Homemade Butter, 4 Best Ways to Make Butter at Home

Yes, you can buy good French butter. Or you can make your own homemade butter with about half an hour of actual work, and see straight away why the French are so precious about it. Made the French way, with cultured cream, it’s richer and creamier, with a real taste of cream rather than just fat and salt. It melts differently on warm bread, and it has that faint grain you only get from fresh butter.

You also get real buttermilk as a bonus, the tangy liquid left after churning, which is perfect for crêpes, soda bread and cakes. And if you bring a little dish of your own butter to the table, shaped neatly and scattered with flaky salt from Camargue, people will notice!

Here’s how to make butter at home the French way: which cream to buy, four ways to churn it, how to wash, salt and store it, and what to do with the buttermilk.

Why French homemade butter is cultured

Most French butter starts with cultured cream. It sounds technical, but it’s nothing more than controlled souring, the same way crème fraîche is made.

You add a spoonful of something with live cultures to the cream and leave it at room temperature. The lactic bacteria turn the milk sugar into lactic acid, which thickens the cream and gives it a fresh, slightly tangy flavour. The butter you churn from it tastes fuller and more complex, and the buttermilk comes out properly tangy, just right for baking.

If you’d rather make plain sweet cream butter, you can skip the culturing step. It’s quicker and still good, just simpler in flavour, and the buttermilk will be mild rather than sour.

Choosing the cream

This is where everything starts. Ordinary cream makes ordinary butter, no matter how carefully you churn it.

• Fat content: use double cream (heavy cream) with at least 35% fat, ideally a little more. Single cream (light cream) won’t split into butter.
• Avoid UHT: pasteurised cream is fine, but avoid UHT or ultra-pasteurised cream. It cultures poorly and makes flatter-tasting butter.
• Grass-fed if you can: cream from grass-fed cows gives a more golden butter with a fresher taste.

Equipment to make your own butter

You only need one way to churn, plus a few basics. Here’s what each option involves.

To churn the cream (pick one)

For draining and washing

• A large bowl: for washing the butter. Glass or ceramic is better than metal because it doesn’t warm up as quickly. The Le Creuset mixing jug is a nice one if you want to do it in French style, and Pyrex makes a big, sturdy 3 litre glass bowl. Your choice.
• A fine-mesh sieve: for straining off the buttermilk. It doesn’t need to be fancy.
• Butter muslin or cheesecloth: not essential, but handy for squeezing out the last of the buttermilk, which helps the butter keep longer. Choose a tightly woven cloth that won’t let butterfat through, rather than the thin, open-weave kind.

Nice to have equipment

• A kitchen thermometer: if you plan to make butter regularly, an instant-read thermometer takes the guesswork out of getting the cream to the right temperature.
• Butter paddles (Scotch hands): traditional wooden paddles with ridges for working the butter and pressing out the buttermilk. A silicone spatula works too, but proper paddles make the job easier, last forever, and you do feel like you’re doing it properly.
• Butter moulds and stamps: purely decorative, but if you’re making butter for guests, a wooden mould or stamp looks lovely. Traditional French designs include flowers, wheat sheaves and cows.

How to make butter at home, step by step

Allow 24 to 36 hours for culturing, a couple of hours to chill, and then 20 to 30 minutes of hands-on work.

Step 1: Culture the cream

1. Stir 600ml double cream with 2 tablespoons of live yoghurt, cultured buttermilk or crème fraîche in a clean bowl.
2. Cover with a clean cloth or a loose lid so it can breathe.
3. Leave it at room temperature, around 21 to 24°C (70 to 75°F), for 24 to 36 hours. It’s ready when it has thickened and smells pleasantly tangy, like mild yoghurt.
4. Don’t leave it much longer than 48 hours, or it gets too sour. If it smells yeasty, cheesy or unpleasant rather than fresh and tangy, throw it away and start again.

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Step 2: Chill, then bring it back to cool

1. Put the cultured cream in the fridge for at least 2 hours to slow the culture right down.
2. Before churning, let it warm up to about 13 to 16°C (55 to 60°F), cool but not fridge-cold. Too cold and it takes forever to split. Too warm and the butter turns soft and greasy, and it’s hard to wash.

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Step 3: Churn the cream

Whichever method you use, the cream goes through the same stages: liquid, softly whipped, stiffly whipped, then suddenly the fat clumps together and separates from a thin, milky liquid. That sudden split is the moment you’re waiting for.

You’re done when you have clear clumps of yellow butter sitting in a milky liquid that smells tangy.

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Step 4: Drain the buttermilk

1. Pour everything through a fine sieve set over a jug. The buttermilk goes into the jug (keep it for baking), and the sieve holds the soft clumps of butter.

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Step 5: Wash the butter

1. Move the butter into a bowl and cover it with ice-cold water.
2. Press and fold the butter with your hands, a spatula or butter paddles. The water will turn cloudy.
3. Pour off the cloudy water and repeat with fresh cold water until it runs clear. It usually takes three or four rinses.

Don’t skip this step. Washing removes the leftover buttermilk, which is what makes butter go sour quickly.

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Step 6: Work and shape

Put the butter on a board and use butter paddles or a spatula to press, fold and turn it for a couple of minutes, until it’s smooth and even, with no beads of water left. If you have butter muslin, wrap the butter and give it a gentle squeeze to remove the last drops.

Then shape it however you like: a small block wrapped in baking paper (parchment paper), a roll, or pressed into a mould.

When the cream won’t turn into butter

• The cream is whipped but won’t split: keep going. It can sit at the stiff whipped cream stage for a few minutes before it suddenly turns.
• Nothing is happening at all: the cream is probably too cold. Let it sit out for 15 to 20 minutes and try again.
• The butter is soft and greasy: the cream was too warm. Chill the butter in ice-cold water before washing and working it.
• It won’t split, however long you churn: check the fat content. Cream under 35% fat may never turn into butter.

Salted homemade butter, the Breton way

If you like salted butter, now is the moment. Scatter flaky salt or good sea salt over the butter and fold it through gently, so you can still see some small crystals. Start with about 2 to 3g (½ teaspoon) of salt for 250g of butter, then taste and add more if you like it saltier.

French flaky salt is the traditional choice: delicate, slightly mineral and very different from table salt. A little goes a long way and gives that sweet-salty crunch on bread, new potatoes or radishes. Le Guérandais Fleur de Sel and Le Saunier de Camargue Fleur de Sel are both lovely.

Salt helps butter keep longer, but that’s not the only reason Brittany is famous for salted butter. Under the old French monarchy, salt was heavily taxed through the gabelle, so in most of France people switched to unsalted butter. Brittany was exempt from the tax, salt stayed affordable, and the Bretons kept salting their butter. They still do!

Flavoured butter

Once you’ve got the hang of it, your homemade butter is the perfect base for flavoured butters. Fold in herbs, garlic or citrus zest at the shaping stage. In late spring, try my chive blossom butter, made with the little purple chive flowers. It tastes gently of onion and looks beautiful on the table!

How to store homemade butter

In the fridge

Properly washed butter keeps for about 2 to 3 weeks, wrapped or in a covered butter dish. Butter that hasn’t been washed well goes sour in a few days, which is why the washing step matters.

In a butter bell

A French butter bell keeps butter soft and spreadable at room temperature. It works best with salted butter in a cool kitchen. Change the water every 2 to 3 days, and keep unsalted butter in the fridge in warm weather.

In the freezer

butter freezes brilliantly for up to six months. Wrap it tightly in baking paper, then in foil or a freezer bag to prevent freezer burn, and defrost it slowly in the fridge overnight.

What to do with the buttermilk

The liquid you poured off is real buttermilk from churning, which is not quite the same as the cultured buttermilk sold in bottles. If you cultured your cream, it will be tangy and perfect for baking. If you made sweet cream butter, it will taste like thin, mild milk, so use it in place of milk rather than as a substitute for sour buttermilk.

Good uses for cultured buttermilk:

• Crêpes and waffles
• Soda bread and soft sandwich loaves
• Clafoutis or a Far Breton
• Madeleines and Quatre-quarts or yoghurt cake

Storing Buttermilk

Buttermilk keeps in the fridge for about a week in a sealed jar. Cultured buttermilk already smells sour, so you’re judging whether it smells off rather than tangy. If it smells unpleasant or looks mouldy, throw it away.

You can also freeze it for up to three months. Pour it into ice cube trays or Souper Cubes, freeze, then tip the cubes into a freezer bag, so you can take out just what a recipe needs.

FAQ

Over to you

Cultured butter takes a bit of planning, but not much actual work. Most of the time, the cream is just sitting on the counter, then resting in the fridge, and the hands-on part is 20 to 30 minutes.

Is it something you’ll make every week? Probably not. But for a weekend lunch, a dinner with friends, or the first new potatoes of the year, spreading your own butter on good bread, with that soft tang and a few crystals of sea salt, is a small kitchen moment that feels very satisfying.

Have you ever made your own butter, or are you about to try? Tell me which method you used in the comments!

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