China Crumpet

This sounds so unbelievably pretentious that even I almost gag. I know. But what if I told you that home churned butter tastes a million times better than the store bought kind and only takes about 5 minutes to make? Are you still with me? Wouldn’t you like to try as well??

This whole crazy idea comes from a fellow foodie and blogger “kryddburken“. She writes in Swedish so I felt it was my sacred duty to share in English also. But to those of you who read Swedish, check out her stuff!

So to the butter. All you need for 100 g of pure, home made butter is:

• 3 dl (a bit more than a cup) fresh cream
  (NOT homogenized, processed, or any kind of long lasting cream, it’s gotta be fresh cream or it won’t work. Trust me. In Beijing I get it in a ziplock bag at the xinyuanli market. You Swedes can use vispgrädde.)
• about a teaspoon of good quality salt

THAT’S IT! Then you just whip the cream with an electric whisk until it goes stiff, then really stiff and then starts to separate.

NOTE: If you have been whipping for like 6,7,8 minutes and it just keeps being all shiny and whipped creamy, you have the wrong kind of cream. Enjoy it with hot chocolate or a piece of chocolate red wine cake and forget about the whole butter idea until your next trip to the market.

When you think you’ve ruined the whole thing and have lumps of butter swimming around in milky looking watery liquid you are done. Dump the whole thing through a fine-mesh sieve and squeeze the liquid out with clean, cold hands. You should also run it under some cold water to wash off all the separated liquid, this means it will keep longer. When you have your finished lump of butter, add salt to taste and enjoy.

If you have cream that has gone slightly sour, the butter will be better still. In theory, the butter keeps for a while. In practice, it will be eaten long before it comes close to going bad.

Serving suggestion: We had it today for breakfast with breakfast rolls right out of the oven and freshly squeezed orange juice. A breakfast fit for a king.