Thursday, February 18, 2016

You Can Make Better Butter

Better butter? Isn't butter already delicious? Yes, it is! But, there has long been the controversy over which is better for you.  Butter or margarine?  It's all about the cholesterol.  I'm not going to go into all the 'butter versus margarine' arguments. There is plenty to be found on the internet about that, and you can do a search  yourself if it interests you.



I've always prefered butter over margarine myself. I didn't prefer the price though. When you are feeding a large family on a single income, you try to stretch every dollar.  So, our family used margarine. Except for special occasions, like Christmas, when I would splurge on a block of butter to use for Christmas dinner.  Now, with this recipe, we can have our butter all the time!
This makes butter into a spreadable, keep in the fridge, cook with it, delight! It results in a butter that has 1/2 the saturated fat, which is the bad thing about butter. In this recipe I used olive oil which has more monounsaturated fat than other oils, but you can also use safflower oil, which has the highest percentage of polyunsaturated fats of all the oils. Which is good. Other oils to try are sunflower, soyabean, canola and peanut.




To make this you will need a blender or a mixer. Then equal parts butter and your choice of oil.
I used 1-1/2 cups of butter and 1-1/2 cups of olive oil.



Measure the oil into you blender. If you are using a regular blender with a lid, you can start the blender on low and slowly drop the cut up butter into the oil. If you are using a Magic Bullet, like I did, just add the oil and cut up butter to the container all at once and blend til smooth. If you use a mixer, cream the butter first, then slowly add the oil and mix til smooth.




Once you have a nice creamy smooth mix, pour it into a glass jar or container, cover and put it into the fridge.  It will harden slightly, but will always be spreadable.
Another note: if salt is something you need to worry about in your diet, use unsalted butter. You can add salt to the mixture in a smaller amount than would normally be in salted butter.



And that's it! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Let me know what you think. Did you try a different oil?
Tell me about it in the comments below and please share, Pin or tweet!


2 comments:

  1. Interesting idea. I would never have thought of making my own

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  2. You can take this one step further and make your own churned butter in minutes! Using a food processor or blender, you will need 1-2 quarts of heavy cream; I have also used whole and 2% milk. All work, just realize the less milk-fat, the more butter milk will be rendered. This does not have any water or coloring added so the flavor is more intense and the color is more white/off-white. You can make this salted or unsalted and control the amount of salt and type of salt. I press mine out in a cheesecloth over a bowl to add to the rest of the buttermilk.

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