Making and growing your own food can sometimes take incredible effort. Make sure that effort isn’t wasted by storing your food correctly! Here are a few different ways to store homemade butter.
Homemade butter is so easy to make! With some heavy cream and muscle, you are one step closer to ditching the grocery store.
If you make your butter, though, you know that it takes time and energy to produce it. Don’t let that time and energy go to waste!
Here is how you can store homemade butter.
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How to Make Homemade Butter
I love making my butter in a blender. However, you can also make it in a food processor or by hand with beaters.
A stand mixer also works great! Be sure to use a towel or a bowl shield.
Add your heavy whipping cream, or raw cream if you have a dairy farmer that sells in your area, to whatever machine you plan on using.
During the mixing process, you may have to scrape the sides or the bottom of the bowl. The butter solids will clump together but need to make contact with the mixer.
After your cream separates and the solids come together to form butter, run your butter under cold water to remove all of the buttermilk. This step is crucial! Removing all of the buttermilk will ensure the butter won’t spoil.
At this point, if you don’t do anything, you have unsalted butter. Ta-da! If you prefer to have salted butter, add a pinch of salt and work it into your butter. You could also form the butter, salt the top, and store.
A quart of cream yields about a pound of butter.
I go more in-depth into the entire butter-making process in this blog post. (PSST – I even include a printable recipe card!)
Who knew making delicious butter was so easy?
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How to Store Homemade Butter
Some say butter is only safely left out at room temperature for a day or two.
The reason behind this is simple – nothing is preserving the butter, so it breaks down quickly.
If you are making homemade butter, you can always add salt! Salt is a natural preservative. Since dairy does tend to spoil without fermentation or refrigeration, modern preservation methods like a refrigerator may be best for butter storage.
Oxygen is another enemy to long-term butter storage. So be sure you’re storing your butter in an airtight container.
If you plan on wrapping your butter, try wrapping your butter in two layers. First, with parchment paper. Then with plastic wrap. The parchment paper prevents sticking.
If you are storing your butter at room temperature, a dedicated vessel like a glass butter dish or a butter bell, will give you the best success.
What’s a butter bell? A butter bell is a two-piece butter storage vessel. The butter is stored inside a cone or a smaller container. The smaller container is inverted into the larger container, which also houses water. When the pieces meet, the water helps create an airtight seal that keeps oxygen away from the butter.
Tips for Storing Butter in the Refrigerator
If you don’t plan on using your butter within a day or want to preserve the taste, you can transfer it to a mason jar or silicone mold and let it chill in your fridge. If you’re using a silicone mold, you can later transfer your butter to parchment paper and plastic wrap.
If your refrigerator maintains a steady temperature and the butter remains unopened, it may be able to last up to 4 months in your refrigerator.
Tips for Storing Butter in the Freezer
But if you aren’t planning on using it anytime soon, you can also freeze it to prolong its shelf life. Butter can last in the freezer for 8 to 12 months. If you plan on using butter in smaller increments, it’s recommended you slice your butter prior to freezing it.
The freezer is a great solution for long-term storage of homemade butter and store-bought butter. When I buy store-bought butter, I always freeze it in the original packaging. This is so I can keep the seal the packaging already has and extend the life of the butter.
Even More Storage Tips
Butter is best preserved with no moisture or air. However, butter is also known to absorb the flavors of the food around it. So it must be securely wrapped.
Even though butter absorbs the flavors around it, it can be wrapped in almost anything. Wax paper, a beeswax wrap, and even aluminum foil are all perfectly fine methods for wrapping homemade butter!
I use this silicone butter mold with hash marks to create sticks of butter. When the butter has set in the refrigerator, I transfer the sticks of butter to parchment paper and store the parchment paper-wrapped sticks of butter in Ziplock bags in the freezer.
Avoid Sour Milk
I store my butter in the freezer because I want to prolong the storage process for as long as I can.
I’m also a busy mom – there are times when I’m not able to remove absolutely every drop of buttermilk from my butter! When I don’t, I’m shortening the life span of my final product.
Take a Note from Store-Bought Butter
Fresh butter is sometimes a darker yellow than store-bought butter. That’s due to the diet of the cow that made the cream.
A cow’s diet can impact all of the dairy products it produces!
This is why it’s important to source high-quality ingredients for you and your family! “You are what you eat,” isn’t just a saying – it’s a reality!
Raw milk may not be the answer – maybe it’s the organic milk you find in your local grocery store. Whatever your solution is, try to aim for using high-quality cream to make delicious homemade butter.
What To Do with the Remaining Buttermilk
Don’t throw out the buttermilk!
Yes, making fresh homemade butter actually produces two products – butter and buttermilk. You can use the buttermilk in lieu of milk in any baking recipe.
You can also use buttermilk as a meat tenderizer. Add it to your favorite meat marinade.
Suppose you don’t eat meat that often, add buttermilk to your homemade salad dressings! The most popular is a buttermilk salad dressing. It’s similar to ranch dressing.
Some people even make buttermilk ice cream!
New Recipes You Can Try
If you try buttermilk ice cream, comment on this blog post and let me know! If you’re looking for rustic recipes to try your homemade butter out in, follow me on Pinterest. That’s where I share more about rustic recipes, low-tox living, and farming in your backyard.
I love making homemade butter, but I also love a flavorful compound butter. It’s an incredible way to add another layer of flavor to any protein.
If you want to try your hand at something on the stove, try making an herb-infused brown butter sauce. Flavors develop in fats. Homemade butter is the perfect vessel for fresh herbs, hot or cold! You can use your sauce to top pasta, salads, or vegetables.
Of course, I love to bake with butter! There’s nothing like seeing bright yellow flecks buried in a pie crust or watching butter run down a slice of hot cornbread.
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