Making butter is so easy, you can do it with your eyes closed!!! Homemade butter and Latino American Nata recipes

I cannot believe how easy it is to make butter – your kids can do it with their eyes closed! Mine did! I have learned so much on my recent visit to Spain that I truly wish I could have stayed there longer. Some of the things I learned are that butter can easily be done with only 1 ingredient, that it can be done in less than 15 minutes and that is the perfect task to give to small kids to do while you are making dinner! They have fun, the stay out of your way and they are contributing to dinner.

Another wonderful discovery is that as you make butter, half way to the process you end up with Nata – Nata is a traditional Latino American salted cream that we use in variety of dishes. It is so delicious and you use it almost as butter – on top of toast, on boiled potatoes, on top of tacos…. You get it!

Also as you make butter, you will have a secondary product made: Buttermilk! It is great to make pancakes and cakes.

So here it is – Butter (and Nata) in 15 minutes or less!

Ingredients:

Heavy whipping cream

Salt (optional – you can do it without. I used Sea Salt)

Equipment:

Mason jar with lid (for adults)

Plastic Mayonnaise Jar with lid (for kids)

Preparation:

For Nata:

Pour cream into your jar until it is half full, put salt to taste, close the lid and start shaking! That is it! Shaky shaky shaky…

At around the 6 minute mark, you will see that as you shake you will not feel any liquid moving inside the jar, open your jar and if you see a thick cream stuck to the outside of your jar, you are done – You have nata! It will keep for week (if it last that long before everyone in your household demolishes it!)

For butter:

Pour cream into your jar until it is half full, put salt to taste, close the lid and start shaking! That is it! Shaky shaky shaky….

Keep shaking that jar for about 12 minutes or so – you will pass the nata stage and then you will start feeling a liquid move again in your jar.

Open your jar and you will see a clump of nice sweet yellow butter swimming in white buttermilk.

Pour the buttermilk out into a container and strain your butter. Squeeze it a little with your fingers to take all the buttermilk out of it.

Make a ball with it and put it on a container or if you want to shape it, put it on a plastic wrap, cover it and shape it to your liking.

You can also do a compound butter – simply add herbs or garlic to taste to your freshly made butter and mix.