How to Make Raw Butter (+ video)

Easy recipe for homemade butter using raw or pasteurized cream. The method is simple and maximally nutrient-dense when the cream is sourced from pastured cows. This food is considered sacred in traditional cultures.

Ah, homemade butter. Has there ever been a more perfect food? 

To the Traditional Swiss living in the isolated Loetschental valley early in the last century, raw butter made from unpasteurized cream was a sacred food.  No pale supermarket butter, but a golden alpine butter made from the rich, beige raw cream of cows grazing on thick grass.

The children raised on this nutrient-dense, raw butter had strong physiques, and wide faces with plenty of room for their teeth. They also displayed very high resistance to disease.

In fact, there wasn’t a single case of tuberculosis in the Loetschental Valley despite this illness raging elsewhere in Switzerland during the early part of the 1900s. At that time, the Swiss villagers still existed on foods grown or sourced themselves in the valley. Only salt was brought in from the outside.

The young men raised on this nutrient-dense traditional diet with plenty of raw, deep yellow butter were so perfect and pleasing in physique, strength, and character that the Vatican favored them over all others in Europe to serve as the Papal Guard.

The Loetschental Swiss knew that it was this nutrient-dense, raw butter that was responsible for their robust health. The indigenous Swiss would put wicks in bowls of the first spring butter and burn it in their Churches!

We now know that this sacred food contained ample amounts of true Vitamin A (NOT beta carotene!), D, and K2.  When sufficient amounts of these fat-soluble vitamins are present in the diet, they work synergistically to produce a level of health unknown in modern civilization.

The Importance of Raw Butter

When I first became knowledgeable on the subject of Traditional Diets, obtaining plenty of raw, grass-fed butter for my family became a primary goal.

The problem was that raw butter was not available anywhere near where I lived. I couldn’t even find raw cream or unpasteurized milk for that matter!

Determined to have this sacred food for my husband and me (I was pregnant at the time) and for my oldest child who was a young toddler, I sourced quarts of frozen, raw grass-fed cream from elsewhere and shipped in 9 or more quarts a month for my family’s use.

With some of that beautiful beige, grass-fed cream, I would make the most tantalizing, golden butter for my family. I continued this habit for many years.

How to Source Grassfed Cream

The only thing you really need when making butter is quality pastured cream. Don’t use anything else or your butter will turn out white or very light yellow. Pale butter indicates a low amount of fat-soluble vitamins and no Vitamin K2.

The easiest route is to buy quarts of raw, grass-fed cream from a local farm. If you don’t have a local grass-based dairy farm nearby, you can request your local health food store to stock pasteurized cream.

This pastured A2 cream is an excellent brand available via a nationwide co-op with hundreds of drop locations.

Devon cream is also high quality and can be mail-ordered to your door.

Be sure to avoid UHT (high temp) pasteurized cream, as it is excessively processed and denatured.

If you can obtain raw, pastured milk but not cream, another idea is to separate the cream off the top of a gallon of milk using a turkey baster and make butter with that cream.

The key is to get creative! Raw butter is THAT important to have in the diet, particularly for those of Northern European ancestry.

Can’t Tolerate Dairy?

If due to allergy or availability, you are unable to enjoy the benefits of pastured raw butter on a regular basis, it is very important to be sure you’re getting sufficient Vitamin K2 (called the “X-Factor” by Dr. Price) in the diet via a whole food derived K2 supplement (as MK-7, the fermented form). Another dairy-free option to obtain K2 (as MK-4, the animal form) is Australian emu oil.

Both forms of Vitamin K2 synergize with Vitamin A and D obtained in the diet and/or via high vitamin cod liver oil for maximum absorption and effectiveness. The three together are particularly effective at maintaining the health of the teeth and gums.

The recipe below details the instructions demonstrated in the viral video tutorial. You may use either raw or pasteurized cream, preferably from pastured animals for maximum nutrient density.

Note that once you make the butter, you can easily take it one more step to make homemade ghee, which is shelf-stable. Both ghee and raw butter oil are concentrated forms of all the goodness of butter!

Reference

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price