“With enough butter, anything is good.” – Julia Child

Mmmm, butter, that delightfully decadent accompaniment to most things delicious. Slather it on corn on the cob, dollop it on a baked potato, spread it on fresh bread. The options are limitless.

And after several recent studies dispelled its unhealthy reputation, butter is making a comeback.

Butter first was vilified in the 1960s, when the American Heart Association linked saturated fat to heart disease. In the ’80s, the USDA recommended cutting back on saturated fat, total fat and cholesterol, giving rise to a glut of low-fat and fat-free food products.

But in 2010, a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no link between dietary saturated fat and heart disease. In March 2014, a second study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine came to the same conclusion.

Meaning? Butter is not all bad, and some fat actually may be good for you.

Like all things, moderation is key, but experts now say that eating fat does not make you fat. Healthy fats in foods such as olive oil, nuts and avocados are key to weight management and satiation.

The fat in butter also can help us to more effectively absorb and utilize the vitamins and nutrients in the foods we eat, especially those found in vegetables. Butter also is touted for being high in conjugated linoleic acid, which may help prevent certain types of cancer.

That being said, store-bought butter is not cheap, so I decided to experiment with making my own.

I was surprised to learn that butter actually is quite easy to make. All you need is heavy cream, ice water, a food processor (or blender or electric mixer), a spatula and a bowl.

The basic idea is to mix the cream for about 10 minutes. First, it will turn into whipped cream, then as you keep mixing, the butter fat begins to separate from the buttermilk, and – Voila! – you have butter.

For the best result, most recipes highly recommend using organic cream from pasture-raised cows because it generally has a higher fat content. I had hoped to find some locally produced cream but ended up having to rely on the grocery store.

I started at Natural Grocers, where a clerk recommended the Kalona Super Natural Organic Whipping Cream, which also happened to be the least expensive option they had. In search of something even cheaper, I checked City Market and found Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream. Here are the details on the two products I picked:

At $6.99 per quart, the Kalona cream is organic and comes from grass-fed cows on small, sustainable family farms in Kalona, Iowa. It’s non-homogenized, batch-pasteurized and certified Grade A organic.

For $1 less per quart, the Organic Valley also is organic cream that comes from pasture-raised cows that are raised without GMO feed, antibiotics, toxic pesticides and synthetic hormones. It’s ultra-pasteurized, and the ingredients listed on the label are Organic Grade A Cream and carrageenan.

The carrageenan made me wonder if there would be anything besides cream in cream, so I did some research and found that carrageenan is a polysaccharide extracted from red seaweeds and used in food products for its stabilizing and thickening properties.

Some controversial reports blame carrageenan for negative health effects such as inflammation and for potentially being a carcinogen, but as of now it is approved and considered safe by the FDA as a food additive.

Regardless of its potential health effects, the carrageenan hindered the butter-making process by making it much more difficult to separate the fat from the milk. As a result, I had to process the Organic Valley cream much longer than the Kalona cream to turn it into butter. The slight cost savings were not worth the additional frustration.

In the end, making my own butter turned out to be more expensive than buying it at the store. At Natural Grocers, the Organic Valley unsalted butter was $5.55 per pound, $0.44 less than butter made from Organic Valley cream and $1.44 less than butter made from Kalona cream. The cheapest organic butter at City Market was $5.99 per pound.

Time-wise, making butter isn’t too intensive – about 20 minutes, plus cleanup.

But what about the taste? Is homemade butter so amazing that it really is worth a little more cost and effort? Maybe.

I gathered some friends to do a blind taste test with the homemade Kalona and Organic Valley butters, as well as store-bought Horizon Organic unsalted butter (Ingredients: Organic Grade A Pasteurized Sweet Cream, Lactic Acid). The taste-testers included a vegetarian foodie, a family who described themselves as equal-opportunity eaters, and a typical meat-and-potatoes guy.

All five testers were able to easily discern which of the three butters was store-bought, describing it as both bland and salty, very dense and thick, and having a smooth, consistent texture.

They diverged, however, on which of the two homemade butters was their favorite. The Organic Valley butter received three of the five votes and was described as yellower in color, with a mild, subtle and rich flavor and a slightly grainy texture. The Kalona butter, my personal favorite, received two of the five votes and was described as whiter in appearance, very creamy but not too heavy, smooth and light.

All of my testers agreed that the homemade butters tasted significantly better than the store-bought, and most agreed that homemade was worth the additional cost. But despite the superior taste, none found it worth the time and effort.

So, if you are a huge foodie and value eating the freshest, most flavorful food products, then making your own butter is worth trying. (If you really are a huge foodie, though, you’ve probably already tried.)

For everybody else, it could be fun to experiment with once or twice, especially with kids. For me, it probably isn’t worth the extra cost and time.

In the case of butter – store-bought 1, homemade 0.

Homemade Butter

NOTES: To process butter, you need a food processor, electric mixer or blender. I used a blender and found it difficult. An electric mixer likely would work better, because it can whip the cream more evenly. For best results, use organic cream with a butterfat content of at least 35 percent.
Yield: About 1 pound butter, plus 2 cups buttermilk
Time: 20-40 minutes
Ingredients:
1 quart heavy cream
Ice water
Salt, to taste (optional)
Method:
Start with the cream at about 50 to 60 F.
Pour cream into medium bowl. Using a mixer, blend at medium speed for about 10 minutes. If using a blender instead, process 1 cup of cream at a time and scrape the sides of the blender frequently to avoid clogging the blender.
The cream will begin to transform into fluffy whipped cream, then will develop stiff peaks.
Continue to blend until butterfat globules start to separate from the buttermilk. The butter will stiffen and clump together, and the watery milk will pool in the bottom.
Drain the buttermilk into a separate container and refrigerate for later use in another recipe.
Use the spatula or spoon to press the butter against the sides of the bowl and squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
Pour ice water over the butter to rinse it. Continue to press and fold the butter with the spoon to eliminate any remaining buttermilk. Removing all the buttermilk will prevent the butter from spoiling too quickly.
Pour off the cloudy liquid. Rinse three to four times or until the water becomes less cloudy.
Continue kneading the butter against the side of the bowl until all the liquid has been pressed out. Add salt, if desired.
Pack butter in an airtight container and store in fridge. Can also be frozen for up to 6 months.
Recipe adapted from www.organicgardening.com/cook/homemade-butter.