment but I had to this time. The quality of your videos is amazing. I've been watching your channel for a few years, and you've consistently always put out fun, educational, and funny videos. I love learning, and the way you teach is just... hard to describe. I don't find myself noticing the time slip by when I watch the videos, you were born to perform. Thank you so much for putting so much effort into these videos! I will always look forward to the next video.
There's one thing you didn't really get into: Souring the butter. Traditionally butter has been made from sour cream over here (I guess all of northern Europe), with industrialisation producers switched to not souring the cream but culturing it afterwards as they can use unsoured buttermilk for more things than soured buttermilk. There's a couple of places that still produce proper soured butter and it's indeed quite a bit better, though not if you expect it to be mellow. If you get a roll of Faßbutter it's even going to be churned in a batch with a (giant and stainless) butter churn, and not have undergone the usual continuous process, and it usually won't even be that much more expensive. Definitely worth the extra money when you're doing shortcrust or such.
I taught my 5-6 year olds how to make butter because the topic was changes in substances - so liquid to ice, liquid jelly, popcorn kernels to popcorn and cream to butter
Yall should know you can just put heavy whipping cream in a regular Mason jar or pretty much any airtight container (i made it in a water bottle with a screw on lid once) buy just pouring some in and shaking it back and forth. You shake for a bit and get whipped cream, and then you keep going and you get butter. Much easier and cheaper than buying a special butter churn jar thing and you don't have to dirty your kitchen aid
We learned about it in primary school. We were given some whipping cream in an empty water bottle and were told to shake it until it turned into butter.
Amazing episode! This does make me wonder if it might be time to revisit the very first episode with the medieval cheese. It would be fun to see how far Tasting History has come as a show, and how far Max Miller has come as our (beloved) host!
This particular video has sparked a lot of people sharing childhood stories of making or helping make butter. Once again, food performs brilliantly at bringing people together. But it took Max sharing his interest in something so simple but so close to everyone's families. Thank you.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Butter Bell, or "Beurrier Breton" as a method of keeping the butter longer before refridgeration. It's kept in water, preventing oxidation while keeping the butter soft for spreading.
I use butter irregularly, so I've tried using white vinegar instead of water in my butter bell - it pickles the butter it contacts, which is a very interesting taste!
Growing up on a ranch in western Nebraska, we had a milk cow. As kids, we had to milk her every morning, and sometimes evenings too, depending on how much she was giving, or if she had a calf with her at the time. We made a lot of butter off of the cream from that. It also made the best caramels you will ever taste!
Hello and than you for the interesting channel. I really enjoy your videos. I am 67 and I remember making fresh butter with my mother and siblings when we were children. Back then you could easily find whole milk that was Pasteurized but not homogenized. We would pour this milk into a jar (perhaps half full), tighten the lid, and take turns shaking it vigorously until eventually the butterfat would start to cling together into clumps, just as you demonstrated with your cream in a butter churn. Our mother would handle the steps after that point, but I have distinct, happy, memories of burning off some of my immense childhood energy shaking jars of milk vigorously to make butter.
For anyone wanting to give it a try, homemade butter freezes very well in an airtight container. We've never had any spoil in the freezer because it doesn't stay in there for more than a month or two. Then we eat it! Once you thaw it use it in about three days, but keep it refrigerated. We freeze our butter in small containers so we only thaw what we need for one or two days. You'll never want store bought butter again!
There is a restaurant in my hometown, where years ago, when they were just starting out, one of the waitresses had a hobby of making homemade compound butters, which they would give to regulars along with the bread. It was an Italian place, so there were the usuals like garlic and basil, but then she was branching out into strawberry basil and blueberry thyme, that kind of thing. Absolutely amazing and you never knew what you were going to get. I am sad for myself but happy for her that she graduated and is now a dental hygienist.
Hey Max, I make homemade European style butter. You let the raw cream sit out on the counter for 24 to 48 hours then make your butter. When using store bought cream you just add about a 1/4 cup of cultured buttermilk and a couple of tablespoons of live culture yogurt and then let it sit. When you wring out your butter in cheese cloth, if it is warm, put the butter in the fridge or freezer a bit before wringing out the butter.
A hilarious rancid butter in hair story: when I was a one-year-old, I almost looked like I was bald because my hair was sparse and very fine. My mother heard that putting butter in the hair would make it grow thicker. We lived in the tidewater Virginia area, and it was in August. The butter went rancid very quickly, and my mother felt terrible about it. I have extremely thick, wavy hair. And I have always been crazy for butter! When I was 30 months old, my mom discovered me in the kitchen eating a stick of butter with big bites. I still am likely to sneak a bite here and there. Make of that what you will...
I'm from the complete opposite side of the state in SWVA (Help!). I used to eat stick butter when I was a kid. Also, Virginia seems to have some interesting folk remedies. Supposedly, my biological grandma from Virginia was told that she could get larger breasts if she rubbed... chicken excrement on them😬😲😮😳. Long story short, that myth was busted.
Max, my mother,who was a character, was unimpressed by how some of our family members applied butter to bread and decided to give a lesson. She grabbed her bread, butter and her knife and proclaimed “You don’t scrape butter on the bread, you slather it!”. When you said to slather it I thought of my mom and cracked up. It appears my mother would have approved of your method. Lol
I learned that from Bilbo Baggins. At one point in the Fellowship of the Ring he describes to Frodo how his great age makes him feel like too little butter scraped across too much bread. I forget the exact quote, but it stuck with me. Butter is meant to be slathered on and savored. It's not a lubricant for the bread, it's the actual topping meant to be enjoyed! Bilbo's point was about all things in life, and I try to take it that way... but it was a metaphor about buttering your bread.
One of my favorite stories from baking and pastry class, in culinary school, was about the difference between whipped cream frosting and butter... if you whip it too much, just put it into the croissant.
I have to thank you for inadvertently solving a question that has baffled me for many years with regards to butter. When I was 22, I came to the United States for 3 years, and one thing I simply could not understand was why the butter was a strange white with the oddest taste, even though I was assured that it was indeed made of cream (I am from Ireland- we are renowned for our dairy.Grass fed cattle are the norm here).
Not only that but both US and Canadian butter have more water in them than European butter. When melted in a hot pan these butters spit all over but good European butter does not. Lots of cheating going on and even worse in Canada is sour cream. It's not sour cream. At least in the US it is still possible to buy real sour cream even at Walmart. Canada: shame on your dairy industry! Shame shame.
@@Dollibet Same in Brazil. Because of the country's own vastness, grass-fed butter must come from far away, sometimes other states entirely, which is a luxury to have. It can be found and it is arguably accessible, but if you can afford to have grass-fed butter every week, you are already a bit privileged.
I love your channel for my D&D campaigns! Nothing grounds a story more than food, and you always give me a ton of inspiration for so many different things! No longer are the days of rations being some jerky and trail mix lol Explorers from the north? They're packing pemican and hard tack! As well as foraging for fish and wild onions by the river during camp time. Stopping at a farm as you adventure? They say these fields make the freshest butter during this season. Of course we have to wash it a few times first lol Docking at the port for a while? Enjoy the smoked fish, maybe wash it down with some grog! And after a long day of questing, you chill with some satyrs who offer boiled eggs while the bread is baking. And after bread and garum, you lay down with some sweet itrion and wine, dozing off among the trees and stars
My mother grew up on a farm and would churn the family's butter. She grew to hate butter and when margarine or oleo was introduced she preferred it to butter even though the yellow colorant had to be mixed in. For special occasions I will pour 3 cups of Jersey cream into a quart jar, screw the lid on and agitate the jar until the butter fat clumps together and make my butter saving the buttermilk for cooking a chocolate cake.
There two types of butter here in Europe. There is the mentioned cultured butter, but there is also sweet butter, which is essentially the butter in the video. Both can be bought in most supermarkets with a fridge section. Here in Germany for example, the cultured butter is called "(mild-)gesäuerte Butter" and the sweet butter is called "Süßrahm Butter". And yes, the German and English word for butter is exactly the same.
Hi Max, I remember as a kid churning butter at my grandparents house. My grandmother had a few cows that ate mostly grass most of the year. She had a 1 gallon churn with wooden paddles and a hand crank. Just like they did with other chores like shelling peas(by the bushel) and shelling pecans, they stuck the kids with it. They always acted like it was supposed to be fun, but after 10 minutes, you knew better. Anyway, after cranking for what seemed like forever, a large lump of butter would form which you took out and put in the refrigerator. The rest of the milk still had enough fat that it tasted good. With the price of heavy cream what it is, you're better off buying butter. Or maybe you just need to torture some kids.
As a parent, I take offense to your comment. Making butter is not "torture" how hateful of you to say. I absolutely loved shelling peas with my grandmother. I wish my son could enjoy doing it. He can shell them, sure. But not gain the wisdom of her years. Making butter in a jar is a magnificent experience, all children need. Maybe reevaluate your life choices.
My dad is from rural ireland. He used to go turf cutting as a kid and sometimes they'd find bog butter. His father actually found a bog body back in the 50s too.
Supposedly when my Great-Grandad was young, he ate some bog butter on a dare, and the taste was so bad that it put him off butter for the rest of his life
My grandparents ran a small dairy farm. I can remember my grandmother churning butter with a hand churn back in the 1970's. I suggest a blender, however.
An interesting series would be a quick overview of how people preserved food (or rather, how they kept preserved food?) back in the day... Like with butter, I get they put salt in butter to preserve it, but how did they keep it? What kind of containers did they use? Did they use containers? What about the sweet butter? How was it kept in the home? Food preservation/use (as in, all the ways people used food, since they couldn't put it in a fridge for a week) has always fascinated me...
The victorian way youtube channel spoke a bit about how sweet butter was handled in affluent households. In many of those situations it was made that morning and used pretty much immediately, so the need to store it long term wasn't necessary. I imagine that was rather common all over for unsalted butters. Then again I'm no historian so that could have been the case only in well to do Victorian homes.
I use a French butter bell and have kept both store bought and home made unsalted butter in it for over a month on the counter with zero issues. Always soft and never melts even in the Aussie summers. Changing the salt water regularly is the trick 👌
When I was a kid, my class made butter. We passed around a Tupperware with cream inside it in a circle. I think they were keeping us busy. They served it at a parent teacher night.
We did the same thing in either 4th or 5th grade. Our Teacher had found an antique butter churn similar to what is shown in the video. We actually had it straight out of the jar. IIRC we had it on pieces of biscuit.
We did it, too. 3rd or 4th grade, I think. In our case, the teacher brought in a jar which we all took turns shaking, and then sampled the fresh butter on crackers.
I also have done this, both in preschool and in the 3rd grade. Little did I know I would grow up to make fresh butter out of my dairy goat's raw milk after turning it to cream. I still haven't quite gotten used to the slight goaty aftertaste.
I grew up in Ukraine village and my grandmother used to churn butter in a 3 liters jar just on her laps. I remember it took her good couple hours. She rinsed it with water as you did and added some salt. But I loved freshly made without salt obviously. Also some times if I remember that correctly she made it fro sour cream. Which one may call cultured butter.
I grew up on homemade butter. If a family had only one cow, the thick cream would need to be collected for a few days, before there was enough to make butter. Salt was used to draw more buttermilk from the butter, as well as preservation. Due to saving the cream and lack of good refrigeration, butter was never as bland or sweet as what we can purchase in the store today.
I used to wash my butter by hand, but I was gifted a stand mixer so now I use the paddle attachment and stream in the ice water, pour out and repeat 2-3 times. The absolute best is adding roasted garlic and herbs, but I do honey, cinnamon sugar and strawberry too. Often as gifts with a loaf of sourdough.
I made butter once, completely underestimated the amount and had like a pound of butter for myself to eat. One of the best butter I have ever eaten, and the buttermilk was delicious as well.
When my kids were little, we’d have then make fresh butter as a Thanksgiving activity. Put whole cream in a coffee can (or other metal can), seal, duct tape the lid on. Send kids out to kick/roll/shake the can around for an hour or so. Busy kids, fresh homemade butter on your Thanksgiving table. Win/Win
I learned too make butter in second grade from a project our Teacher did with us for Thanksgiving. She put cream in mason jars and had us shake them until the it turned to butter. The power of child energy is great and keeps them busy. I've been making butter ever since. I now make cultured butter as well as sweet cream. I'll add fresh herbs or spices and roll in parchment, vacuum sealer and in the freezer it goes until I need something really special for quests to eat with a warm homemade loaf of crusty bread.👍👍
I definitely recall reading Little House on the Prarie and learning that they sometimes used the juice of a grated carrot to color the butter slightly more yellow.
Another option with your freshmade butter is to cut it into smaller pieces and freeze it and then just pull it from the freezer and use it as needed it will last a lot longer that way
Only one important thing to remember - it's best to cover it with at least a few layers of foil or put it in a box and then foil it to keep the smells out. Otherwise the butter will very quickly absorb all the smells from the freezer.
I remember spending a month with my great- aunt Rita.(my Great grandfather's sister). She had three guernsey cows and had a cream separator through which she would run her fresh milk every morning and get a thick cream thicker than anything I have ever seen since. When she wanted butter, she would just place a lump of this cream in a mixing bowl and stir it for about a half hour with a tablespoon and she would get her butter. I had always thought that you needed a churn or crank jar to make butter, but, if your cream is rich enough, this method works just as well.
Max's pokemon brings all the nerds to the yard, and they're like, you wanna trade cards, damn right. i wanna trade cards. ill trade you, but not my charizard
In my home country, margarine has always been the go-to, which makes sense because even today butter is sort of expensive compared to margarine. The first time that I tasted real butter was in my adulthood when I bought some because I was making a recipe that called for butter and I wanted to make it properly. I tasted it on its own and was amazed by its flavor, it had a really delicious milky flavor. Also, I really love the Butterfree plush in the back. Butterfree really grew on me when I played Red as a child, and it learning some grass-type moves really helped its cause as it helped me in the first two gyms.
Great video Max. Fun Fact: The first butter factory in the United States was right here in my hometown of Campbell Hall, NY. Building is long gone, but there are plaques dedicating where it once stood. I’ll grab some pictures and tag you on Instagram. There absolutely is a difference between breeds and butterfat content, jerseys being the highest, Holsteins being the lowest. Diet does factor a large part into butterfat content as well.
My grandmother also grew up on a ranch where they made most of their own food, including butter. Churning was one of her chores. She said she preferred making butter from slightly older milk, as it turned into butter quicker than really fresh milk. (It may also have developed a more complex flavor, just as people used to hang their meat for a certain period of time.)
Whenever I got out of my way to make homemade bread I also make butter. As a kid i learned to do it by shaking the heavy cream with a clean marble in a jar. Now I use my blender, I didn't think it would work but was surprised that it does! Beats shaking a jar lol Nothing better than fresh butter spread of fresh bread. Its so simple but so perfect.
Also use a butter paddle to push it around the bowl instead of your hand, so the water stays cold longer. Amish stores have these. Also, if you start with cultured cream, like crème Fraiche, the butter will have a rich, complex flavor. I know this from first growing up with a modem Mennonite family and having to grow everything we are because of mold sensitivies (so no processed foods), and then doing the same for my own kids, including getting into raw dairy and culturing foods. Make crème fraiche. You won’t regret it!
I taught Kindergarten for many years and one of our favorite cooking activities was making butter and biscuits for Mr. B. I poured room temperature cream (I learned that lesson the hard way 😂) to fill jars about half full. Usually used 1 jar for every 3 kids and told them to get shakin! They never believed me when I told them how tired their arms would get. While some were shaking others would be working on the biscuits but everyone had a turn doing both. Our room would smell so good and everyone had a bunch of fun and enjoyed every morsel!
Outstanding video. I made butter when I was a kid by shaking a tightly covered jar until I got a little lump of it. It was pretty white. My parents were born in the late 1920s and we talked about adding carrot to it and also that margarine during WWII had come with a little packet you could mix in to get a yellowish color. After that, I always thought the rocking or flipping butter churns seemed like a much better idea than the dasher churns where you had to lift the dasher up and down.
When I was a kid, my mom was making whipped cream for a cake and overwhipped it. After seeing the lumpy, watery mess, she decided to... throw away the whole batch. She had no idea she had made butter, and I also didn't realize what she had done until I was older 😂
This is the kind of story that makes me feel like we lost so much practical knowledge over the course of a few generations. I feel like in the 1800s nobody would "not know" how butter was made. I could be wrong I suppose.
At one point I was working in a grocery store bakery, and we accidentally left the whipped cream for a little too long. It was a slow day. So we turned it back on for a few more minutes and went down to the bread department and got some fresh bread. It was wonderful.
I've made butter in my mixer before- when I rinse it, I put it in a mesh sieve,and keep running the sieve under the cold water tap until the water runs clear.I lay a bunch of paper towels on the counter and wrap the ball of butter in them,and keep squeezing the butter and changing the paper towels until there's no more liquid coming out.Then put the butter back in the mixer bowl and work some salt in it,and pack it into a clean container and stick it in the fridge.
If you make butter at home, make sure to have a sip of the buttermilk you pour off. It's really very pleasant and so much better than whatever masquerades as buttermilk that you get from the store. Real buttermilk is also great for pancakes and biscuits.
Hey Max, check out this recipe I found for toothpaste from 13th century: "To make a paste to clense the teeth, medle ye togidere twei partis of hony, o part of mynt, and of o part wode ashe, and o part cratche; and whanne thei han meddlid tho thingis, sitte thei in the sunne, til the tyme determyned, whanne tho schulen be clensid, and be spreynt togidere with watir; if the paste is of a lord, adde ye the secounde part of a good saffroun to the paste, for the firste."
I used whipping cream (36%) with 4 tbsp of cultured buttermilk and plain Greek yogurt (w/ live bacteria). Mixed together and let stand at room temp for ~30 hours and then used a stand mixer. Tastes amazing!
Having made amazing cultured butter a few times at home, I honestly recommend it so much over normal "sweet cream" butter. All you need to do is to make a crème fraîche: just add about 1 part cultured buttermilk or good-quality yogurt to 10-15 parts cream (about 2-3tbsp per pint), shake or stir it until fully combined, and let it sit in a closed container like a mason jar at room temperature for 12-24 hours, until it thickens. After that, just put the crème fraîche in the fridge until cold, and then follow the normal process for making butter. The culturing process gives it such a lovely, subtle flavor that's far superior to sweet-cream butter in my book, and as an added benefit, it also tends to last longer. Not that it's likely to need to.
I tried making homemade butter on my own before as a child. Shaking it in a baby food jar containing a milk of sorts. I can't remember what it was but it was fun.
We did that in girl scouts, I forget what specifically we started with but we got to put the butter on crackers after which was fun (and I was an oddity for not minding the flavor of buttermilk... that was pretty divisive)
@@bellablue5285same here. We all took turns shaking the canning jar filled with cream. Also either before or after making the butter the troop leader read a story to us about a frog falling into a bowl of cream and the struggle of swimming in the cream eventually created an island of butter that the frog could sit on.
Back in my mom's school-teaching days, that was a favorite activity of hers. Few more productive ways to burn off the energy of a room full of 5th graders than a half hour of SHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKE.
I have a lady who sells fresh Jersey cow milk and goat milk. I will have to make this butter now! I honestly love raw milk, especially Jersey cow. The taste is way different and better than store bought milk. The cream collects on the top in your glass jug and is great for coffee and tea!
Two words: Cultured butter. Historically, cream was kept until there was enough to churn. With little refrigeration, the cream would ferment. The better has active cultures in it and a much more complex flavor. Also, the fermentation would help to preserve it.
I've known about that for a long time, but I've been too afraid to try it (we collect cream by skimming it off of milk instead of buying it - it's quite expensive here). So far I've only made sweet cream butter, often salted. Maybe I'll give it a try with a small amount of cream, but we're not used to it so it might just end up going to waste.
@@raerohan4241 there are directions on the Internet on how to make cultured butter at home. Raw milk has the bacteria needed to ferment it. You can purchase buttermilk culture. Even yogurt with active culture can give it to you.
I have a very old memory to share. I did a good deal of growing up on my great-grandparents' farm. They grew their own produce, and had a small livestock operation which included a milking parlor for about 10 cows. Up until the early 1980s, the milk was kept cold in the "milch haus," which was a thickly-walled stone building set against the side of the barn that cast the deepest shadow. Inside, it had a poured concrete gully, about 4 inches deep, that ran in the floor along one wall. Freezing cold spring water flowed up through one end and ran out the other. That was where they made and kept the butter in the summertime. We made it a point to go in on unusually hot days and check the thermometer. It was never above 48 nor below 44 degrees F. A superb episode, as always!
We used to make our own butter frequently when my kids were young, sometimes in a plastic lidded container shaking it, sometimes with the immersion blender's whisk attachment. Always delicious:)
What a fun episode! It’s so easy today to take certain conveniences and ingredients for granted. During the episode I had a flash from books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables). On farms, there were separate ´dairies’ to process the milk, and I suddenly remembered that they were made of stone and built half underground… To keep the milk cool and now, I realize, to allow the making of butter! I’m surprised that ghee was not universally adopted in the northern hemisphere as a means of preserving the fat. Thanks for opening my eyes to the medieval church’s olive oil racket!
@@naamadossantossilva4736 Because for thousands of years there was no refrigeration. And when you need to process a lot of milk everyday from your cows, it allows you to make a shelf-stable fat that keeps for years.
For a "recipe" for butter, try one of the volumes of the Foxfire series. This is a series of books compiled about 50 years ago that preserve the arts and ways of the people of the Appalachians. A lot of interviews and firsthand info from elderly people of the time, who learned the arts often in the late 1800s.
Something I always add to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner is a ball of fresh churned sweet cream butter, it adds a nice touch to the meal and a heavenly smell to the house. As for the buttermilk, well I never use it for anything in particular before it expires, plus I'll need every inch of fridge space for the feast leftovers, so I just add it to the mashed potatoes with a dash (or two) of garlic salt
@@Jennifersacredhag I’m a History Major and love to cook so this is like my go to channel to have on tap. I like those ones too, especially the seasonal, but my favorites are the more ancient recipes, like Rome and Egypt.
I chose to use raw cream for this episode as it is the main thing that makes recipe “historical”. When making modern butter, I always used Pasteurized cream. The process has saved countless lives and I think it might be a good topic for a video!
Sounds like a good idea indeed. Just finished the video and as I always say, great job ❤
It would be a good topic. We take our food safety for granted these days, it would be good to have a reminder of how good we have it compared to our forebears.
Also, if you could find an old recipe for it, maybe you could do a video on the history of ghee (clarified butter) 😊
Fun fact: one of the risks of consuming raw dairy is contracting tuberculosis of the bones
Agree Miller. Sweet butter tastes brighter than salted, but salted tastes more unctuous than sweet. Perhaps mention some of the storage containers used over the generations, such as the butter bell, and the seemingly more recent phenomenon of spreadable butter, which is very easy to DIY while controlling the quality of the ingredients. Many store brands include water, which makes toast soggy. I look forward to you sprinkling in even more of your acting / comedic takes like you used to. Paz y salud.
When I was in elementary school I had a teacher who would tie food to history lessons when learning about pioneers she had us all learn how they made butter by passing around the butter churn jar until it became butter. We then got to eat the butter we made on bread she had baked at home.
It’s one of my favorites memories from elementary school. I credit that teach with starting my love of history by making it come alive rather then just facts on a page.
I had a teacher who did the same thing, kinda. She gave us a baby food jar and with cream. We shook it until it became butter. We made Johnny cakes, and she brought in 3 sisters stew and we had a little 5th grade feast!
My science teacher did the same thing in 5th grade. She made banana bread and we got to make our own butter. Memories.
A core memory is in highschool where our history teacher Mr.Booker made us pancakes so sad he left before we graduated he was well loved by all the students who set foot in his class I hope he's doing well now
We had a similar lesson, everyone was split into groups and each group shook cream in a jar with marbles to churn it. Then everyone's "butter" went into a bowl and got salted, and we spread it on bread. I can't recommend salted whipped cream on bread.
My first grade teacher showed us how to make butter with an electric hand mixer ... fun!
Fun fact about butter: In Medieval times, butter was used to pack breakable items like glass and crockery. The items were packed in crates and warm, liquid butter poured over them. Once the butter solidified again, the items could not move in the crate and where thus safe from breaking. This practice is the origin of the German idiom "alles in Butter" (literally: "Everything in butter"), meaning "everything is allright".
I have never heard of alles in Butter. Is it maybe just used in some parts of germany?
@@Graf-Fischgen-von-Fischgesicht Not to my knowledge. It is an older idiom, though, so people under 30 or 40 may not know it.
That's a bit genius. Probably worked best in winter though - it would be a bit of a tragedy in 30⁰ heat. I wonder if there was butter that was kept for the purposes of shipping -spoilt in some way perhaps or if it was just so cheap.
This is so interesting! I knew the saying but I never knew where it actually came from, so this was very much a "oh that makes so much sense" moment for me! (under 30 btw and I know for a fact that several of my younger friends know it too. although I can imagine the younger generations genuinely not knowing it anymore).
@@Graf-Fischgen-von-FischgesichtIn west germany (actual west, not BRD "West") at least its a normal idiom
The tall butter churn actually only takes 30 minutes or so if you take turns with excited children! I used to work at a historical museum, and it's amazing how fast it can happen when that's all the kids want. 😂
Energetic children are absolutely the key to a number of repetitive kitchen tasks.
Finally! Hyper active childern can have a purpose instead of drugging them like they are a disease.
@@MrYfrank14 - it depends on the degree of the hyper state, don't you think?
That's adorable!
@@MossyMozart - perhaps. But every hyperactive child I have seen was called " a boy" back in my day.
We didn't drug them .
Everyone survived.
My mom loves to tell a story about me as a toddler where she found me in the fridge, stick of butter in hand, just munching on it like a candy bar. Nearly 3 decades later, I gotta say... the urge is still there. Loved this video!
one of my little brothers was the pickiest eater growing up, but would always eat the butter off his bread and ask for more butter to be put on it. i also saw him just munching on a stick of the stuff too. my hypothesis was 'he's not getting enough calories, and butter is basically raw calories, ergo his body would love the stuff'
Literally the same with me. My mother caught me snarfing down an entire stick of butter. But the opposite happened to me. Growing up and even today 5 decades later, I can only stand butter if the recipe absolutely needs it.
@@davidtee5367I mean, that's why my aunt used to eat the tips of burnt matches.
Thanks for sharing the link, I can't wait to start churning...I always wanted to learn to do this as a cooking skill.
I
My mom said that when I was little, she would catch me taking bites out of the butter in the fridge, and when she asked me why, I told her, "It's my candy bar."
My sister was trying to make whip cream, but she processed it too long and made butter. So, for Christmas, she made small loaves of bread, homemade jam, and home made butter. All 3 in a basket( each basket from dollar store) and gave as gifts. BEST Christmas present ever!
I’ve always wanted to do this but didn’t know if people would like it. Good to know they were a hit!
I’ve seen them called ‘homestead baskets’ or ‘farm baskets’. Fresh bread, homemade butter, garden flowers and herbs, fresh eggs or cheese, handmade soap or candles, whatever you produce can go inside!
I can taste this comment and I love it
I remember my mother making butter from our “top cream” in just the way you describe. We salted our butter. As an adult I made gee. I was born 77 years ago when we made our own soap from ashes and fat and of course our own milk,butter, butter milk, cream, soft and hard cheese. Thank you for bringing back this “lost lore”
For what it's worth, I'm 44, and I do all of what you describe in my kitchen. And I've made sure my daughter learned how to as well.
It's a survival thing for us. Groceries are really expensive and it's cheaper for me to just buy the cream top milk and use that cream for things. LOL.
Ghee is excellent, truly a brilliant way to make butter last longer without refridgeration. Great to cook with, too. I make popcorn with ghee, it gives amazing flavour without smoking the kitchen out.
My Newfie great granny was the same as she lived in a small outport in Newfoundland, she made butter from freshly milked cows. There was no shopping centre from the time when she was a small girl & she was born in the 1890's. She had made her cloth woven from sheared sheep wool onto her spinning wheels (she had 2, a small & large 1) & loom.
The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles
We use the top cream to make natural yoghurt! It's nice and tart, you get a lot of whey, and I can never ever have flavoured/artificial yoghurt because this is what I grew up eating.
Such a wonderful episode! We can all relate to butter. 😄
I grew up on a farm and we had a single milk cow (Molly). During early spring when all of the wild green onions would sprout up in the pasture, Molly would just gorge herself on these. She loved them!
While this made her happy, it made for terrible milk. It became undrinkable.
BUT, it made for wonderfully flavored butter that was excellent on a baked potato or in mashed potatoes.
My mother would label it as green onion butter in the fridge lest we accidentally put it on toast with jam. 😄
@lrstudio3221 - Yes - it is a really smooooth episode. I could watch nothing butter than this video. I'm melting!
The original herbed butter!!!!
Smart Molly! 💖
My mother grew up in the time of local dairies and milk men and she says the taste would change throughout the year as the diets of the cows changed and in the spring, the milk often had a slight garlic taste. Molly wasn't alone in her preference!
Remember the bitter weeds? Yellow tops? Those made the milk horrible as well..
Laura Ingalls Wilder devoted a section of her "Little House in the Big Woods" (the first of her "Little House in the Prairie" series) to how her mother Caroline would make butter, from start to finish. Look it up and it's pretty detailed. Includes how Caroline would color the butter with carrots, to give it extra sweetness and yellow that the milk may have lacked. (And added salt as needed.) It's a great description of how rural Americans in the 19th c. made it.
I was wondering why he didn't mention this book! I immediately thought of Little House on the Pararie
I think it was in the winter months when she added the carrot juice because there was no grass for the cow to graze on.
I love all of the food preparation sections from the Little House books. Even the description of popcorn as a luxurious Christmas treat.
I loved the idea of the rocking horse butter churn in Little Farmer Boy. It's exciting to have it just rocking back and forth over lifting the butter churner repeatedly.
@@SunnyMorningPancakes It always makes me hungry when I read these books. The sewing ad crafting sections were also what got me into dollmaking.
That's how old trades and skills survive, the lack of interests from the young.
My grandmother, born in 1914 in Scandinavia, would use unsalted butter on her face every day as a moisturizer. In her 90's, she still had phenomenal looking skin!
Here in India, I have seen ghee (clarified butter) used as a face cream and lip balm by "ye olde folks" - and I always wondered if Europeans used butter the same way! Now I know. So thanks for sharing your grandma's story!
Glamorous 😍
Nothing beats home made butter.
I think you'll find everything beats the butter when making it at home. But some devices are better at the task.
@@markstyles1246 🤣
@thefriendlychap4132 - Homemade bread under it?
Oh, i bet the beurre demi sel from La petite laiterie we bought at the market in Paris beats your home made butter.
I miss it.
nothing beats kerrygold
I grew up on a farm. We had gurnsey cows. My mother made butter that was a bright yellow. She beat the cream with an egg beater, when it turned, she washed it as you did by hand, and she had wooden butter molds that she packed it in. She always made bread to go with it. My father sat in the kitchen, waiting for that bread to come out of the oven. He just loved homemade butter on a chunk of warm bread. And so did we - my brother and sister. It was a wonderful life.
"Golden Guernseys" give yellowish milk high in butterfat, about twice as high as those omnipresent Holstein cows' milk. Unfortunately the higher production of (watery) milk from Holsteins means that guernseys and jerseys are now only a tiny minority of our dairy cattle. A hundred years ago it was different. Guernseys were the mark of quality, dairy-wise. If you were going into the ice cream and butter business today, using Guernsey milk and cream would enable you to produce a gourmet product that the commercial lines couldn't compete with.
@@AlbertPaysonTerhune I am 76 years old and live in Connecticut. When I was a kid northeastern CT was all farms. Now some of the best farmland in the state is developed - houses like boxes many times all the same color sit on land that was farmed with pride for generations. It makes me so sad!
Max, clarified butter is made by melting the butter at a relatively low temperature and separating it from the milk solids without letting the solids "brown".
Ghee is made by heating the melted butter to a higher temperature so that the milk solids start to brown, then separating them from the melted butter. Slightly browning the milk solids gives ghee a slightly nutty flavor you don't get with clarified butter.
Great to know. Many sources consider both to be the same and only note the flavor differences
Glad you brought it up. I live in India and we make ghee at home, so seeing this distinction brought up is satisfying.
TIL.
Is browned butter basically ghee then?
@@Mila-Rosa The browning of meat or butter is the maillard reaction, which is the caramelization of proteins. The milk solids are only slightly browned for ghee . For browned butter you let the maillard reaction goes further for a stronger taste that is good for sauces for browned meats and some baked goods, but you can't let the cooking temperature get too high or the milk solids will burn, with a resulting in a bad taste.
Regular butter burns and smokes at about 163-191 °C or 325-376 °F so it isn't very good for frying meat unless you want browned butter. Clarified butter and ghee are very good for frying since they have a high smoke temperature (about 252 °C or 486 °F) because the milk solids have been removed.
Dogs are such amazing creatures. The idea of the family dog working to make the household butter is adorable. I hope those dogs got to taste some of their work as a treat.
Clearly you don't know about the cheese tax. You gotta pay it.
dogs have had many jobs over the years here one you might have heard of.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog
Maybe they could drink the buttermilk
I like this man; no excessive and obnoxious cuts, good delivery and he TEACHES. Max and Townsends are two of the best food historians on youtube.
I used to work as a historical interpreter in a living history village in Florida. The first time I made butter was outside during peak heat in the middle of Summer, and it was an incredibly smelly, greasy, and frustrating mess. We kept having to run inside to the air-conditioning and sit it in a bucket of ice to get it to do what we needed. Definitely makes you appreciate (most) modern amenities. I can't wait to watch this!
Historically most butter in europe and north america was made during the spring when pastures are at their best and recently calved cows produce the highest-fat-content milk. In spring the weather is cool enough to make butter and summer and autumn were for making cheese. Sometimes butter could be made again in autumn if the pastures were good.
I feel like an historical interpreter would know better than to make butter outside in summer...
@MrSteveGrey We did, but that was the program our Living History Coordinator wanted us to do that day as he has a surplus of milk for some reason.
@isaacpowell15 Yes, we explained that to our visitors and it was very apparent to them why it was that way.
Florida now smells bad because of all the fascists living there.
3 minutes in and this is my favourite episode. This show keeps getting better.
it certainly gets butter(er)!
It does! I thought this would be a boring episode (given the subject) but it is one of his best yet!
@@giraffesinc.2193you think butter is boring?
@@jilletdelphine Butter is serious business!
@@axelhopfinger533Darn it, someone else thought of that pun! XD
Your empression of Julie Childs is on point. I cant count the number of times my dad and I laughed about her. At the same time she changed the kitchen game for all generations. Im so glad we have her recorded for all time.
For a time when all my kids (6 kids) were young, a litre of whipping cream was less expensive than a pound of butter, so being a poor, homeschooling family, I turned butter making into a history lesson and we made our own butter. Just used a large glass jar, took turns shaking it till the butter came, washed it, squeezed out the buttermilk (which made great pancakes or biscuits), salted it and we had our butter. I don't think any of the children regret those times now that they are grown.
That’s really lovely 😊 ❤
We lost one of our home incomes so for for Christmas last year I made a collection of flavored butters and gave everyone a loaf of sourdough. Turned out a lot cheaper than trying to buy flavored butters. I need a shield for my stand mixer though lol. Made a total mess with the first batch. I do not have kids or I totally would have put them to work lol.
Yeah! Not the same at all but in kindergarten we used to make butter the same way. I don't think any of the kids had the patience to shake all the way from cream to butter but I remember a clump of butter finally appearing inside the jar!
@@marureeThat is how we made butter in elementary (?) school. Just shook a jar till it congealed basically. 😅
What a charming story. We did the same thing (four children) for similar reasons: less expensive, more tasty, and the entire process helped to occupy and tire-out my mother's "wild animals".
Little tip on making your own butter: You don’t have to buy a hand-cranked butter churn. A regular jam glass will do the trick as well. I’m making home-made butter with those, but instead of a cranking motion you just shake that glass samba style while watching an episode of Tasting History with Max Miller.
Personally, I prefer the shorter glasses with a wider lid diameter then the taller glasses with a smaller lid diameter. It is easier for me to get the butter out later through a larger diameter. I usually choose a 350 to 400g standard glass size they use here everywhere to sell confiture in it. Once eaten empty, clean the glass (after every use) properly with scolding hot water. After it cooled down, fill the glass up to 1/4 or 1/3 with cream. Personally, I like that ratio since there is enough space for the cream to really flop and smash around that glass when I shake it. I’ve done it with a half full glass as well, but it took a bit longer for it to turn into butter. If you want more butter, I would suggest to use a larger glass instead but keep the ratio below 1/2. It is that smashing against the glass bottom and the metal lid on the top which turns the cream into butter, and this needs space. Just make sure you have a glass that allows you to properly close the lid. Else it will get really buttery around you.
We did that in our elementary class then visited a bread factory. Such a good and tasty week.
I did something like this when I was in 3rd grade, as part of a homeschooling lesson. I remember using carrots to help give it more of the classic yellow tint.
@@beepboop9712 Laura Ingalls Wilder mentions that Ma added some carrot juice to her butter to give it color.
Shaking it in a jar is how my mom taught me to make butter for a social studies class in 9th grade.......a very long time ago.
AWH HELL... Around here, the flea markets still have the occasional electric churn... It's usually an old pickle jar (yeah, up to the gallons, depending on size of family or batch)... with an electric fan motor on top of it, to spin the shaft instead of the hand-mixer type that Max showed in the video. I think I've still got an old one I bought for about $5 back in the 90's when my last one died... or... well... it kinda got killed... glass jars and jugs only take so much, but my brother's story was "The move killed it dead"...
I think more folks in the last 10 years or so sell them as "Curios" though... Doesn't stop 'em from working...
Of course... It ain't like you can't find a decent little electric fan motor, a dowel, and cut apart 3 or 4 spatulas (bamboo or rubber work) and cobble your own together out of a pickle jar or whatever else... just get a sturdy lid so it'll take drilling a hole through it for the dowel... Might want to shop around for an appropriate adhesive, but I've always done my repairs with J.B. Weld and given at least 2 days to cure "to be sure"... It's not like we're building a g** d*** Rembrandt or trying to do the work of a Lambo' or nothing...
AND I'm not spending a half-hour chanting and cranking when I can just plug it in and come back in about the same time to check on it... It'll work itself out. ;o)
This reminds me of how we made butter as a kid but what we did was just put the cream (fresh from our cows) straight into a mason jar, about 3/5ths full and seal the lid with a little plastic wrap, and then we just shook it but not in a violent back and forth motion, it was more of like a rowing motion where you'd dip the lid end down and then sort of scoop it up. Anyways you do this for like 15-20 minutes and one hell of an arm workout later you'd have a smooth ball of butter in the jar (depending on how good your motion was, if you just went violently back and forth it would all be little clumps that would have to be strained). We boys used to have contests of who could make butter the fastest and still in a smooth ball. Lots of memories and basically no equipment other than a mason jar and some elbow grease! Thanks for the video, many fond memories.
Definitely just had a butter making race with my girlfriend last week making butter in a mason jar. It’s a blast!
My aunt taught us kids to do it this way! ❤
When my daughter was little, I was a library worker at her school. I used to read to the kids Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One of our year-end projects was making butter. I put the kids in a circle and then had a jar half filled with cream. The kids were told to shake it until they got tired and pass it to the person next to them. When we were finished, I rinsed and salted the butter, gave whoever wanted to try a taste of real buttermilk, and served the butter on some homemade bread. They loved it!
This!! I was looking for someone to mention the Ingalls book, because those are authentic instructions if any. Using carrot squeezings to make winter butter yellow stuck vividly.
What about storing it in a butter bell.
I done the old fashioned way with the plunger style... My Great Grandmother would always con me into doing when I was down there for the summer in rural Western Virginia (no not West Virginia). Essentially she'd call me inside saying she had some errands to do and she wanted to me keep churning the butter. Well after about a few times I realized she wasn't doing any errands and she was just buggering off to my Aunt's down the road about 1mile to chat for a while and left me to do the work. I think she was doing it to be funny cause that was her personality. I caught on and told I knew what she was doing. I still did it anyways cause it was better than cleaning out the hen house or herding cattle on my uncles farm. I miss her.
My great grandmother lived with us when I was a kid, and she said the one invention that really changed everything was the refrigerator. It was lovely to hear that echoed in your video.
I'm 64 and my grandmother taught all her grandkids how to churn butter with nothing more than a mason jar with a lid you shake till you have butter she made butter about twice a week and it was always so good that is about how long it lasted lol it was used in and on everything
I ask my grandmother about making butter in a mason jar and she said “ no sane person would make their butter by shaking a mason jar , It just takes too long, it was a way to keep rambunctious young kids occupied for a couple hours, you’d give a child a jar of cream and tell them not to stop shaking that jar till it was butter”
Fun fact about the several millenia old bog butter- there's a charity dinner at one of the Smithsonian museums in dc every year, and if you're willing to pay an extraordinary amount of money you can sample a tiny fraction of some foods that have been preserved and discovered from various areas (like honey from Egyptian tombs, or Bog butter. etc) Supposedly it's quite earthy.
Mmmm, the peat bog flavor
Omg 😱
Whaaaaat that's really cool! No way
No lie, I'd try that honey. Idk about the butter, but honey never goes off.
Hard pass
I have fond memories of helping my maternal grandmother churn fresh raw cows milk to produce butter, then packing in a wooding butter mold to make a large block pf butter. She used a traditional stoneware churn as well as a large hand-cranked churn. Then she saved the buttermilk for my grandfather.
I used to work for a small local dairy in the UK and we made our own butter using cream from Jersey and Guernsey cows. The butter was so rich and yellow and just delicious, perfect on top of a scone with a cup of tea.
Max talking about how butter became a staple that was in *everything* in European cooking, made me remember what my grandmother (who was an _amazing_ chef) used to say; that back when she was young, no matter what you were making, if it didn't taste good you just threw in more butter and/or cream until it did!
Wise words indeed!
I work at a pioneer village, and we make butter every day! We use our 102 year old cast iron wood cookstove to bake scones (and the buttermilk goes in the scones) and the butter goes in a dish to put on top!
I live in Brazil, and I am old enough to have been lucky to taste home made butter, made by my grandmother. When I was very little she used to buy milk in glass bottles, sold directly from a farm.
I still remember the consistency, the taste of this butter... so good.
I grew up on a small farm, and making butter was an everyday thing for us. Loved seeing this video. Here's a couple of tricks that will save you some trouble: put the cream in just a regular wide-mouth mason jar, or a half gallon jar if you can find one. No paddles or churn. Just shake it like shaking a mixed drink. Not too fast, but not slow either. You want the cream sloshing in it. Then as it starts to thicken/separate, slow down to a back and forth "rolling the cream" motion to gather it. It will collect in a ball as it separates and starts to stick together. Takes about 15 mins. No straining in a cloth or scraping needed. Then dump it, pour out the buttermilk, and wash it by working it with a spatula in cold water, drain it, work out any water in the butter, and work in your salt. Then mold it/press it, and refrigerate. The whole process takes maybe 30 mins. Mmm. Oh, and Max.....the "music for churning" - no. Just, no. 😂. Oh, there is one other thing. You mentioned the sweetness of the butter. There are two kinds of butter, sweet cream and sour cream. Most people are used to commercial butter which is in the middle. You can put your cream in the fridge until it sours, and then make butter, and it will taste a little bit more like what you're accustomed to. Fresh cream butter, or sweet cream butter, is going to be milder and a little more...bland. I personally love both of them, just for different uses.
Ahhhh! You described it so much better than i did! I left out the speed cuz i couldnt describe it. "Sloshing" is exactly right. Thats how my mom made it.
Thanks for the tips!
I respectfully disagree. The singing makes it go faster and the butter tastes better.
I've made butter this way when I have cream that's near its expiration date and I won't use it up in time. It's tiring, but it works. Watching an episode of Tasting History helps pass the time.
@@TastingHistoryI dare say the issue wasn't with song per se but with the set list.
2:22 My Grandad had one of those. But with whipping paddles that was for whipped cream! Every Thanksgiving he would make a big production of making whipped cream for dessert. He made a fuss about keeping his recipe "secret" even though it was only 2 ingredients. Thanks for sparking those fantastic memories!
I remember making butter in second grade. The teacher put the cream into a jar, we all took a turn shaking the jar until a blob formed in the jar and then she took that out and finished it. We put it on bread and had a real treat. Since I am now in my 60's it was obviously a memorable learning experience.
I grew up very poor and real butter was something we only had on holidays. Even to this day my favorite indulgence is just a slice of good quality bread (toasted or not) with a bit of quality butter spread over it. It's crazy to think that and realize how easy butter is to make! 😆
Thanks to my ADHD, I have an extra quart of heavy cream in my fridge that I was wondering what to do with. Then this episode came out! Guess I know what I'm doing with it now! 😊
Its really interesting that geography really affects what people considers as cheap or expensive ingredients.
In my country, butter is considered as high tier ingredients, especially unsalted ones, so its mostly just used for cakes and toast (which is not a food people eats regularly in my country), or simply replaced it with margarine, which is cheaper.
Vegetable oils like palm oil or coconut oil, however, are even cheaper.
What does Adhd have to do with heavy whipping cream again?
@@Hongobogologomo Having ADHD means I do stupid stuff like spend an hour going through my kitchen and making up a grocery list of things I need to buy, only to forget that list at home and find myself standing in front the dairy case wracking my brain to remember if I have heavy cream at home already and ultimately buying another quart because for the life of me I cannot remember.
Max, I don't normally comment but I had to this time.
The quality of your videos is amazing. I've been watching your channel for a few years, and you've consistently always put out fun, educational, and funny videos. I love learning, and the way you teach is just... hard to describe. I don't find myself noticing the time slip by when I watch the videos, you were born to perform.
Thank you so much for putting so much effort into these videos! I will always look forward to the next video.
Wow, so kind. Appreciate the support.
@@TastingHistory Always my friend!
There's one thing you didn't really get into: Souring the butter. Traditionally butter has been made from sour cream over here (I guess all of northern Europe), with industrialisation producers switched to not souring the cream but culturing it afterwards as they can use unsoured buttermilk for more things than soured buttermilk. There's a couple of places that still produce proper soured butter and it's indeed quite a bit better, though not if you expect it to be mellow. If you get a roll of Faßbutter it's even going to be churned in a batch with a (giant and stainless) butter churn, and not have undergone the usual continuous process, and it usually won't even be that much more expensive. Definitely worth the extra money when you're doing shortcrust or such.
I love how so many of us have memories of making butter in school. I don't think that is done quite as often anymore. Homemade butter is the best!
I taught my 5-6 year olds how to make butter because the topic was changes in substances - so liquid to ice, liquid jelly, popcorn kernels to popcorn and cream to butter
I prefer Kerrygold to my butter.
Yall should know you can just put heavy whipping cream in a regular Mason jar or pretty much any airtight container (i made it in a water bottle with a screw on lid once) buy just pouring some in and shaking it back and forth. You shake for a bit and get whipped cream, and then you keep going and you get butter. Much easier and cheaper than buying a special butter churn jar thing and you don't have to dirty your kitchen aid
We learned about it in primary school. We were given some whipping cream in an empty water bottle and were told to shake it until it turned into butter.
I remember this. I had shake a jar of cream and pass it around the class taking turns during a history lesson. We weren't allowed to eat it after.
Anything better than butter and bread? Butter, bread and homemade strawberry jam! You programs are fantastic.
Now you just need to find a peat bog and leave it there for about 2,000 years, and you can finally construct the FORBIDDEN GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH!
Hardtack for the bread
@@REDDAWNprojectclack clack
And the bread will be made with hardtack!
Panis Quadratum
Medieval cheese
Bog butter
who says its forbidden
Amazing episode! This does make me wonder if it might be time to revisit the very first episode with the medieval cheese. It would be fun to see how far Tasting History has come as a show, and how far Max Miller has come as our (beloved) host!
Oh memories.
This particular video has sparked a lot of people sharing childhood stories of making or helping make butter. Once again, food performs brilliantly at bringing people together. But it took Max sharing his interest in something so simple but so close to everyone's families. Thank you.
To help keep the butter cold while working it with the paddles, you can chill a stone slab (usually marble) and use that as your work surface.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Butter Bell, or "Beurrier Breton" as a method of keeping the butter longer before refridgeration. It's kept in water, preventing oxidation while keeping the butter soft for spreading.
This! I LOVE my Le Creuset butter crock! No refrigeration needed and it stays soft and spreadable.
I use butter irregularly, so I've tried using white vinegar instead of water in my butter bell - it pickles the butter it contacts, which is a very interesting taste!
I love your depiction of history with a culinary twist!! There is a rich history in our foods!!
Greetings from a Vietnamese American
This is one of your most perfect episodes….your research, your humour, your passion for butter! Perfection!
Don't forget the singing and tongue twister!
Growing up on a ranch in western Nebraska, we had a milk cow. As kids, we had to milk her every morning, and sometimes evenings too, depending on how much she was giving, or if she had a calf with her at the time. We made a lot of butter off of the cream from that.
It also made the best caramels you will ever taste!
@nwredneck390
I've never heard of a cow who gives caramels! Fascinating.
Sounds divine ❤
Hello and than you for the interesting channel. I really enjoy your videos. I am 67 and I remember making fresh butter with my mother and siblings when we were children. Back then you could easily find whole milk that was Pasteurized but not homogenized. We would pour this milk into a jar (perhaps half full), tighten the lid, and take turns shaking it vigorously until eventually the butterfat would start to cling together into clumps, just as you demonstrated with your cream in a butter churn. Our mother would handle the steps after that point, but I have distinct, happy, memories of burning off some of my immense childhood energy shaking jars of milk vigorously to make butter.
For anyone wanting to give it a try, homemade butter freezes very well in an airtight container. We've never had any spoil in the freezer because it doesn't stay in there for more than a month or two. Then we eat it! Once you thaw it use it in about three days, but keep it refrigerated. We freeze our butter in small containers so we only thaw what we need for one or two days. You'll never want store bought butter again!
There is a restaurant in my hometown, where years ago, when they were just starting out, one of the waitresses had a hobby of making homemade compound butters, which they would give to regulars along with the bread. It was an Italian place, so there were the usuals like garlic and basil, but then she was branching out into strawberry basil and blueberry thyme, that kind of thing. Absolutely amazing and you never knew what you were going to get. I am sad for myself but happy for her that she graduated and is now a dental hygienist.
Hey Max, I make homemade European style butter. You let the raw cream sit out on the counter for 24 to 48 hours then make your butter. When using store bought cream you just add about a 1/4 cup of cultured buttermilk and a couple of tablespoons of live culture yogurt and then let it sit. When you wring out your butter in cheese cloth, if it is warm, put the butter in the fridge or freezer a bit before wringing out the butter.
A hilarious rancid butter in hair story: when I was a one-year-old, I almost looked like I was bald because my hair was sparse and very fine. My mother heard that putting butter in the hair would make it grow thicker. We lived in the tidewater Virginia area, and it was in August. The butter went rancid very quickly, and my mother felt terrible about it. I have extremely thick, wavy hair. And I have always been crazy for butter! When I was 30 months old, my mom discovered me in the kitchen eating a stick of butter with big bites. I still am likely to sneak a bite here and there. Make of that what you will...
Well since you said "make of that what you will" I'm gonna say this, and if it offends you I'm sorry, but: *Fat*
The butter went to your head.
Yup@@caimansaurus5564
I'm from the complete opposite side of the state in SWVA (Help!). I used to eat stick butter when I was a kid. Also, Virginia seems to have some interesting folk remedies. Supposedly, my biological grandma from Virginia was told that she could get larger breasts if she rubbed... chicken excrement on them😬😲😮😳. Long story short, that myth was busted.
@@thenovicenovelist I'm from West Virginia, not Virginia. :)
Max, my mother,who was a character, was unimpressed by how some of our family members applied butter to bread and decided to give a lesson. She grabbed her bread, butter and her knife and proclaimed “You don’t scrape butter on the bread, you slather it!”. When you said to slather it I thought of my mom and cracked up. It appears my mother would have approved of your method. Lol
You are actually supposed to butter bread a piece at a time. That is, if we are talking about proper etiquette
I like your mom. One dairy girl to another.
@@JvariWand in extremely large quantities
I learned that from Bilbo Baggins. At one point in the Fellowship of the Ring he describes to Frodo how his great age makes him feel like too little butter scraped across too much bread. I forget the exact quote, but it stuck with me. Butter is meant to be slathered on and savored. It's not a lubricant for the bread, it's the actual topping meant to be enjoyed!
Bilbo's point was about all things in life, and I try to take it that way... but it was a metaphor about buttering your bread.
your mother was right, butter should be covering the bread in thick layer.
One of my favorite stories from baking and pastry class, in culinary school, was about the difference between whipped cream frosting and butter... if you whip it too much, just put it into the croissant.
I have to thank you for inadvertently solving a question that has baffled me for many years with regards to butter. When I was 22, I came to the United States for 3 years, and one thing I simply could not understand was why the butter was a strange white with the oddest taste, even though I was assured that it was indeed made of cream (I am from Ireland- we are renowned for our dairy.Grass fed cattle are the norm here).
Not only that but both US and Canadian butter have more water in them than European butter. When melted in a hot pan these butters spit all over but good European butter does not. Lots of cheating going on and even worse in Canada is sour cream. It's not sour cream. At least in the US it is still possible to buy real sour cream even at Walmart. Canada: shame on your dairy industry! Shame shame.
American butter is strange. Too white and with no taste
@@Dollibet Same in Brazil. Because of the country's own vastness, grass-fed butter must come from far away, sometimes other states entirely, which is a luxury to have.
It can be found and it is arguably accessible, but if you can afford to have grass-fed butter every week, you are already a bit privileged.
It's because American butter is made from bull milk, not cow milk.
is KERRY GOLD a good Irish butter? It's the only one I can get in the states.
I love your channel for my D&D campaigns! Nothing grounds a story more than food, and you always give me a ton of inspiration for so many different things!
No longer are the days of rations being some jerky and trail mix lol
Explorers from the north? They're packing pemican and hard tack! As well as foraging for fish and wild onions by the river during camp time.
Stopping at a farm as you adventure? They say these fields make the freshest butter during this season. Of course we have to wash it a few times first lol
Docking at the port for a while? Enjoy the smoked fish, maybe wash it down with some grog!
And after a long day of questing, you chill with some satyrs who offer boiled eggs while the bread is baking. And after bread and garum, you lay down with some sweet itrion and wine, dozing off among the trees and stars
This sounds so cool and creative! 😊
My mother grew up on a farm and would churn the family's butter. She grew to hate butter and when margarine or oleo was introduced she preferred it to butter even though the yellow colorant had to be mixed in. For special occasions I will pour 3 cups of Jersey cream into a quart jar, screw the lid on and agitate the jar until the butter fat clumps together and make my butter saving the buttermilk for cooking a chocolate cake.
There two types of butter here in Europe. There is the mentioned cultured butter, but there is also sweet butter, which is essentially the butter in the video. Both can be bought in most supermarkets with a fridge section. Here in Germany for example, the cultured butter is called "(mild-)gesäuerte Butter" and the sweet butter is called "Süßrahm Butter". And yes, the German and English word for butter is exactly the same.
Hi Max, I remember as a kid churning butter at my grandparents house. My grandmother had a few cows that ate mostly grass most of the year. She had a 1 gallon churn with wooden paddles and a hand crank. Just like they did with other chores like shelling peas(by the bushel) and shelling pecans, they stuck the kids with it. They always acted like it was supposed to be fun, but after 10 minutes, you knew better. Anyway, after cranking for what seemed like forever, a large lump of butter would form which you took out and put in the refrigerator. The rest of the milk still had enough fat that it tasted good. With the price of heavy cream what it is, you're better off buying butter. Or maybe you just need to torture some kids.
As a parent, I take offense to your comment. Making butter is not "torture" how hateful of you to say. I absolutely loved shelling peas with my grandmother. I wish my son could enjoy doing it. He can shell them, sure. But not gain the wisdom of her years. Making butter in a jar is a magnificent experience, all children need.
Maybe reevaluate your life choices.
@ndb_1982 Jeez. Lighten up! Ever heard of sarcasm? You might want to reevaluate or get your sense of humor recalibrated. SMH.
@@ndb_1982 You're not being rational, you are being overly emotional over something very silly.
@@ndb_1982go band to band lil bro
I find that it comes out about the same cost and that does not include the buttermilk one gets
I made butter once just to try it. It was kinda cool! I used a Mason jar and a marble. It turned out pretty nice!.!
I freaking love how Max can make something simple as butter awesome and entertaining.
My dad is from rural ireland. He used to go turf cutting as a kid and sometimes they'd find bog butter. His father actually found a bog body back in the 50s too.
Supposedly when my Great-Grandad was young, he ate some bog butter on a dare, and the taste was so bad that it put him off butter for the rest of his life
My grandparents ran a small dairy farm. I can remember my grandmother churning butter with a hand churn back in the 1970's. I suggest a blender, however.
An interesting series would be a quick overview of how people preserved food (or rather, how they kept preserved food?) back in the day... Like with butter, I get they put salt in butter to preserve it, but how did they keep it? What kind of containers did they use? Did they use containers? What about the sweet butter? How was it kept in the home? Food preservation/use (as in, all the ways people used food, since they couldn't put it in a fridge for a week) has always fascinated me...
The victorian way youtube channel spoke a bit about how sweet butter was handled in affluent households. In many of those situations it was made that morning and used pretty much immediately, so the need to store it long term wasn't necessary. I imagine that was rather common all over for unsalted butters. Then again I'm no historian so that could have been the case only in well to do Victorian homes.
I use a French butter bell and have kept both store bought and home made unsalted butter in it for over a month on the counter with zero issues. Always soft and never melts even in the Aussie summers. Changing the salt water regularly is the trick 👌
When I was a kid, my class made butter. We passed around a Tupperware with cream inside it in a circle. I think they were keeping us busy. They served it at a parent teacher night.
We did the same thing in either 4th or 5th grade. Our Teacher had found an antique butter churn similar to what is shown in the video. We actually had it straight out of the jar. IIRC we had it on pieces of biscuit.
We did it, too. 3rd or 4th grade, I think. In our case, the teacher brought in a jar which we all took turns shaking, and then sampled the fresh butter on crackers.
I also have done this, both in preschool and in the 3rd grade. Little did I know I would grow up to make fresh butter out of my dairy goat's raw milk after turning it to cream. I still haven't quite gotten used to the slight goaty aftertaste.
I can't believe nobody noticed that Butterfree in the background. I appreciate your attention to detail :)
I grew up in Ukraine village and my grandmother used to churn butter in a 3 liters jar just on her laps. I remember it took her good couple hours. She rinsed it with water as you did and added some salt. But I loved freshly made without salt obviously.
Also some times if I remember that correctly she made it fro sour cream. Which one may call cultured butter.
I grew up on homemade butter. If a family had only one cow, the thick cream would need to be collected for a few days, before there was enough to make butter. Salt was used to draw more buttermilk from the butter, as well as preservation. Due to saving the cream and lack of good refrigeration, butter was never as bland or sweet as what we can purchase in the store today.
I used to wash my butter by hand, but I was gifted a stand mixer so now I use the paddle attachment and stream in the ice water, pour out and repeat 2-3 times. The absolute best is adding roasted garlic and herbs, but I do honey, cinnamon sugar and strawberry too. Often as gifts with a loaf of sourdough.
I made butter once, completely underestimated the amount and had like a pound of butter for myself to eat. One of the best butter I have ever eaten, and the buttermilk was delicious as well.
Buttermilk is great for baking. When I make brownies I use Buttermilk in it and it is amazing.
When my kids were little, we’d have then make fresh butter as a Thanksgiving activity. Put whole cream in a coffee can (or other metal can), seal, duct tape the lid on. Send kids out to kick/roll/shake the can around for an hour or so. Busy kids, fresh homemade butter on your Thanksgiving table. Win/Win
Going to do this someday
I learned too make butter in second grade from a project our Teacher did with us for Thanksgiving. She put cream in mason jars and had us shake them until the it turned to butter. The power of child energy is great and keeps them busy. I've been making butter ever since. I now make cultured butter as well as sweet cream. I'll add fresh herbs or spices and roll in parchment, vacuum sealer and in the freezer it goes until I need something really special for quests to eat with a warm homemade loaf of crusty bread.👍👍
I definitely recall reading Little House on the Prarie and learning that they sometimes used the juice of a grated carrot to color the butter slightly more yellow.
My mom told me they did this when she was growing up on the farm in rural 1930's Pennsylvania
Yep, her mother would boil the the carrots in milk, and then add the cooled milk to the butter. The girls loved to eat the carrots.
I recall this as well.
Another option with your freshmade butter is to cut it into smaller pieces and freeze it and then just pull it from the freezer and use it as needed it will last a lot longer that way
I do that with store bought butter. It freezes very well.
Only one important thing to remember - it's best to cover it with at least a few layers of foil or put it in a box and then foil it to keep the smells out. Otherwise the butter will very quickly absorb all the smells from the freezer.
I remember spending a month with my great- aunt Rita.(my Great grandfather's sister). She had three guernsey cows and had a cream separator through which she would run her fresh milk every morning and get a thick cream thicker than anything I have ever seen since. When she wanted butter, she would just place a lump of this cream in a mixing bowl and stir it for about a half hour with a tablespoon and she would get her butter. I had always thought that you needed a churn or crank jar to make butter, but, if your cream is rich enough, this method works just as well.
That butterfree is adorable max! And perfect for the video!🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤
I love Butterfree❤
It's really beautiful. But for this episode I would have chosen a Miltank.
Miltank has already been used 😔 Still not ready to repeat Pokémon.
Max's pokemon brings all the nerds to the yard, and they're like, you wanna trade cards, damn right. i wanna trade cards. ill trade you, but not my charizard
@@TastingHistory You chose well
In my home country, margarine has always been the go-to, which makes sense because even today butter is sort of expensive compared to margarine. The first time that I tasted real butter was in my adulthood when I bought some because I was making a recipe that called for butter and I wanted to make it properly. I tasted it on its own and was amazed by its flavor, it had a really delicious milky flavor. Also, I really love the Butterfree plush in the back. Butterfree really grew on me when I played Red as a child, and it learning some grass-type moves really helped its cause as it helped me in the first two gyms.
These videos are so well done. You can tell that a tone of effort goes into your work. Thank you
Great video Max. Fun Fact: The first butter factory in the United States was right here in my hometown of Campbell Hall, NY. Building is long gone, but there are plaques dedicating where it once stood. I’ll grab some pictures and tag you on Instagram.
There absolutely is a difference between breeds and butterfat content, jerseys being the highest, Holsteins being the lowest. Diet does factor a large part into butterfat content as well.
My grandmother also grew up on a ranch where they made most of their own food, including butter. Churning was one of her chores. She said she preferred making butter from slightly older milk, as it turned into butter quicker than really fresh milk. (It may also have developed a more complex flavor, just as people used to hang their meat for a certain period of time.)
That is cultured butter, like yoghurt and sour cream
Whenever I got out of my way to make homemade bread I also make butter. As a kid i learned to do it by shaking the heavy cream with a clean marble in a jar. Now I use my blender, I didn't think it would work but was surprised that it does! Beats shaking a jar lol Nothing better than fresh butter spread of fresh bread. Its so simple but so perfect.
Also use a butter paddle to push it around the bowl instead of your hand, so the water stays cold longer. Amish stores have these.
Also, if you start with cultured cream, like crème Fraiche, the butter will have a rich, complex flavor.
I know this from first growing up with a modem Mennonite family and having to grow everything we are because of mold sensitivies (so no processed foods), and then doing the same for my own kids, including getting into raw dairy and culturing foods. Make crème fraiche. You won’t regret it!
Boosting for you
I taught Kindergarten for many years and one of our favorite cooking activities was making butter and biscuits for Mr. B. I poured room temperature cream (I learned that lesson the hard way 😂) to fill jars about half full. Usually used 1 jar for every 3 kids and told them to get shakin! They never believed me when I told them how tired their arms would get. While some were shaking others would be working on the biscuits but everyone had a turn doing both. Our room would smell so good and everyone had a bunch of fun and enjoyed every morsel!
Outstanding video. I made butter when I was a kid by shaking a tightly covered jar until I got a little lump of it. It was pretty white. My parents were born in the late 1920s and we talked about adding carrot to it and also that margarine during WWII had come with a little packet you could mix in to get a yellowish color. After that, I always thought the rocking or flipping butter churns seemed like a much better idea than the dasher churns where you had to lift the dasher up and down.
When I was a kid, my mom was making whipped cream for a cake and overwhipped it. After seeing the lumpy, watery mess, she decided to... throw away the whole batch. She had no idea she had made butter, and I also didn't realize what she had done until I was older 😂
So did I, but I tasted the butter and kept it. It was fairly nice. But I had put sugar in the cream, so I got sweetened butter.
This is the kind of story that makes me feel like we lost so much practical knowledge over the course of a few generations. I feel like in the 1800s nobody would "not know" how butter was made. I could be wrong I suppose.
@@stephanpopp6210add a bit more sugar and you'd have buttercream frosting!
@@Izzy-cp8yt You're so right and I didn't even think of that
At one point I was working in a grocery store bakery, and we accidentally left the whipped cream for a little too long. It was a slow day. So we turned it back on for a few more minutes and went down to the bread department and got some fresh bread. It was wonderful.
I've made butter in my mixer before- when I rinse it, I put it in a mesh sieve,and keep running the sieve under the cold water tap until the water runs clear.I lay a bunch of paper towels on the counter and wrap the ball of butter in them,and keep squeezing the butter and changing the paper towels until there's no more liquid coming out.Then put the butter back in the mixer bowl and work some salt in it,and pack it into a clean container and stick it in the fridge.
If you make butter at home, make sure to have a sip of the buttermilk you pour off. It's really very pleasant and so much better than whatever masquerades as buttermilk that you get from the store. Real buttermilk is also great for pancakes and biscuits.
Hey Max, check out this recipe I found for toothpaste from 13th century:
"To make a paste to clense the teeth, medle ye togidere twei partis of hony, o part of mynt, and of o part wode ashe, and o part cratche; and whanne thei han meddlid tho thingis, sitte thei in the sunne, til the tyme determyned, whanne tho schulen be clensid, and be spreynt togidere with watir; if the paste is of a lord, adde ye the secounde part of a good saffroun to the paste, for the firste."
It's so strange being able to understand parts of this, whilst others are barely comprehensible.
@@jacklucas5908 what are you talking about, it's perfectly easy to understand! 🤣
I imagined Jamie Fraser saying this. 😏😍
Not sure what the "cratche" refers to. Or "gidere". Other than that, makes sense.
@@shaventalz3092"Togidere" is 'together'.
I used whipping cream (36%) with 4 tbsp of cultured buttermilk and plain Greek yogurt (w/ live bacteria). Mixed together and let stand at room temp for ~30 hours and then used a stand mixer. Tastes amazing!
Having made amazing cultured butter a few times at home, I honestly recommend it so much over normal "sweet cream" butter. All you need to do is to make a crème fraîche: just add about 1 part cultured buttermilk or good-quality yogurt to 10-15 parts cream (about 2-3tbsp per pint), shake or stir it until fully combined, and let it sit in a closed container like a mason jar at room temperature for 12-24 hours, until it thickens. After that, just put the crème fraîche in the fridge until cold, and then follow the normal process for making butter. The culturing process gives it such a lovely, subtle flavor that's far superior to sweet-cream butter in my book, and as an added benefit, it also tends to last longer. Not that it's likely to need to.
I was hoping someone would mention cultured butter. I've never had it, but feel it's one of those things people overlook.
I gave homemade cultured butter as Christmas gifts one year. People loved it.
I tried making homemade butter on my own before as a child. Shaking it in a baby food jar containing a milk of sorts. I can't remember what it was but it was fun.
Most likely a heavy cream which can be easily bought at the store. If you didn't have fresh cow juice from the source.
We did that in girl scouts, I forget what specifically we started with but we got to put the butter on crackers after which was fun (and I was an oddity for not minding the flavor of buttermilk... that was pretty divisive)
We did that in occupational therapy!
@@bellablue5285same here. We all took turns shaking the canning jar filled with cream. Also either before or after making the butter the troop leader read a story to us about a frog falling into a bowl of cream and the struggle of swimming in the cream eventually created an island of butter that the frog could sit on.
Back in my mom's school-teaching days, that was a favorite activity of hers. Few more productive ways to burn off the energy of a room full of 5th graders than a half hour of SHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKE.
I have a lady who sells fresh Jersey cow milk and goat milk. I will have to make this butter now! I honestly love raw milk, especially Jersey cow. The taste is way different and better than store bought milk. The cream collects on the top in your glass jug and is great for coffee and tea!
Two words: Cultured butter. Historically, cream was kept until there was enough to churn. With little refrigeration, the cream would ferment. The better has active cultures in it and a much more complex flavor. Also, the fermentation would help to preserve it.
Not really ferment. It develops a yogurt like culture. It becomes "sourcream"
That is fermentation. It’s just from types of bacteria that produce lactic acid, which has a sour taste, instead of alcohol.
I've known about that for a long time, but I've been too afraid to try it (we collect cream by skimming it off of milk instead of buying it - it's quite expensive here). So far I've only made sweet cream butter, often salted. Maybe I'll give it a try with a small amount of cream, but we're not used to it so it might just end up going to waste.
A great use of somewhat sour cream!
@@raerohan4241 there are directions on the Internet on how to make cultured butter at home. Raw milk has the bacteria needed to ferment it. You can purchase buttermilk culture. Even yogurt with active culture can give it to you.
I have a very old memory to share. I did a good deal of growing up on my great-grandparents' farm. They grew their own produce, and had a small livestock operation which included a milking parlor for about 10 cows. Up until the early 1980s, the milk was kept cold in the "milch haus," which was a thickly-walled stone building set against the side of the barn that cast the deepest shadow. Inside, it had a poured concrete gully, about 4 inches deep, that ran in the floor along one wall. Freezing cold spring water flowed up through one end and ran out the other. That was where they made and kept the butter in the summertime. We made it a point to go in on unusually hot days and check the thermometer. It was never above 48 nor below 44 degrees F. A superb episode, as always!
We used to make our own butter frequently when my kids were young, sometimes in a plastic lidded container shaking it, sometimes with the immersion blender's whisk attachment. Always delicious:)
What a fun episode!
It’s so easy today to take certain conveniences and ingredients for granted.
During the episode I had a flash from books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables). On farms, there were separate ´dairies’ to process the milk, and I suddenly remembered that they were made of stone and built half underground… To keep the milk cool and now, I realize, to allow the making of butter!
I’m surprised that ghee was not universally adopted in the northern hemisphere as a means of preserving the fat.
Thanks for opening my eyes to the medieval church’s olive oil racket!
Why make ghee when you can just put the butter in a cold place?
@@naamadossantossilva4736 Because for thousands of years there was no refrigeration. And when you need to process a lot of milk everyday from your cows, it allows you to make a shelf-stable fat that keeps for years.
For a "recipe" for butter, try one of the volumes of the Foxfire series.
This is a series of books compiled about 50 years ago that preserve the arts and ways of the people of the Appalachians.
A lot of interviews and firsthand info from elderly people of the time, who learned the arts often in the late 1800s.
I loved those books! Incredible compilation of information.
Something I always add to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner is a ball of fresh churned sweet cream butter, it adds a nice touch to the meal and a heavenly smell to the house. As for the buttermilk, well I never use it for anything in particular before it expires, plus I'll need every inch of fridge space for the feast leftovers, so I just add it to the mashed potatoes with a dash (or two) of garlic salt
Was literally on a Tasting History binge and now I’ve been gifted with new video!
I love binging on Tasting history. My favorite ones tend to be the Middle Ages and/or seasonal and holiday foods. ❤
@@Jennifersacredhag I’m a History Major and love to cook so this is like my go to channel to have on tap. I like those ones too, especially the seasonal, but my favorites are the more ancient recipes, like Rome and Egypt.