Food & Drink

How to Make Mason Jar Butter

Maybe you’ve mastered homemade bread, but how about made-from-scratch butter? It’s easier than you think

Photo: Angie Mosier

Fresh mason jar butter.

“It’s pretty amazing to hold a piece of fresh butter,” Suzanne Vizethann, the chef-owner at Atlanta’s Buttermilk Kitchen, tells G&G. “That taste, that quality, is the difference between catching a fish out of the water and eating it, versus it spending a week on a truck. It’s just going to have a different flavor.” With just three ingredients and a mason jar, you can make the staple yourself at home. “It’s a really fun thing to do with kids,” she says. “Or, if you have friends over, everyone can take a turn shaking the jar.”

photo: Angie Mosier

Ingredients

  • Yield: 3 ounces or almost 1 stick

    • 1 cup full-fat heavy cream

    • 1 tsp. full-fat sour cream

    • 1 (16-oz.) regular Mason jar

    • Cold water


Preparation

  1. Pour the cream and sour cream into the jar, filling it halfway full. Screw the lid on and shake the jar for 6 to 8 minutes. After the first 4 minutes, you’ll have whipped cream. Keep shaking until a lump has formed inside, and shake an additional 30 to 60 seconds after that.

  2. Remove the solids from the jar. The remaining liquid is buttermilk, which you can save for other recipes or discard. 

  3. Place the solids into a small bowl. Pour cold water over the butter and use your hands to squish it into a ball. Discard the water and repeat, rinsing two more times. At this point, you have butter. You can add in things like salt, honey, and herbs to create flavored butters, or serve as is.

Excerpted with permission from Welcome to Buttermilk Kitchen by Suzanne Vizethann (Gibbs Smith). Copyright © 2020.