Homemade Compound Butter

The fact that it just takes one simple ingredient (whipping cream) to whip up (no pun intended) a batch of what might just be the best butter you ever had, this is a no-brainer of a recipe. If you want to take it to the next level, toss in your favorite herb to transform it into compound butter, which is a fancy chefy way of saying flavored butter.

Ingredients

High quality heavy whipping cream

Herbs of choice (optional)

Iced water

Tools

Note:

The amount of butter you get depends on how much fat content there is in the cream. For example, 1L of whipping cream with 35% fat content produces roughly 350 - 400g of butter. The remaining liquid is all buttermilk.

Steps:

1. Use a hand mixer/stand mixer (if you're feeling really badass you can use a whisk) to whisk the cream.

2. It won't take long until you notice the cream starting to thicken in consistency. Congratulations, you just made whipped cream.

3. Continue whisking the cream at high speed. You will notice that the cream will start to get lumpy. If you're making whipped cream, Gordon Ramsay will call you an idiot sandwich because you've overwhipped it, but we're making butter so that's fine. This means that the butter is separating from the buttermilk.

4. Once all of the butter has separated, strain everything using a fine mesh sieve with a bowl underneath to collect the buttermilk. (Save the buttermilk for other recipes)

5. Add some iced water to the butter and whisk it with the mixer one more time. The water has to be cold otherwise the butter will melt.

6. Strain the remaining liquid. If you're making compound butter, toss in your finely chopped herbs of choice and use a rubber spatula to fold everything together, if not, immediately store the butter in the fridge.