Butter from Soured Cream?

[hqueen13]

I had some raw cream that had soured a bit, but I went ahead and made butter with it anyway. I was rather surprised that as soon as it turned to butter, the sour smell went away, and the butter seems to taste fine.
Anybody know if it is safe to use?

 

[moolie]

What you've got there is cultured butter, people do it on purpose, enjoy

 

[hqueen13]

Yay! I thought it was just fine!! Maybe I'll continue to do this on purpose
I'm always a little too lazy and let the cream sit too long anyway...
Thanks moolie! You're such a wealth of information!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

hqueen - was that cow milk or goat milk? I've always thought that it would take me soooo long to collect enough cream from my goats milk to actually make butter, that it would sour too. I may have to go ahead and give it a try since you had such a good result.

 

[hqueen13]

It was cow milk, but I don't know why it would be any different with goat's milk. Anybody else got any ideas?
I was really surprised that the smell just disappeared. I actually made butter with only 1 pint of cream, which yeilds about 1/2 lb of butter. So I don't know that you have to have a huge amount to at least try it out. Maybe if you test that you should try it in a jar first, and give it to the kids to shake. In my kitchenaid it takes less than 1 minute to actually make the butter. The rinsing takes longer than making the butter itself!!

 

[~gd]

I have to ask are you simply rinsing the butter or were you kneding at the same time. since butter is a oil out emulsion a simple quick rinse should remove the buttermilk on the surface. Kneding is needed to remove the buttermilk trapped in the emulsion so the 'bubbles' of buttermilk join together and find their way out of the butter mass. The shelf life for unkneded butter is considerably shorter than either sweet cream butter or cultured butter. The good bacteria that sours milk and lots of naturally pickled products need oxygen to thrive. with the oxygen cut off by the butter you can get some nasty odors [think old gym socks] after a week in the refrig.~gd

 

[k15n1]

freeze a portion, if you can't use it in time.

Or boil the water off until it's clear and you get redish-brown bits in the bottom of the pan. That's ghee and it will keep for years (despite what the internet says) under the usual canned-food conditions.