Sunday, October 13, 2013

Goat Butter

I started freezing  milk for the winter this week. I figure I'm going to need about 24 half gallon bags to make it through the dry spell. It's hard to imagine I will be going from drowning to dry in a few months.

I separated a couple of gallons of milk for butter. Goat butter is a little different than cow butter. It's white not yellow and has a lower melting point. Putting a chunk on your tongue is a neat experience. It just sort of dissolves.

This time since I had so much cream, I decided to make the butter in the kitchen aid instead of the blender. Big mistake. My splash guard has gone missing and I had to stand for 15 minutes with tea towels to catch splashes.

Here's how to make goat butter:

First you will need goat cream. I used a cream separator, but you can also leave your jars of milk undisturbed for several days and scoop the cream off the top.

Chill cream to about 50 degrees. Pour into the blender and start beating it. After about 5-10 minutes in the blender, you will hear a distinct splashing sound as the butter separates from the buttermilk.

Now you want to scrape all that butter into a bowl of cold water. Icy cold works best, because it will be very soft at tap water temp- it may be different where you are, but the cold water comes out lukewarm in the summer down here.



With a spatula, kneed the butter against the side of the bowl to remove all the buttermilk. You will need to refresh the water several times. The butter will go rancid rather quickly if the liquid is not removed.

Save that lovely buttermilk for pancakes.




When the wash water is nearly clear, it's time to remove the water from the butter by working it against the side of the bowl. An ice bath may help here if the butter gets too soft. Many people use butter paddles for this job, but I don't have any. The liquid runs down the grooves in the paddles as you work the butter.


Salt your butter with some sea salt. A little seems to go a long way- I've oversalted before. The salt will help to preserve your butter and releases more moisture- be sure to drain it off.

Now mold your butter. I would love to have a cute butter mold. I don't so I made due with a soap/chocolate mold I've yet to use for soap. You can also roll the butter in wax paper to form a log. That's the method I'll use next since the mold didn't work very well for me.


Enjoy your butter!

5 comments:

  1. I used my goat butter in green beans, it turned to watery milk LOL!

    I put my cream in a mason jar only half full, let it sit out overnight on the counter and the shake it for 15 minutes the next day. I'm going to try your way next time and those paddles look like they would come in handy ☺

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  2. You just amaze me! I wish I had your energy. And so resourceful. I have made goat butter, but that was back when I was milking 7 does and had a fridge full of milk. And then didn't get much. I love it though. And I do not like goat milk after it's been frozen, at all. Is there a secret to good tasting frozen goat milk that I don't know about?

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    1. I had a hard time with some of last winter's frozen milk separating. I did some research and read that for best quality strain the milk and put it directly in the freezer. I hope that works out for us!

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    2. I was just wondering if putting the thawed milk in a blender and blending it will break up those little grainy fat globs. That's why I didn't like it, it was grainy.

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    3. Last winter, we had a few bags that separated so badly that they went to the chickens and then I had some that were just fine. I really think that the separated ones were the ones that had sat in the fridge a few days before I froze them. I bet the blender would help. I've also heard of people straining it again. However, when I tried that with the really separated milk it stopped up my filter.

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