*Expedient Butter Making 1*
This weekend was used for study and filling in small but important prep holes. Wifee and I were discussing butter, which we currently buy in large quantities and freeze. This works OK, but it takes up freezer space that could be used for something else that has to be kept frozen. Thinking we might start keeping milking goats to get heavy cream in a fan situation we thought we should practice making butter ourselves, especially since Wifee has never done it. I've made butter lots of times before, but we don't own a churn and I've always just used a jar and shaken it until butter forms. This actually works fine but it's a fair amount of work, so I set about seeing how it could be made easier.
This used to be a nut chopper. We buy these things all the time at flea markets for under $1 each, often $0.25 each. It consists of a spring loaded shaft with a handle on the top and a 4 bladed chopper on the bottom. To turn it into a butter churn I simply removed the top handle and return spring, then hooked the shaft up to my cordless drill. Poured in a cup of heavy cream, put the drill on high speed and in 25 minutes had this.
So why did I just order a hand cranked butter churn? Well, the nut chopper churn worked but was less than ideal. Turns out that the chopper blades that were agitating the cream are a bit short. Once the cream begins to get stiff the blades can't reach the sides of the jar, requiring you to put the jar on its side while continuously rotating it so the now forming butter falls into the spinning blades. It did work this way and the butter was excellent but too much hassle.
Spitfire
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