Well, who on earth doesn't love sweet, creamy butter? I know I do. Just a slice of fresh bread slathered in butter makes everything right in the world. I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner (soup) and got out a box of mini-Saltine crackers to have with it. Nearby was the butter. So I pulled out a handful of mini-Saltines, dragged each one across the top of the butter, and popped it into my mouth. Most excellent and I had to force myself to step away. It's the small things that make life worth living.
Butter on crackers is good and, even with peanut butter, I like using regular butter on one side of the bread and peanut butter on the other. We used to make butter when I was a kid, although it was always white, not yellow.
I do that with saltines too. If I'm in the mood for something sweet I'll sprinkle some sugar on top of the butter.
And if y'all haven't tried the mini-Saltines, you must get you some. They are the same taste as regular Saltines, but about an inch square and very crunchy. Just right to pop in the mouth.
I have introduced butter making to a few restaurants during my career in the food industry. It never failed but when teaching the kitchen crews to make it the question always comes: “why is it white?”. The good thing about making your own is that although it is a little more spendy than high grade store bought butter but the whey produced as a side benefit is great for sauces a soup bases. Uh.,...if anyone hasn’t made it yet but wishes to give it a try in a kitchen aide mixer or something akin to that, watch it!! My worse mistake was producing butter from 3 gallons of heavy cream (I like heavy cream) and then walked away from the Hobart mixer just for a moment. I swear, just a moment and all the sudden it sounded like the Hobart was coming apart and the whey was splashing everything within 25 feet! As the cream starts turning, the whey left behind will inevitably splash around so ya have to turn the mixer down to a lower speed to prevent the kitchen from looking like a milk bomb and just gone off.
I have made butter with my mixer, but honestly I wasn't that thrilled with the result. And as you said, cheaper to just buy a good grade of real butter at the store.
I always butter my toast before I put jelly on it, but I just like a thin layer. There's a small store up the road from me that carries Amish butter...sold in a 1 kilo log wrapped in brown butcher paper. It's very good stuff, and not much more expensive that a name-brand butter. Here are 3 different variations of clarified butters I make with it: That's the entirety of a kilo.
Sooo, is white butter sold in the stores? I have never looked hard at the different types or brands of butter only if it's salted or not and the price.
I never heard of 'clarified' butter so I googled it and learned two things (1) much less likely to burn (2) less likely to spoil. I suppose everything is spoilable but butter doesn't last long enough here to have experienced that happening. Has anyone? Maybe I'll google that too out of curiousity .
I got milk from a farmer down the street every morning he did not use any drugs on his cows. I would skim the cream off the milk and save it until I had enough to make butter. Making the butter was just putting it in a large jar and shaking it for about 20-30 minuets and than skimming the butter off the top. I enjoyed the exercise and had fresh butter too. Later I added one more process was to heat it up and clarify it. which gave us one great butter. My wife started complaining so we are back to buying butter but it is not as good.
@Von Jones I started making ghee maybe 10 years ago. Ghee is clarified butter taken one step further: after the whey foams off, you keep heating it until the milk solids precipitate out, at which point you stop and strain them out, or you brown them to impart a deeper flavor to the butter fat, and then strain them out. (Genuine ghee from India is different, but that's another story.) That middle jar in my pic is ghee...the other two are clarified and flavored. Over the years, I've made ghee from every single brand of butter (house brand, local, national) from every store around here (Walmart, Food Lion, Kroeger, Giant Food) to see if there were a difference between them. All of the stick butters behave identically through the reduction process (the Amish butter is different)...and I never encountered any white butter in any of the stores. In fact, now that we talk about it, the Amish butter is also yellow...I never really thought about it not being white. Regarding butter going bad: I've had it turn rancid. I always keep some out in a covered dish so it's room-temp spreadable. But since I don't use it that quickly (I don't eat that much of it, and I cook with oils and ghee), it does not get used quickly. When it goes bad, you can not only taste it, you can smell it. I've learned to keep just part of a stick out and not a whole one.