March 28, 2009 - 11:48am
Butter problems
I'm in the middle of a home made butter project and I have bread fermenting for baking later today. I was hoping they would be ready together. I mixed the cream and yogurt last night and put it in the oven over night. I checked the temp this morning and it was 96F. I set it on the counter for a while to cool slightly about an hour. I beat it on high with a hand mixer and after about 5 minutes it started to separate. I dropped to low and it never separated any more. Now what I have is creme fresh. A smooth bowl of rich sour cream sort of. I did manage to drain some whey off but just a couple T. Is there any way to save this and continue into butter? At the moment it is setting at room temp in hopes it will separate.
Eric
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cold separates better.
OK, I'll try that
Eric
it makes less of a mess when it separates. And use ice cold water to rinse the butter.
If it doesn't separate, Eric, you can still use it but please call it Mascarpone and say you did it on purpose. :)
Happy spreading!
Mini
I considered using the DLX whisk and plastic bowl but I had my daughter doing this and wanted her to experience the change into butter by hand.
Renaming and declaring victory is always an option.
Eric
It's got to be the temperature it sat at overnight--sounds pretty warm to me; I didn't mind at about 77 degrees. Mini might be right about the marscarpone. Sounds better than my burnt pizza last night, though.
--Pamela
I had planned on turning the light off but, I forgot.
Eric
Tarragon Chicken marinated in creme fraiche.
http://whatwearecookingnow.blogspot.com/2004/11/tarragon-chicken-thompson.html
--Pamela
Pamela, don't give me recipes for Creme Fraiche, I'm still hoping for the best here lol!
The chicken does look good though :>) Hows that go? "when you have lemons, make lemonade".
Eric
I'm sorry, but I think your butter is cooked! --Pamela
should read: "I did mine" (must have been a brain mis-fire on original post). --Pamela
to separate. What do you think about adding 1/2 cup of ice water to it and start beating it again? Remember, fat and water don't mix and it might regain some of the moisture it lost sitting in the oven overnight.
Mini
Take 4 cups of cream plus 4 tablespoons of cultured creme fraiche (yogurt is an OK substitute, apparently). Mix well and heat to 100 degrees F. Let stand undisturbed for approximately for 6 to 12 hours.
You can make a mustard sauce for fish and beef, a raspberry sauce for lamb, pork and vegetables, and beef stroganoff.
Creme fraiche also can be used as a tenderizing and basting agent for seafood, poultry and meats, e.g., before you broil meat, poultry or vegetables, you can coat them with creme fraiche. When the cremem fraiche warms up under the boiler it slowly melts and continuously bastes the food while it cooks.
I've also got a recipes for chicken, dill and cucumber salt, oysters with pepper pearls, vegetables au gratin in a moment, chicken breast and liver pate, creme chantilly, creme fraiche frozen custard, vanilla creme fraiche frozen custard, honey creme fraiche frozen custard, cassis creme fraiche frozen custard, and double cream chocolate custard.
Creme fraiche also reduces the smell of meats, seafood, and poultry (guess this means that it helps if you have some bad smelling fish or something like that).
Just let me know. These are all really good recipes. You are a lucky man to have such a big supply of it.
--Pamela
I start my creme fraiche with buttermilk...works great.
Patricia
Take 4 cups of cream plus 4 tablespoons of cultured creme fraiche (yogurt is an OK substitute, apparently). Mix well and heat to 100 degrees F. Let stand undisturbed for approximately for 6 to 12 hours.
You can make a mustard sauce for fish and beef, a raspberry sauce for lamb, pork and vegetables, and beef stroganoff.
Creme fraiche also can be used as a tenderizing and basting agent for seafood, poultry and meats, e.g., before you broil meat, poultry or vegetables, you can coat them with creme fraiche. When the cremem fraiche warms up under the boiler it slowly melts and continuously bastes the food while it cooks.
I've also got a recipes for chicken, dill and cucumber salt, oysters with pepper pearls, vegetables au gratin in a moment, chicken breast and liver pate, creme chantilly, creme fraiche frozen custard, vanilla creme fraiche frozen custard, honey creme fraiche frozen custard, cassis creme fraiche frozen custard, and double cream chocolate custard.
Creme fraiche also reduces the smell of meats, seafood, and poultry (guess this means that it helps if you have some bad smelling fish or something like that).
Just let me know. These are all really good recipes. You are a lucky man to have such a big supply of it.
--Pamela
Crème fraiche over strawberries or bananas is wonderful for breakfast.
Crème fraiche in a potato gratin is ambrosial! Just substitute it for milk.
You mentioned coating poultry with crème fraiche, but you can also baste with it. As an added benefit, the drippings with the crème fraiche, deglazed, make a pretty terrific sauce.
OMG! I think I put on two pounds just typing this message!
David
Hehehe, I would love a recipe for chicken and maybe a salad dressing using creme fraiche. Maybe I'll even learn to spell it in the process lol.
Yea I tried washing some in cold water and it isn't reverting no way no how. I try again and this time I won't get it so warm.
Thanks all for your support on this.
Eric
the neighborhood ! It would be happy to get the use for something other than to keep umbrellas, and the kids whacking at each other with the dasher!
Can you send me a photo of your churn? I have seen them large enough for 10 gallons of cream but not for a home size. Just curious what it looks like.
Eric
Eric,
Here's a photo of a glass butter-churn, very much like the one my mom used for making better when I was a kid back on the farm:
It has a capacity of approximately 1 gallon, perhaps a bit more.
Mom never monkeyed around with culturing her cream. She just ladled off the top 2 inches or so of cream that rose to the top of each gallon of milk in our refrigerator. Sometimes we had sweet cream butter, sometimes sour cream butter. My recollection is that we churned the cream cold, straight from the refrigerator. None of us wanted to be the one who had to crank the churn (although the effort was minimal), but we did like to watch the cream transform. The texture went from smooth, to granular, to clumpy over a span of 10-20 minutes. I'd say most of the clumps of butter ranged from dime-size to maybe the size of a half-dollar, at most. The butter clumps were irregular, kind of ragged in appearance. After straining off the buttermilk (a thin, watery liquid; not the thick, cultured product you can purchase in supermarkets today), she would work the butter in a large wooden bowl with a wooden paddle. The bowl was about 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter at the rim and perhaps 6-7 inches deep. She rinsed the butter with cold water while working it to get all of the traces of buttermilk out. I think she salted the butter to help in the process of removing the last traces of moisture. Apparently butter that wasn't thoroughly washed would go rancid more quickly. Of course, if it were made with sour cream, it already had a bit of a tang anyway.
Mom also had a large, wooden, barrel-shaped butter churn that held 5-6 gallons of cream. I only remember us using it a few times. The cream was agitated by turning the barrel end over end as it was mounted on a waist-high wooden stand. There were two short spindles, or axles, mounted on opposite sides of the barrel's exterior that fitted into the top of the stand, permitting the barrel to rotate on its short axis. I remember using this churn one time in particular because the butter formed nearly perfect spheres about the size of tennis balls. Of course they all were mashed in the washing process, but it was pretty cool to open the churn and see those balls of butter bobbing around in the buttermilk inside.
Good luck with your continued butter experiments.
Paul
The one I uploaded to Eric was many gallons. He laughed and said it would take $ 50.00 of cream to fill it! Might just have to go straight to the source for that cream. Some ole' sweet mama cow with soft brown eyes that give' s us milk because she loves us! ( That's why my little boy thinks the hens give us fresh eggs!) Have a great ( soggy-muddy) weekend!
Audra
I used to see all kinds of churns on e-bay...I was tempted...now I might be again!!
Sylvia
Eric, they had little churns!
Sylvia
I'll post them to my food blog and post the link. Really, you've inspired me! I had my husband pick up some CF at Costco and plan to make one of the recipes too.
--Pamela
just cream with no additives? I don't know if it makes a difference or not. I was all psyched to make butter from a method posted here on TFL. The instructions were to use cream, in other words the list of the ingredients of the container say cream..no guargum, carageenan (I know spelling). You know what, I can't find any. I've looked in 4 stores, no luck. They all have some sort of additive.
I'm still looking..
Betty
Thanks everyone for your interest in my butter project. Unfortunately my cream and yogurt has been blended to the smoothest soured butter you ever tasted. I had planned to run to the store for some chicken breasts tonight, but we are in the middle of a spring blizzard and the roads are covered with ice and freezing rain. So no chance to try the Chicken and tarragon with Creme fraiche tonight.
Betty, I just went to Walmart and looked at the house brand of cream and yogurt. Both had ingredient lists with only cream or milk and no additives and were Pasteurized but not Ultra Pasteurized. It wasn't hard to find here. Hope you can locate the good stuff.
Paul, That looks like the right size for home use. I have seen those at estate sales and auctions around here but never given it a thought. Thanks for sharing your childhood memory's.
Sylvia, I'm wondering if the beaters on a mixer might be to violent for this. The beaters on the old fashion churns are much larger and more gentle.
I'll try again when the sun comes out again here.
Eric
Gee Eric, I live in an area with not much of a selection, but we do have a Walmart. Their house brand, "Dari-Gold" and "Umqua" all had additives. I also checked at Safe-Way, Thriftway and a Grocery Outlet Store. I don't live in the woods, but cream is probably not a high priority item in my community and hence the stores stock the brands with preservatives. Thanks though.
Betty
Eric, I'll ignore the comment on the beaters being too brutal. Why wood? How long has there been stainless steel? Wood was easy to find.
Back to the Blender: Anyone try it yet? My Aunt would always use her blender. Worked great! I used to sit and watch her zap the cream and see the butter form. She would wash it, kneading it underwater until it was clean. Then she worked it slowly into a soaking wet wood form she had in another bowl. Then she would push out the butter blocks onto butter paper, wrap it up and freeze it. The buttermilk got put into a large gallon glass and then into an old small milk can and soon we were off on a delivery to one of the neighbors.
I remember the butter paddles well. Many people have something similar in their kitchens today, a wooden spoon, more like a flat shovel, used to be the width of a 1 lb. butter box form. Used for pressing butter into the form and pushing out air pockets. The older ones don't have thick rounded handles but are just as flat as the shovel part. My folks use one in their daily cooking, Dad still takes it to his shop every 5-7 years sanding a beveled edge back on. I don't think it gets near the abuse as when we were home. It is very hard wood and grew dark with age. It is still a favorite tool in a frying pan. I have two but they're not authentic.
Here is a butter link: http://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080524145348AATx0Vv
Eric, now that you have all this Mascarpone, why not make Tiramisu? All you need now are lady finger bisquits, strong coffee and cocoa powder, and a little rum or rum flavoring. .....Best trick I know to make it vanish! And today is Sunday!
Mini
I remember years ago visiting my best friend at her sisters home and she said she made her own butter in the blender!! I know when making whipped cream fresh if it's over beaten it turns to butter...Martha Stewart made the same comment on her show...don't overbeat your whipcream or it turns to butter...it was being beaten in the kitchenaid with the wisk attachment! Sylvia
Mini your palate is much more refined than my humble tastes. We are getting by with a big stack of sourdough pancakes topped with what ever this stuff is. Thanks for the link to butter making. I'm convinced after reading that site and the follow on at the bottom that I doomed the butter by over heating it in the oven. One author says 58-65F and some are talking about chilling the container.
I think the next try will be in the DLX using the whisk attachment.
Richelle, I noticed while in the Walmart they also had goat milk in quarts. Maybe a little cheese maker here after all. There was enough fat in the goats milk to separate off into butter? How does that taste? Did you have to sour it first?
Eric
Hi Eric. I didn't forgot your Creme Fraiche problem! We have unexpected company for the next few days, so I'm just getting back to you with a few things for now. Here are two ways to use it in addition to the one you already have.
http://whatwearecookingnow.blogspot.com/2009/03/most-moist-chicken-ever.html
(I made this for dinner last night and it was absolutely terrific.)
http://whatwearecookingnow.blogspot.com/2009/03/chicken-dill-and-cucumber-salad.html
Cook extra chicken with the first recipe and then you can make this the next day.
More later when our company departs.
--Pamela
Last night I put my bowl of would be butter in the garage just outside the kitchen. It was in the mid 20's last night so probably 35F or so in the garage. Today it's hard as a rock (or frozen butter). I used it on SD Pancakes and it was great but I was surprised it got hard. It must have been closer to butter than I thought.
I tried it on the Italian loaf I baked yesterday also. Just to keep this on subject. :>)
Eric
Don't you love it when things work out after all?
I have my fingers crossed for my quasi-rye-sourdough today. If it works, I think I'm going to call it my "OMG, It Worked! Loaf."
I was just looking at this thread and thought I would chime in on a couple of things. I have been churning my own cultured butter for a number of years and bring the same obsession to it as I do my milling.
96F shouldn't have been too hot for a yogurt culture. I have made butter from creme fraiche cultures and I will tell you it can take over an hour of hard churning (in a hand cranked butter churn) to get butter from it if it has been heavily cultured. You may just have given up too soon. Of course, you may have wanted to chill the cream a bit after culturing it at 96F, but just cooling it to room temperature would have been fine.
I use very cold water with crushed ice to wash my butter. You want the butter to be getting fairly hard on the final wash so that you can work it better to get out those last drops of water.
For those contemplating the purchase of a butter churn - as always - Lehman's to the rescue. Their hand cranked churn is the right size for 2 quarts of cream (although it holds more) and it does a good job. I'm always wary of the eBay churns, but that's just me. I thought about an antique churn, but do enjoy some of the technological improvements found in my "Dazey type" contemporary churn.
Lehman's also supplies both German and US type butter paddles and the picture on their website are much clearer than my description would be. I have both, but prefer the samll German type paddles as they fit better in my hand and really do pull more liquid away from the butter. What I have found is that working in a wooden bowl helps pull moisture from the butter as the wood (as opposed to steel/glass/etc) is porous.
Hope this helps.
introduces commercial yeast by comparing it to sourdough as if everyone already knows how sourdough works. Hey, this country cookbook is not that old!
Yeah, I know, "out of the blue" here. But... my mind wanders.... I was looking up things to do with too much butter and also trying to find the 7 herb soup and, and, and....
I wandered into "grains" and up to yeast, and was reading under "raising your dough" there in German it says...
..."store bought yeast can even be worked like the yeasts in sourdough."
Cracks me up.
-Mini
Eric, your butter problem really got me thinking about recipes I've made over the years with creme fraiche. We had unexpected company, my cousin and a young girl from South West France--a friend of his son's--for the last several day. Wanting to impress this girl with how well Americans can cook and bake, I revisited two of my creme fraiche recipes from the past, broiled chicken marinated in creme fraiche and beef stroganoff with wild mushrooms. I had forgotten about the wonderful effect that lactic acid can give food, esp. poultry and meats! My recent venture into SD breads and my newly acquired knowledge about lactic and acidic acids really helped me understand how lactic acid differs from acetic acid (vinegar, lemon juice, etc.), i.e., how lactic acid has a much more subtle flavor that doesn't overpower the taste of the foods marinated or prepared with it.
The two dinners I made went wonderfully with SD blue cheese and walnut loaves that I baked. The French girl ate everything with great vigor and had an absolutely clean plate both nights. She would save a little piece of bread and literally wipe her plate clean--this was her family's custom. She though my bread was very good and even more so the 2nd day.
We also went wine tasting and visited two vineyards. One was a modern machine-picked vineyard--all very neat and organized. The 2nd was a small not-so-tidy vineyard with 150 year-old hand-picked vines. The wine maker gave us a tour of the 2nd vineyard and the French girl noted how similar it was to the way vineyards are cared for France.
Well, this is a bit of a rambling post, but I just wanted to share the experience of lactic acid, SD bread, and how she wiped her plate clean!
--Pamela