Last year my sister-in-law texted me a picture of a huge baking sheet filled with homemade butter. She was about to put it in the freezer to firm up so she could cut it into sticks.
I was so jealous.
How could I call myself a real foodie when I didn’t make my own butter?! Butter is the BEST. And all it takes is raw cream, right? You don’t even need special equipment (although it REALLY helps with the process). I felt like I was a huge slacker, so I began the hunt for raw milk.
About six months after the search began, I had found two solutions. Both, however, were VERY expensive. The cheaper of the two farmers charged $14 per gallon of raw milk, which was more than twice as much as I pay for organic milk.
Despite the fact this purchase would likely tip my grocery budget over the edge, I bought a half gallon, brought it home and made butter.
A whole whopping 1/4 cup.
This teeny tiny amount of butter (and teeny tiny amount of buttermilk) made me seriously question whether or not making butter is worth it. I bring this question before you guys – my friendly frugal foodies – to discuss and debate.
Is making butter worth it?
The two main variables in making homemade butter are the same in any homemade food: time and money. Let’s address each one with practicality in mind, since we all know if it’s not practical, it’s not gonna happen!
Is making butter worth the time?
In order to get raw milk, I have to go to the farmer’s market on Fridays between 10am and 2pm. The farmer only accepts cash, which means I have to stop at the bank beforehand (since I rarely carry cash). It takes 8 minutes to get to the bank, then another 10 to get to the farmers market. Five minutes to unload the kids, give them the “keep your hands to yourself and don’t take strawberries” pep talk and walk to the farmer’s stand. Two minutes to buy milk. Five minutes to walk back to the car and buckle up the kids. Fifteen minutes to drive home and another 3 minutes to unload the kids and milk from the car and put the milk in the fridge.
According to the recipe in Nourishing Traditions, the milk should sit at room temperature for about 8 hours to sour. Since I’m not usually making butter at 7pm at night, the milk goes in the fridge until the evening. Before I go to bed, I pour out the raw milk into clean quart jars so it’s easier to access the cream. I let them sit on the counter overnight.
In the morning, I spend 10 minutes scooping off the cream into my Blendtec (I have one similar to this one) and put the milk back into the half gallon jar (because my fridge isn’t big enough for any more quart jars). The quickest part of the whole process is actually making the butter, which only took two cycles on the Blendtec, or 1 minute and 45 seconds.
Total Time to Make Butter = 50 minutes of “doing,” 17 hours of waiting
In order to buy grass-fed butter, I do a few of the same steps above. I drive to Costco (which is right next to the bank, so 8 minutes), meander my way through the crowds of people to the back of the store to get the butter, then meander again to the front of the store to check out. The shortest time I’ve EVER stayed at Costco for a single item was 12 minutes, but since the kids will likely be with me, let’s add another 5 to the front for unloading/pep talk/walking to the front door (since there’s never parking at the front anyway) and another 5 minutes to the end for walking back to the car and loading it up with butter and the kids. Another 8 minutes home and 3 to unload everything and everyone.
Total Time to Buy Butter = 41 minutes of “doing”
There are a lot of different variables at work here and your situation might be very different from mine.
If you have your own animals, aren’t constrained to a day of the week or time of day, live closer to a store, can buy raw cream (instead of scooping it from the milk) or are able to stay up late to make butter, you won’t have to “do” as much or wait as long.
However, if you have to drive a significant distance to get raw milk, then possibly distribute to others in your area (if you’re doing a cow share) and aren’t able to make butter the next day, you’ll spend a good bit more time “doing,” waiting AND driving.
Waiting doesn’t bother me… unless I ran out of butter in the midst of cooking or baking. The doing though, that’s a bit tougher. Going to the farmer’s market is fun, but it’s not quite convenient… yet.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d LOVE for the market to be a more regular occurrence in my shopping, but in the midst of Winter when I’m getting produce that really doesn’t matter if it’s organic or not (squash, oranges, bananas, etc.), then the stores within 1/2 mile of my house that take my debit card are MUCH more convenient that the market. You see what I’m saying? Hopefully this will change as time goes on, but this is where we are right now.
On the other hand, I’m already shopping at Costco each month. There’s a set grocery list that I buy from and I’m going for stuff, whether or not butter is on the list. Costco isn’t a special trip. It’s the norm.
Is making butter worth the money?
A half gallon of raw milk yielded me 6oz of cream, which produced about 1/4 cup of butter and scant 1/2 cup of buttermilk. Crunching the numbers:
- There are 8 cups in a half gallon. $7 per half gallon breaks down to 88¢ per cup and 11¢ per ounce. So 6 ounces of cream costs 66¢.
- It takes twice as much cream to make the same 1/2 cup of buttermilk, so the 1/4 cup (4 Tbsp) of butter from the 6 ounces of cream costs 44¢ and the 1/2 cup of buttermilk costs 22¢.
Total Cost to Make Butter = $3.52/lb
However, I’m not TRYING to make buttermilk. I only want to make butter. But because I don’t get a choice to make only butter and not buttermilk, the cost of the buttermilk is absorbed into the true cost of making butter.
Total TRUE Cost to Make Butter = $5.28/lb
One package of Kerrygold grass-fed butter costs $6.79 at Costco. Each package contains 1 1/2 pounds of butter.
Total Cost to Buy Butter = $4.52/lb
So then, is homemade butter worth it?
The answer again depends on the same two variables: time and money. If you have lots of free time and have access to cheap raw milk, then it would absolutely be worth making your own butter! However, if you’re short on time and raw milk is more than your grocery budget can afford, then this just might be something you should buy instead of make.
In my eCourse Grocery Budget Bootcamp, I teach the steps to evaluate whether making foods from scratch is worth it. Butter in my books, is not worth it at this point. However, I always make our own bread. You can learn more about Grocery Budget Bootcamp, HERE.
I came up with the following conclusions:
- If I can find raw butter for less than $5/lb, I should buy it.
- If I can find raw milk for $6 per half gallon, I should buy it and make my own butter.
- If I can find raw cream for $1.50 per pint, I should buy it and make my own butter.
The reality is that the lowest price of raw cream I’ve seen in my area is $10/pint, and the only way I’ll get raw milk for less than that is if I had my own cow. Which would be GREAT, but it’s just not happening anytime soon. Some places can’t even get raw milk legally, so there might be even greater challenges if you’re trying to make raw butter.
Here’s a formula for you to determine whether or not it’s worth it for you to make your own butter:
Cost of Raw Milk / Ounces in Your Jar = $ A (cost per ounce of raw milk/cream)
$ A x 6 = $ B (cost of 4 Tbsp raw butter)
$ B x 8 = $ C (cost of 1lb raw butter)
Remember that this formula is very generic. Your actual cost will depend on how much cream you’ll get from your raw milk. However, this is a great place to start if you’ve ever considered making your own butter and whether or not it’s worth it.
Time and money are likely the two biggest drawbacks to making your own butter, but there are some advantages:
- raw milk is likely locally sourced using sustainable practices
- you know the living conditions of the animal, and therefore quality of the milk
- can create whatever variation of butter you want: sweet, cultured, salted or unsalted
- it’s kinda fun!
How to Make Homemade Raw Butter
Got raw milk? Want to make some butter? Is it cost and time effective for you? Here’s a tutorial, with the basic recipe following adapted from Nourishing Traditions.
Allow raw milk to sit at room temperature for 8 hours. Line a glass bowl with a strainer and a coffee filter. Scoop cream from the top of the raw milk and place into a food processor or blender. Blend cream until the butterfat begins to separate from the liquids, approximately 2 minutes.
Pour liquid and butterfat into the lined strainer and allow liquid to strain through. Gently press butterfat to remove additional liquid. Remove butterfat to a clean cloth.
Wrap the cloth around the butterfat and squeeze gently to remove remaining liquid. Allow liquid to strain through the strainer.
Done! You’ve made butter!
- Raw Milk
- Allow raw milk to sit at room temperature for 8 hours.
- Line a glass bowl with a strainer and a coffee filter.
- Scoop cream from the top of the raw milk and place into a food processor or blender.
- Blend cream until the butterfat begins to separate from the liquids, approximately 2 minutes.
- Pour liquid and butterfat into the lined strainer and allow liquid to strain through. Gently press butterfat to remove additional liquid.
- Remove butterfat to a clean cloth.
- Wrap the cloth around the butterfat and squeeze gently to remove remaining liquid. Allow liquid to strain through the strainer.
When I was growing up, my mom made butter from raw milk all the time but she did not let the milk sit out for 8 hours. She simply let it sit overnight in the fridge to separate, took the cream off for butter, and then used the “skim” milk for cooking and drinking. Her process for washing the butter was different also. She strained the remaining liquid off and then rinsed the butter fat with cold water until it was no longer cloudy. Then she salted it and we ate it. Brings back memories. Yum!
Just wondering what you have been doing with the remaining sour milk and the buttermilk from your butter making process?
I am my own butter from double cream regularly or as regularly as I can find the cream on offer. I often look for cream on its use by date as I can and do freeze the butter. If I get the cream at reduced rate, it is cheaper than buying butter, but at the normal rate it’s the same price a butter. Then it’s about whether I have the time. I do not use raw Cream because I simply cannot afford it. It’s almost 3 times the price for us and I can’t justify that. I know some would question the value in making butter from supermarket cream, but it’s for me. It makes me feel like I’m saving my family money and at least we’re not eating margarine.
Oh my, the bottom line is that you paid $7 for 4oz of butter. So not worth it. Why is raw milk so expensive?
I have a neighbor who sells me raw milk for $4 gal. I skim off the cream for butter (or save up for ice cream in the summer). I use the buttermilk in muffin batters and my son drinks the milk. I never realized what a bargain I had till I saw your prices.
Your price is the same as my sister-in-law’s, which is why she often makes her own butter! If I could get it that cheap, I’d be ALL over it!!
So interesting! Well I was getting my milk for $4/gallon,but it just went up to $5/gallon which seems it would still be worth it,but my concern is that I don’t have a food processor nor a high powered blender,but just an old Oster blender and I’m not sure how it would do with that. I rely on it for smoothies and it is not in the budget at all to replace it if it died. Your thoughts please!
If you have kids, get them involved. All you have to do is put the cream in a jar with the lid on very tight and shake. It is a good arm workout for grown up and fun for the kids to see the butter forming and buttermilk separating.
Thanks for the great tip Jana! Now I just have to find affordable raw milk, lol!
I get my raw milk for $6.50 a gallon but have paid as much s $8 at times, through a co-op. In our state you cannot buy raw milk off of the farm, so it cannot be sold at a Farmer’s Market, unfortunately. I buy cream by the half gallon or gallon $12/half gallon and $24/gallon. I never skim cream off my milk or I would have skim milk and that is not my purpose in buying raw milk. I would never leave the milk on the counter over night either as you lose shelf life that way. I buy ice and ice my milk down during transport. I do set the cream out for 8 hours before making butter. The cream will naturally rise to the top even if the milk is left in the refrigerator. All in all, even though I do not get as much butter as I would like from the cream, I will continue making it as long as I can obtain raw cream to do so. I love the buttermilk too, for things like pancakes, cornbread, biscuits, etc. Buttermilk can be frozen to cook with if you get too much too.
How about the quality of the butter/taste? Does the taste of the butter differ from store bought?
Oh yes. Homemade butter is nothing like store-bought butter. It is a million times better.
Great article. Only one thing was a sticking point, the added cost for the buttermilk. Since buttermilk is produced with the same process that makes the butter, it’s cost would be incidental to the cost to make the butter. Plus, you didn’t factor in the cost for the milk left over whether it was usable or not. Similarly when you bake, the item you’re baking is the cost, the heat coming from your oven doesn’t factor into the cost to heat your house. It’s incidental to the cost to bake the item.
Good post. I believe the reason I leave it out for 8-12 hours is because I use a couple of tablespoons of yogurt in a process I believe to be called “culturing” and in the alotted time, it builds cultures that help to keep the butter fresh for longer and turns my butter from good butter to great butter(as far as my tastebuds are concerned.)
Something you don’t address is the fact that while Kerry Gold is a much better butter than conventional butters they still use pasteurized cream, which is not at all the same as using raw cream made from raw milk. For less than a $1 more you get a much healthier butter than even Kerry Gold can provide. They just don’t compare. Plus you have buttermilk which you can substitute for milk in some recipes like pancakes.
My raw milk is $5 per gallon and I get almost a quart of cream from each gallon. I make our butter with the cold cream straight from the fridge because my family does not like the sour taste of the cultured butter and it seems that if the cream is warm then it won’t “coagulate” in the blender. I use my Blendtec (fast) and the back of a wooden spoon in a bowl to press out the liquids after rinsing, etc. Clean up is quick and easy. I calculated the cost of making it and I think it was about $1.89 per pound for the homemade butter. My 16 year old son makes it now and then –it’s pretty quick and easy.
I wish I could get raw milk that cheap, and get that much milk from each one! That’s so awesome LizAnn!
I guess I’m just not that thrilled with making butter, because I milk two cows (4 this fall) and still prefer to buy KerryGold. I had a hard time getting all the whey out, it didn’t last as long, and took up far more time than what yours does. We just drink our milk with the cream, make yogurt, ice cream, etc. I love homemade butter, but it’s a once in awhile thing for us.
If it’s not worth it for you Carol, then I don’t blame you not making it! 🙂
Here I can get raw cream for $15/gal. Looks like thick mayo. Raw milk $4. Plus they deliver to my town. They live more than 40 miles away. They also sell eggs. We use a stand mixer to make the butter. We usually get 4-5 pounds from a gallon.
So glad I read this. I just figured up that I could buy a quart of cream for $6 and Id have to drive 20 minutes to get it. Costco has Kerrygold butter on sale right now $2.40 off I believe. But costco is 50 miles away. I was trying to decide if I should stock up on Kerrygold amd freeze it or just buy it raw for $6 a quart. I should ask her how much a gallon of milk is. It might be cheaper to go that route. Then I can make yogurt too.
You can buy whole cream in the milk isle…I buy organic whole cream instead of half and half. Put it in the kitchenAide blender and I have butter in a bought 5 minutes. Making butter cheap, easy. It doesnt need to be that hard people!
Hi Rob! I’ve never found raw cream in any average grocery store, but perhaps it’s available where you live? Using pasteurized cream to make butter might work, but the results are not the same. I agree that it doesn’t have to be hard, but you do need a source for raw cream to make it work!
Good on you Bob. Obviously it takes a man to get down and just do the thing and as cheaply as possible. My wife and I decided to have a go at making our own butter and not wanting to spend a fortune on apparatus we might not ever use again we went for the cheap option.
At the local supermarket we brought a small carton of double whipped cream 300ml costing £1.05, I put it in a jug and put the balloon whisk on the hand blender, within less than two minutes we had a butter and a butter milk.
Squeezing it in cold tap water two to three times brought out little more butter milk, whether iced water might have improved it I don’t know, but we had made 135 gms (4.8 oz) of butter.
We then cut the lump into two to make a salted butter and cut the other piece into six pieces to which we added various herbs as a trial. Okay it might not freeze without separating and a million other things we have not yet come across. But as a cheap experiment it worked, and having worked we can always build on this and buy the butter churns and butter pats etc. etc. I suggest starting small with a carton of double whipped cream and a hand blender, you can buy your herd of cows later on.
I have never used “raw” cream to make butter-just heavy cream from the grocery store. It’s as easy as Rob said, but the price and taste (imo) about the same as store bought butter. The only negative I find in store bought butter is that some of it is bland. In that case, I let it sit a room temp until I can cream it in my blender for a few moments with a little extra salt to give it some flavor. Taste great!
You don’t have to wait for eight hours at room temperature. The cream just has to be at room temperature.
Also the butterfat content of milk is higher when you get raw milk from Jersey cows or even brown Swiss cows. Holsteins produce one of the lowest butterfat contents percentage-wise in the dairy industry.
Also I’m sorry to hear that milk is so expensive in your area, we sell raw milk for $3.25 per half-gallon. And our butter we market at $7.50 a pound. I suggest shopping around some more at dairies that have a breed of cow that produces more butter fat. This will save you a lot more money in the long run. Just some suggestions from a life time farm boy. Thanks for the article.
I’m puzzled by all the folks who think you need raw cream to make butter. Kerrygold, you comparison butter, isn’t made from raw cream. It’ is made from pasteurized cream. And not only that, Kerrygold supplements their cow’s feed, and they do NOT use organic or non-GMO feed for the supplement. So if you buy pasteurized organic heavy cream at your market and make butter from it you are making a cleaner product than Kerrygold. If it is from pastured cows, then you are making both a cleaner and a healthier (more omega 3s) product that is equivalent to very expensive pastured organic butter. In my store, the cheapest I can ever find pastured organic butter is $8 a pound.
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree Jessica. Kerrygold’s cows are grass-fed roughly 312 days out of the year, meaning their diet is 90% grass (which means Irish cows spend more time grazing than most other countries in the world). This leaves 10% of their diet to be dried grass and supplemented after birthing. Of this last 10% (which includes dried grass), 97% is non-GMO. That means that only 3% of the annual diet of these cows MIGHT contain GMOs. To me, this is not even close to comparison of a typical penned cow fed exclusive feed, primarily sourced from GMO ingredients.
We sell our raw jersey milk (high in butterfat) for $5 a gallon. The heavy cream goes for $7 a gallon. Too bad we don’t live in the same area!
Yes, I’d totally buy it from you!
When I bake stuff that calls for unsalted butter, heavy cream and buttermilk, I make my own butter and it’s cheaper, because I don’t have to buy all 3 ingredients. I use the buttermilk from the butter, use the butter, and use the leftover cream. Done. I usually just shake it in a jar.