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why butter doesn't separate from sour cream?

nicodvb's picture
nicodvb

why butter doesn't separate from sour cream?

Hi,

I made some sour cream letting ferment 1 litre of heavy cream with 2 tablespoons of yogurth at room temperature for 24 hours. When it was thinckened I whipped it for a lot of time (maybe 20 minutes) trying to extract butter from buttermilk, but I obtained only 1/3 of buttermilk and 2/3 of something that resembles more mascarpone than butter.

What happened? I hoped to get cultured butter...

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

or a yogurt culture got in the way.  Beating the hell out of yogurt adds heat and makes it into... creamed cheese.   Hang it in cloth to make it thicker as the whey drips out.  

Try it without yogurt and chill the heavy cream well before beating.   Then over beat to the point of separation takes only a few minutes on high, a blender works faster.   Shaking a half filled jar violently also works.  

When beating for whipped cream, one should use a low setting to avoid making butter and only beat once.  A second beating will guarantee butter. 

More can be found looking up, making butter.

Mini

 

Janknitz's picture
Janknitz

Sorry, Mini, to disagree, but I've made cultured butter by clabbering cream with yogurt.  It's really yummy!

What might have happened is that the original cream you used was Ultra High Pasturized.  Something in the way this cream is pasturized prevents the fat molecules from separating.  If you look on the carton you will see it say "Ultra High Pasturized" or "UHP" somewhere.  The only local creams I could find that weren't UHP were organic--it made it all the better, but more expensive.

BTW, this is a fun thing to do with kids.  You can put the clabbered cream in a mason jar with a lid (make sure to leave a lot of room for expansion) and shake, shake, shake.  All of the sudden--BUTTER!  It "only" took about 5 - 7 minutes of shaking. 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

and I should have.   Thanks

lumos's picture
lumos

....or maybe the kind of yogurt you used was the culplit?  It has to be the one without any emulsifier or thickner and preferably home-made or organic (less possibility of chemical additives).  You can use creme fraiche (full-fat, preferably unpasturized. if not, at least organic) to make cultured butter, too,  though it comes out slightly tangier than cream+yogurt mixture method.

btw, you might have not butter you wished for this time, but cultured 'mascarpone' sounds very yummy! :)

nicodvb's picture
nicodvb

Thanks everybody for your replies. Let me clarify a couple of things:

-the cream I used was UHT. Previously I used it to make plain butter successfully and the butter came out really good

-the yogurth I used was "greek" yogurth, that is:  drained.

Now, according to some page I read the lactobacilly release emulsifiers during fermentation. If this is true and if emulsifiers are in non trivial amounts, is it possibile that butter didn't separate exactly because it was  bound to buttermilk by virtue of the emulsifiers? It's the very first thing I thought, but I don't have any knowledge on this field. If this is the case the use of a non (ultra-)pausterized cream shouldn't make any difference, right? because the ferment would still be full of emulsifiers, whatever the starter and the cream used.

I don't know if a proper buttermilk or creme fraiche culture would make a difference, maybe the beasts therein  don't release as many emulsifiers?

Janknitz's picture
Janknitz

If you google "cultured butter" you'll find lots of people having success making it with yogurt.  I didn't find anything along the line of "it worked with this yogurt, but not that one", so I don't think that the lactobaccili are the issue--I really think it's related to the pasturization process in the cream.  You do find people that had no luck using UHP cream. 

When I made cultured butter I used my homemade yogurt.  I'm not sure what I cultured that particular yogurt with--usually I use Trader Joe's Greek style yogurt, or I have some envelopes of powdered culture in the fridge when we accidentally eat up the last bit of yogurt in the house.  So it's a bit of a pot luck around here. 

pchatter's picture
pchatter

Hi! I was able to successfully make yogurt with heavy cream and yogurt cultures (in powder form) and then made it into butter in my Vitamix. I am wondering if anyone has had any luck with making butter from yogurt made with milk (and not cream)? Thanks!