You can find raw milk at your local health food store, grocery store, or farmer’s market. While you can use a regular-mouth jar, it will be harder to skim the cream off of the top.

If you prefer, you can run the jar, lid, and ladle through the dishwasher to sterilize them.

Raw milk that you get in the winter will yield slightly less cream than raw milk you get in the summer. In general, you’ll get between 1 and 2 cups (236 to 473 ml) of cream.

If you want classic butter, leave out the buttermilk. For example, if you skimmed 2 cups (470 ml) of cream from the top of the milk, stir in 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of buttermilk.

It’s fine if the jar is still warm from being sterilized. Pouring the cold cream into the warm jar will help take the chill off of the cream.

Use a thermometer to check the temperature or hold the jar to feel if the cream has warmed up. If you left out the buttermilk, the cream will need to ripen closer to 12 hours while cultured cream will take closer to 5 hours.

The cream should be between 50 and 60 degrees F (10 and 15 degrees C). Chilling the cream will make it easier to shake or churn into butter.

You can also use a stand mixer. Pour the cream into the mixing bowl and use a whisk attachment to beat the cream on low speed. Increase the speed until the butter and buttermilk separate.

The butter muslin will catch even the smallest pieces of butter. If you can’t find butter muslin, fold cheesecloth a few times so it’s layered.

Use the buttermilk that you pour off for making ricotta cheese or baked goods such as cakes, cookies, and pancakes.

The water will become cloudy as the milk solids are washed off of the butter.

Keep washing the butter until the water remains clear. This will mean that you’ve washed off all of the milk solids that would make the butter become rancid.

Continue to knead until you don’t see anymore liquid in the bottom of the bowl.

Chives Orange, lemon, or lime zest Rosemary or thyme Garlic or ginger Parsley Honey

You can freeze the butter for 6 to 12 months. If you didn’t get all of the milk solids out of the butter, it may last closer to only 1 week.