In our column Fake It or Make It we test a homemade dish against its prepackaged counterpart to find out what's really worth cooking from scratch.
Photograph by joy the baker / Flickr
Mmmmm, butter. As Julia Child once said, "With enough butter, anything is good." We can all agree with her on that, but opinions diverge on whether a homemade variety trumps what you find in the grocery store--all things (especially things like time and cost) considered. Many home cooks swear that supermarket butter has nothing on the stuff made from scratch, which has always struck me as curious since butter comes from just one ingredient--heavy cream--and it's not among the many, many items that fine dining restaurants typically make from scratch. Could taking a DIY approach really lead to a better finished product? Here, we put the claim to the test.
The Contenders
Breakstone's All Natural Unsalted Butter vs. Homemade Unsalted Butter
Making butter is the rare cooking project where you end up with more ingredients than you started with: Heavy cream basically needs to be "agitated" until it separates into butterfat and buttermilk. While this might call back memories of shaking a jar of heavy cream in your elementary school classroom, or conjure images of a pilgrim woman bending over a wooden churn, neither of these methods represent best practices for modern butter making. The best way in a home kitchen is to whip heavy cream with an electric stand-mixer until it separates into clumps of butterfat and buttermilk. Then strain out the buttermilk and knead the butterfat in ice cold water to remove every last drop of milk. Some sources, but not all, suggest ripening the cream first by letting it sit at room temperature for 12 hours to achieve better butter flavor. The Guardian and Joy the Baker provide great step-by-step guides to the whole process.
Relative Costs
It's more than twice as expensive to make your own butter than to buy it. I paid $2.00 for a cup of Breakstone's butter, and $3.59 for enough heavy cream to make 3/4 cup of the homemade--or $4.79 per cup.
Relative Healthfulness
Even. Both are made with heavy cream.
Time Commitment
It took me about 25 minutes to whip, strain, and knead my butter.
Leftovers Potential
Store-bought butter can keep in a cold fridge for months without spoiling, as long as you keep it away from strong odors. Homemade butter's shelf life depends on how thoroughly you extract the buttermilk. If a substantial amount of buttermilk remains, it will sour within a week, otherwise homemade butter can keep for up to 2-3 weeks in the fridge.
What The Testers Said
First let me introduce our panel.
THE HEALTH NUT
A delicate eater, the health nut is calorie conscious but also likes to eat well
THE FOODIE
Calorie agnostic, our foodie judge has a sophisticated palate and a love of cooking
