Go to the Recipe: Sous Vide Cultured Butter
Very cool!
Question: do you use mason jars because the bacteria need air to grow (hence you don’t submerge them completely) or can the cream be vacuum sealed? Thank you
Question: do you use mason jars because the bacteria need air to grow (hence you don’t submerge them completely), or can the cream be vacuum sealed? Thank you
Hello Carlo, Mason jars were used for a few reasons. The first being nostalgic and keeping it old school. The next was the consistent weight to keep the jar on the bottom of the bath while culturing. Only the cultured cream needs to any submerged for this. Using the jar is also a simpler task for liquids In this application, compared to sealing liquids in a chamber vacuum sealer. You may very well use a vacuum sealer and have great results culturing.
Can a centrifuge such as the spinzall be used instead of a food processor (or mixer) for separating the liquid from the fat?
I have one, and I plan to use mine for this purpose
@Nolan Shaw Years back, i made some butter (not cultured) using a washing machine's spin cycle as a centrifuge. Gave me great results. While i don't have a spinzall, I can't imagine the results would be any different
How long do you reckon the cream hast to sit at room temperature..? Sadly I dont have the sous vide option but I wanna make it anyway
Just got a gallon of cream from a local farm. Gonna give some butter away as gifts!
It depends upon the taste profile you're looking for. Going for a sweeter, milder profile, 2 days on the counter then 3 days in the fridge hits the sweet spot for us. Going beyond 3 days on the counter gets too "funky" for our taste. This is starting with commercial buttermilk then reusing the new as a starter. The secret is playing with the counter time/fridge time (the fridge seems to increase complexity without increasing tang).
i made this today, 2 tests, using store brought 47%fat heavy cream and 50% fat jersey cream. i followed the steps to the letter. using a yogurt culture and sousvide 43c for 48 hourrs
47% heavy cream was crazy tangy, honestly i don't know how people can eat this.
50% was ok, still to tangy for uk taste buds, i will try this again with less yogurt and 24hours next time and try some organic cream
i hoped for a better butter , however i think butter here in the uk is already as good as it gets. i guess because it made from milk and not cream.
i also tried the above with half the amount of yogurt and left it at room temp for 48hours,this was a much milder flavor much nicer on bread etc
so why and when would cultured butter be used?
do you have a list of different cultures we can try that will change the taste?
thanks chefsteps
Hello Frazer, Bummer you did not like the tang. As with anything personal taste is everything and changing your method to suit your taste is always best. About butter though, you cannot make butter from milk as it does not have the fat content to produce butter. Cultured butter can be used in any application but is best eaten fresh on toast or bread with some flaky salt. Flora Danica Culture is the a well rounded culture for making cheese and butter. Buttermilk works too as a culture. Usually less culture means more tang as there is more food for culture to produce. 24 hours is a good mark to set for less tang. Cheers.
thanks for your reply, i will try some more tests and let you know how i get on.
i guess uk and usa butter is totally different
interestingly, tasting the butter on its own has a huge tang, yet on toast its hardly noticeable
Hmmm, I tried this recipe twice. Both with 35% store bought cream. First version I used kefir, didn't have any yogurt in the house. 24 hrs @ 110f yielded a super tangy butter. Too tangy though so I tried again with yogurt. Everything the same otherwise. This time less tang. I washed thoroughly then salted and added msg and continued to work the butter to get the remaining whey out. Sadly I think the msg imparted a tinny strange flavor that wasn't present prior to adding the seasoning. I don't like it. This is the first recipe on chefsteps in literally years that hadn't worked out perfectly. Not complaining just giving my experience. I'm going to try the danica and see how that works sans msg.
come utilizzare il sous-vide per poter fare il burro chiarificato
How to avoid so much of the butter sticking to the cheesecloth? Seems to nontrivially affect yield.
As a Dane I love that you honour our butter tradition for a uniquely cultured butter - including the culture from the danish/international Christian Hansen
Fun fact: flora danica is Latin for danish flower and as well the name of the royal porcelain:)
What percentage of the residual cultured buttermilk is necessary to culture new batch of cream?
i tried wetting the cloth first. Seemed to reduce stickage
Next time just swap your new buttermilk for the yogurt. We recommend using the same quantity (80g). In a tip above.
today ii made this butter and regular non cultured butter as a side by side experiment. I did use yogurt and msg but only cultured an hour (per previous comments/recommendations). The regular butter came together quickly and was easy to risne, massage etc. The cultured, although quite chilly, was so gooey i had a very hard time managing it...
Both taste great but the cultured is a winner
i bet product lost in 'production' is at least 10%, there is butter everywhere in my kitchen!
Thank goodness for dishwashers!
Question: I ran the food processor quite a while and when it didn't appear to be changing i thought it must be 'done'. I wonder if the gooey factor was due to under/over processing. what clue can i look for?
So far I've done three trials and I'm close but I'm having trouble dialing it in:
- Organic pasteurized cream, yogurt, salt+msg: a bit tangy but not at all buttery. Prominent MSG flavor that was a little off-putting. Bland.
- Organic pasteurized cream, flora danica culture, salt+msg: close to the first one but a little more buttery.
- Raw cream, flora danica culture, salt: Completely different. Intensely cheesy, like spreadable parmesan. Very little if any tanginess. Low yield.
I think the last one is close, but I wish it were more tangy. Should I try culturing for longer? Or can you suggest a different culture I should try? I don't want it to get any more cheesy-tasting.
