B is for butter......

Were doing the letter B as a focus on schooling this week. Slowly working through the alphabet. So I was really please I managed to pick up these at sainsburys last night! 

49p each is a bit more than I try to get them for (usually go for about 10p!) But they are bit 600ml pots and enough to make a decent batch of butter for £1.50. Kids will be making this and posting a picture to their letter B poster. Also making some fresh bread to go with it. And I have (yet more!) bananas to use up. So were swimming in the letter B this week. 

This is really easy. I happen to be fortunate enough to have inherited a Kenwood mixer form my great grandmother. If you dont have one, a normal hand mixer would work. Or you could get an old jar and let the kids go nuts for a while.

Pour it into the bowl, and switch on.

Simples.

It will whip up like over-whipped cream, like this:

Then it will go odd and grainy like this:

Keep going!

I scrape down the sides a few times as the solids tend to migrate up the bowl.

You will turn around to do something, then turn back and this will have happened:

Literally, it goes from weird grainy cream to butter that fast.

The solids, are butter.

Dont you dare throw the liquid away, that is buttermilk and makes the most amazing scones.

You may need to squeeze the butter a bit to get the liquid out or rinse it if you like.

750g butter, 1 1/2 pints buttermilk from 1800ml whipping cream

If you want salted butter use a tiny bit! Seriously, a little bit goes a long way here, i used 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. Mix it up. I use foil to wrap it up and freeze.

Ive never had butter go rancid, even though it is from reduced cream. the buttermilk keeps for about a week. I would recommend freezing the butter you wont use within a couple of weeks-month just to make sure.

Wash out your cream pots and use them for storing the buttermilk.

Also picked up some reduced herbs last night, I'm still waiting for mine to grow on the windowsill, so I always grab fresh ones when theyre reduced, they add very bold flavour to meals which is important if your cooking with less meat and on a budget.

 Chop and freeze in freezer bags, or you can freeze in ice cube trays with a little water and then pop out and into freezer bags.

These are the chickpeas going into the curry tonight, they have literally doubled in size after being soaked overnight:

This was less than 1/5th bag of dried chickpeas I bought full price at Tesco for £1.09. Compared to a can which would give them same yeild for 65p odd, its clear to see you get a lot more food for your money.

One last note:

Got the ingredients for the wine last night. I doubt I will be doing this today as I have terrible backache. But basically the first rule you need to know, for wine kits like this or wild fruit wine - Steralise, steralise and steralise some more! Bacteria is your enemy, in winemaking. Everything needs to be scrupulous. You can use fancy steralising tablets or boiling water or bleach. This kit is a 5 gallon so I will be using my plastic fermenting bucket, which can handle boiling water. For wild fruit you will most likely be using a demi-john which cannot (glass!) so use bleach. On the left is a 29p tesco value bottle of bleach which i will be using for my steralising and I will probably need another bottle later too, seriously, a LOT of steralising.

Sugar!  need 4kg for this kit, and the 1kg bags were 99p bag, this 5kg back was £4.50, so I went for this one to save 50p. You can get proper wine making sugar, it is about 6 times the price but supposedly produces a better wine. Ive tried both and honestly cant tell the difference, so I use bog standard granulated cane sugar. 

Hope that helps some, I'm off for lunchtime now :)