How to Make Butter with Nothing but Cream and a Jar
Just the other day as I was eating breakfast I was thinking about how I could have fresh butter in a post-collapse situation (yes I really do have strange thoughts like these). This got me looking into how butter was made and surprisingly it looked pretty easy. So yesterday I went to the task to try to make some on my own without the use of electricity.
What You’ll Need (no-electricity required version)
- 1 Pint of Heavy Cream or Heavy Whipping Cream
- A glass jar
How to Make Butter
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Turning heavy cream into butter is as simple as pouring the cream into the glass container, tightening the lid, and shaking. Here’s the transformation the cream goes through (I timed it for reference):
After shaking for about 7 min. The cream turned into whipped cream. At this point you could add a bit of sugar and have a great addition for dessert. But if you want butter you need to continue on with the shaking process.
At about the 10 min mark (3 min after the whipped cream was formed) of continuous shaking the whipped cream magically begins to separate into butter and buttermilk. 
At this point you’ll want to pour off the buttermilk into a separate container (which you can drink right there or save for a future recipe). 
Now pour some water into the jar containing the butter — covering the butter completely. Swish around the butter and water to wash the remainder of the buttermilk off the surface of the butter and drain.- After the butter is washed, place it in another container (like a small bowl) and mix the butter around with a fork or knife, releasing any trapped buttermilk and pour it out
Add salt to taste and viola! you got fresh, creamy, tasty butter.- Posted in Self-Reliance
One pint of whipping cream made almost exactly 1 cup of butter which is equivalent to 2 sticks.
As a test, I decided to see how long it took to make butter with a hand-held electric mixer and was pretty surprised at the results (again I timed it). Using the mixer, I was able to quickly go from heavy cream to whipped cream in about 1 minute. However it took about 14 more minutes (for a total of 15 min) of continuous mixing to turn the whipped cream into butter.
I was shocked. I thought using a mixer would speed up the process significantly but surprisingly it took longer than simply shaking it in a jar!
Obtaining Cream Post-Collapse
Now for the other major problem. Where do you get the cream if the grid goes down (and with it the supermarkets)? Well, heavy cream is nothing more than the cream that floats to the top of milk from a freshly milked cow. This heavy cream is skimmed off the top and processed in the manner above. If you live close to a organic dairy farm like I do, then you could purchase milk from them. Better yet, if you have the space for your own dairy cow that would be ideal, however few of us have that available to us.
The other option that does not require much space is goats (or for even less space try a pygmy goat 
). Goats give around 3 quarts of milk a day and are small enough to fit in a 1/4 acre lot. Goat milk doesn’t separate into cream and milk as easily as cow’s milk does but making butter is still possible. Check out this article in Mother Earth News on how to make butter from goats’ milk without a separator.
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I did this in grade school and we were out of butter the other day and i we had cream i was going to try it out. Ill ask my Papa to bring some cream over so i can do it.
P.S.- I LOVE THIS WEBSITE I told a couple of buddies at school to check it out and they loved it as well, keep up the great work.
Jake,
Let me know how it turns out. Thanks for the referrals btw…
I tried this as well a few weeks ago. The food processer took a looooong time and I only got good results after using the mixer on the pre-processed cream. I useful hint to get the extra buttermilk out is to wash the butter with ice water (not just water at room temperature). Apparently the butter sours quickly if you don’t get all the buttermilk out. I got about 40% butter and 40% buttermilk with 20% washed away and stuck to me and the rest of the kitchen (It was a messy first attempt).
I really think shaking it in a jar is the best option (plus it requires no electricity!).
Thanks for the tip on the washing. I’ll have to try that one out.
try using a plastic coffee can and dropping a couple of marbles in before shaking. its a little faster…
Thanks for the great tip!
hey what brand do you think is the best to use? I just came back from a sience fair and tried it but it didnt work so am about to try this and thanks for the tip about the marbles it could come in handy!
Any brand should do as long as it’s HEAVY whipping cream. Be sure not to fill the jar up completely or it won’t give it enough room to wack itself back and forth withing the jar to create the cream and then finally the butter.
hey thabks will try it! p.s whats the best brand to use???
is the link to the article about making goat butter broken for anyone else?
it keeps redirecting me back to this article.
This is NOT working!! I’ve been shaking forever! I even tried getting fresher cream – to no avail! What am I doing wrong? I followed the directions exactly!
I’m making biscuits today and wasn’t able to get buttermilk, so I made my own! Loved this method. It was very easy (although my arms are tired!). It took longer than I thought to go from whipped cream to butter, but it seems like once it got to the breaking point, the water released all at once. The bonus was that I was able to use the resulting butter in the recipe too!
I think I may do this with my Girl Scout troop as a fun exercise. Maybe we’ll bake some bread then make our own butter…
Thanks!
PS. I used 8oz of heavy cream (organic) in a pint sized jar.
THanks for the comments Diane. I’m sure the Girl Scouts will love this.
Yippee! This city gurl is now a hand churned butter makin’ country gurl! Woo Hoo! Ok so I have to confess I was nearly calling you everything in the book…because when I took the lid off of my jar all that was there was whipped cream. I thought how is this thick nirvana going to let go of the jar to turn into anything else. I set the cold whipped cream in a jar down, in defeat, for a rest, just so happened to be near the stove top. Where the radiant heat was emanating…picked it back up and began to practice once again calling you names…when…all of a sudden…whack whack whomp. Get out! I couldn’t believe it. It really worked! So…I am so sorry for thinking I was too gullible once again to do something some faceless post told me to do on the internet…and I am SOOO sorry for trying to come up with names to call you…and well, I am just so sorry I doubted you! We had lobster tail with “home SHOOK” butter. I did add some sea salt to the rich creamy YELLOW butter. Thanks so much! You made our meal spectacular! (I don’t buy butter or margarine.) Who has lobster without butta? Well, from here on out I will always be able to make a pat or two. Thanks!
Lessons learned: Cold Whipped cream will take longer to shake. Second: is I only poured about a inch of heavy whipping cream into my 6 oz jam jar. You do need the space as the post tells you to “throw” the cream. And Lesson three…be respectful of all posts that teach you new things. You never know, you may end up with blessings in the measure of rich creamy yummy butter! Patience Grasshopper, Patience.
Oh, Ps….
Your post is the only one that noted you may use Heavy Whipping Cream. Which is all I had. The others just say USE CREAM. Not sure if there is a difference, but I wanted to add that in case another reader was puzzled as I was. Thanks again!