Cooking corner: Butter. American, European style and Russian Style.

Butter... such a simple thing.
In USA folk say butter is not the same. First it's salted and unsalted, second... the taste is different, it behaves in baking different... why?

American butter is made of cream, European style butter however is made from aged (aka sour cream), and them comes USA pasteurized milk and Europe - not necessary. Then what do cows eat, are they grass fed.
Can you make your own butter? It's quite easy actually. Here is video about America style butter made at home with kitchen stand mixer.
All one does is : beat the cream until solids and butter milk separate

1) 

More detailed process is explained below how to beat t and do not make a mess
Also this one makes sour cream at home using butter milk. In USA organic milk is the best bet.

2) 

Now Russian style: from fresh milk she takes tops - cream, and she will make butter from cream, shaking a lot, long time.
It's important to have it at about 20C degrees, if it's hotter the butter will be too runny, if it's too cold - that will be too hard to beat it. 1/2 to 1/3 of the jar has to be empty.
And shake it... 10-15 min.

3) 

Use the same principle using the mixer. at 20C is the best.
In 5-10 min there will be a bit of solids.

Beating cream from sour cream - that's Russian style. Sour cream was sitting in the fridge several days. And here comes the drill. very effective :)

4) 

See how much solids? that sour cream was already separated, meaning strained.

They have gadgets for that

5) 

American farmers do the jar method too. Pls take a look. Also at the end there are couple f butter beating devices

6) 

And using kitchen processor

7) 

Another useful video with some good details to it . Sour cream can not be made from store bought light sour cream. It's the follow up on the second video I've listed above.

8) 

Happy butter making.
Sometimes there is reference about cultured butter

9) 

this one basically does work with sour cream European style butter.
This video has important note about ultra pasteurized and pasteurized cream. the process will not work with that. This is similar to Russian style butter referenced in video 4)

Cooking corner: Fermenting ACV (apple cider vinegar) and canning

Winter is time for reflection... looking at this

I go inside do some cooking, do stuff with things that are clean and slow.
Fermenting ACV from scratch. It's about 3 weeks. First batch was done in half-gallon jar

 Here is second run of the ACV fermenting from organic apples, also used acv with mother sediment in both batches. The first batch did not develop strong mother. This one looks better but its still small, in half-gallon

  

 and larger fermenting jar

 

there is the growth, just not like some show nice and very thick to over an inch.

video I watched :

Some canning, musings ... this is stock from home grown birds, also canning some store bought protein, fermenting daikon radish.
Testing big boss (all american 930) and my large chicken stock pot (38 quart commercial stock pot)

 

 My canning workhorses that do all the jobs

 Stock... I can lift that pot only when it's about that full even after tossing lots and lots of logs that solid stainless steel pot full of stock at 38 quarts... nope that's probably 2 people job I guess, for one when it's hot, nope :)

 Canning this, large commercial bowl does good job marinating... that's a table spoon in there, 12 inch tiles...

 ready for pantry

 and stocked

 Pickled daikon radish Japanese style, turned out good

Good to use in things like this (my musings with sushi)

Winter comfort

Blizzard outside,severe weather blizzard alert on all cell phones etc.

and more coming, that just a beginning now we can get a whiteout. Inside... there is need for comfort food. Means good winter soup is mising and it has to be fixed :). Potatoes, dry mushroom, carrot, onions, beans, chicken stock... oh white miso.. that sounds like a plan to me. Were did my udon go? right, all the ingredients are here and I'm not sticking my nouse out because the roads are treacherous it makes it for a very bad driving weather.
so we start with good helping of white miso, and some chicken stock. Dry mushroom goes in there, and then cubed potatoes . Beans I had in cans, means time savings. Onion, small bell peppers (because I had those and red, yellow, orange make for a nice winter color addition) and carrots go into saute pan , because I like my vegetables this way. When the vegetables are almost there we put the udon in, vegetables and beans. and then I just let it do it's thing and go off the smell, if it smells right, it's done.

and then let it sit, copper makes it for nice energy savings also. Cast iron dutch oven would an excellent pot to make that soup also.