We’ve been making butter the old fashioned way since I broke the whisk beater on my Bosch. And I don’t mean using a butter churn.

The first step is to separate the cream from the milk. These jars sat in the fridge for about twelve hours. During that time, the cream rose to the top.

I used a small measuring cup to carefully skim off the cream.

Nate is holding a gallon-sized glass jar. He poured in two quarts of cream, tightend the lid, and began shaking. He started shaking the jar at the beginning of our family council meeting and by the end it looked like this. (about half an hour)

The next step is to pull out all the clumps of butter. A strainer would work nicely–I didn’t think of it until later. The leftover butter milk can be used in pancakes or other baking–or fed to the cats. This is not the same type of buttermilk you purchase in the store. It’s very thin. I don’t know what they do to make the buttermilk you buy in the store.

Now I run the butter under cold water because the heat from my hands melts it and makes it hard to squeeze out all the buttermilk.

Once it’s cold I fold the butter over on itself a few times to squeeze out more buttermilk.

I rinse off the buttermilk and cool the butter again. I repeat these steps until the buttermilk is gone.

Next I pour some salt (about a teaspoon for this amount of butter) onto the butter …

and knead the butter some more along with more rinsing to keep it cool and workable.

And now I have salted butter.

Two quarts of cream makes a pint of butter. Someday I’m going to buy some butter molds. It will make measuring butter for cooking much easier.