Make Your Own Cultured Butter | What's Eating Dan?

I really can't think of an ingredient that is more satisfying warming and even cozy as butter it just makes people happy it makes them smile wish there were some sort of visual analogy for how eating butter makes you feel I got nothing anyway let's talk about butter you know that feeling when you've had a friend for a long time and you finally meet their parents and everything makes so much more sense you understand their weird quirky behaviors their funny sense of humor their odd head shape well the same works for butter so let's start with milk milk is an oil and water emulsion it's about 90% water and dissolved in that water are sugars and proteins and suspended from out that water are globules of milk fat each just a few microns across straight out of the cow the average milk contains 4% fat and closing each globule is a membrane that keeps the fat particles separated and suspended but despite those membranes the fat globules which are less dense than water will eventually rise to the top of milk after a day or so of sitting undisturbed the topmost layer of unhomogenized milk will contain 35% but more fat skim off that top layer and you've got cream still an oil and water emulsion but a much richer one that cream becomes butter to the process of churning churning involves beating air into the cream and slamming lambing lambing the fat particles against one another again again and again on a microscopic level tiny air bubbles worked into the cream act like magnets for fat each air bubble will stick to several fat particles and disrupt that protective membrane causing the fat particles to stick to the surface of the bubble when two air bubbles collide boom the fatty layers that surround them combine into a larger fat clump fat clump sticks the fat clumps snowballing until all of the butter is essentially one big mass and the liquid is swimming in is fat-free buttermilk during the churning process another really interesting thing happens where's milk and cream are both emotions of fat droplets swimming in water butter is just the opposite it's made up of tiny droplets of water suspended without the butter fat by law butter made in the US has to contain at least 80 percent butterfat though some Premium butters and those made in Europe can go up as high as 86 percent the remaining pieces of the pie are about 13 to 19 percent water and about 1% of what we call them milk solids that would be protein sugars vitamins and minerals and there you have it butter a simple singular foundational ingredient except it's not really all that simple or even singular but truth is butter contains multitude butter is an impressive shapeshifter taking on a wide range of forms based largely on temperature a cold stick of butter straight from the fridge around 34 to 40 degrees is really fun because butter fat is highly saturated this quality makes fridge temperature butter pretty horrible for spreading on bread but incredibly useful in baking as we talked about in our ultimate biscuit showdown episode which you should watch if you haven't we create flakiness in baked goods by sandwiching layers of dough with layers of the chilled butter as the baked good heats in the oven the butter fat melts releasing the water which turns to steam that helps puff and separate those layers of dough that's a beautiful thing for biscuits croissants and puff pastry as this temperature climbs into the 60s butter turns into wait for softened butter that might sound like kind of a vague term but softened butter actually refers to a really specific temperature ideally 67 degrees at that temp it's in a perfect state to be creamed with sugar now here's how that works softened butter and sugar go into a stand mixer with a paddle attachment and beat it up as the sugar is forced through the butter it leaves millions of microscopic air bubbles in its wake when used in say a cake but the bubbles expand in the heat of the oven contributing the lightness and lift if the butter is too cold and firm the air can't be incorporated and if the butter is too warm the bubbles collapse butter in the 70s and 80s had really big hair I mean butter in the 70s and 80s is lusciously spreadable this butter is breads best friend now up to this point and our climb on the old mercury we've seen some changes in texture but from here on out things get a lot more dramatic when butter creeps into the 90s it loses one of its key attributes the butter fat reaches its melting point turns to a liquid and is no longer capable of separating those protein and sugar rich drops of water that's right the emulsion breaks melted butter is for dipping Lobster in I guess there's other stuff you can do with it oh right melted butter is perfect for adding the cookies and quick breads where you don't want the added air that creamed butter would bring if we keep heating the butter up over 212 degrees we boil off the water leaving just the butter fat and the milk solids behind once all of the water is gone the temperature can continue to climb in the mid 200s the milk solids brown thanks to the my hard reactions can we get culinary gold ultra nutty brown butter from the melted state you could also make clarified butter or you skim off the milk solids ladle off the butter fat and leave the water behind clarified butter free of those brown a bowl milk solids can be heated to nearly 400 degrees before it starts to smoke making it ideal for searing meats you can also make ghee or do you slowly cook it until the water is gone and look solids brown but then you strain out the brown bits he gives you that same super high smoke point but lovely nutty background flavor the possibilities with butter are nearly limitless when they're all improved if you buy really good butter these days you can buy great butter at the supermarket and you should do just that but you should also try making your own butter at home I'm not talking about accidentally over whipping cream with the kids as a fun science experiment I'm talking about making New Deal cultured butter cultured butter starts with cream and friendly bacteria that ferments some of the lactose sugar into lactic acid it adds Tang eNOS and also thickens the cream in the old days culturing just happened naturally as cream sat around waiting for to be churned into butter nowadays you can make it with far more precision and trust me on this you want to make it butter made with cultured cream is really good stuff let's go to the kitchen we're gonna be making Paul Adams cultured butter recipe which calls for two ingredients the first of which is cream now you probably saw that coming you want to get your hands on the best cream possible you can find it go for pasteurize not ultra pasteurized cream that is free of stabilizers you'll be rewarded with better the next ingredient is buttermilk now the specific cultures and supermarket buttermilk will not only sour and thicken the cream they'll also produce new flavor compounds the most important of these new compounds is something called diacetyl it's a molecule that is responsible for what we perceive as buttery flavor synthesized diacetyl is added to a wide range of commercial food products including margarine and microwave popcorn and this is the real magic of kosher butter it ends up tasting more buttery and regular butter who doesn't want that now we simply combine the cream and the buttermilk in a lidded container and let it sit at room temperature for at least 24 hours or ideally 7 days yep you heard that right a full week now your cream will sour and thickens slightly in 24 hours but after a week of fermentation it will get deep buttery flavor you're essentially making creme fraiche here so don't hesitate to steal spoonfuls of this stuff throughout the week for pasta sauces or a dollop on dessert after a week your cream will smell tangy and pleasantly funky it's time to turn first show the cream to between 55 and 60 degrees if it's too cold it's impossible to turn if it's too warm too much of the fat is still liquid and not crystallized and you end up with a greasy product then we just transfer the cream to the food processor and let it rip until grainy whipped cream turns into butter splashing around in buttermilk we did it then we separate the two using cheesecloth save that buttermilk for pancakes and biscuits and dunk that butter into an ice bath to chill it slightly then comes the final step of kneading the butter to remove excess pockets of buttermilk I do this in a large bowl with a wooden spoon then we just scrape the butter into a new container the stuff is deeply buttery rich comforting and perfect for slathering on bread or melting or browning or making ghee I'm pretty sure no matter what you do with it this is how to eat butter wait a minute now this is how to eat the butter did you like that episode have you made cultured butter yet why not go make it but first hit that subscribe button do you love the butter

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 335,874

Keywords: butter, homemade butter, cultured butter, how to make butter, cultured butter recipe, homemade butter recipe, learn to make butter, culturing butter, butter recipe, whats eating dan, what's eating dan, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, cook's illustrated, cooks illustrated

Id: uhj9O9NbZao

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019