Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: butter

  • 2 Churning 2 Burning

    I finally decided to try the viral running trend again. You know, the one where you run with a bag of cream and churn it into butter. Last time it did not work out very well at all. As promised, this time I made a few changes based on my previous result.

    First, and most importantly, I got heavy cream that was free from preservatives and was low temp pasteurized instead of ultra-pasteurized. This was the most significant and expensive change I made. I bought this boutique stuff called Mill King Heavy Whipping Cream from Central Market. It cost an angina inducing $6.79 for one pint. That comes out to $54.32 per gallon.

    And what exactly is all that money I’m spending for? The only ingredient in this stuff is literally just cow’s cream.

    Last time, I got burned by preservatives like polysorbate 80. This stuff has none of that at all. It doesn’t make sense that not adding things to a product makes it cost so much more. For $50 a gallon I’d expect this to contain Love Potion No. 9, Invigaron, and Compound V.

    This is like when you go to the modern gym with rows of treadmills and ellipticals everywhere and membership is $10 a month. Then you see another place that looks like some rando’s garage with rusty dumbbells in a corner and everything looks like it smells like ball sweat, and the price is $75 a week.

    In addition to the change of cream I made lots of other changes. As you can tell from the amount of sweat on the bottle in the pics above, I left the cream out for about an hour to get close to room temp before heading out. I also ran 6.5 miles instead of 6 although my route was still entirely sidewalks and improved roads. I also added about 1/8 tsp of salt to the cream. Same as last time, I poured the cream into a double bag and put the bag in my hydration carrier and took off.

    When I got back I knew instantly that I had a different result than before. Last time there was no real separation but this time there was a definite fatty residue all over the bag with a liquid phase all around it. A picture of the inside of the bag will show you what I mean.

    I stuck a finger in there and scooped some up and it definitely tasted like butter. This means I got farther than I got last time. The next step from here is to scoop out your butter and dunk it in ice cold water. This helps wash out any buttermilk that is trapped in your butter (which can make it go bad faster). You put the butter into a giant bowl of ice water and knead it a little so the butter clumps together and everything that isn’t butter rinses out.

    A picture of this would show you what I mean. If I had one. Let me say that scooping freshly made room temperature butter from a ziploc bag into a bowl of ice water is one of the messiest things I’ve ever done in my life. I instantly wound up with butter all over my forearms and the kitchen counter and everything. And warm butter does not simply wash off your hands. It just smears around all over the place. The last thing I was going to do was grab my phone to take a picture of this horrible mess. If you ever try making your own butter, make sure you have at least two sets of hands to help with this step and the inevitable clean-up.

    Eventually, after many hand washes and towelings off, I got the butter fully rinsed. I formed it into a ball and placed it onto a saucer.

    Eyeballing it, this made a total of about 3 or 4 ounces of butter. The only thing left was the taste test. A couple dabs on some toast and washed down with a Powerade.

    OK, not to sound immodest or anything but it tasted great. It tasted like you imagine the homemade butter you will one day make with your own two hands will taste. Rich, creamery butter taste and mouthfeel.

    Finally, the ultimate question to answer: was this whole thing worth it? Fuck no! Between the two tries I spent $9.75 on cream, ran 12.5 miles, and completely turfed my kitchen. And for what? Four ounces of butter? What a fucking joke. I guess I have the memes and the friends I met along the way, but the juice is not worth the squeeze as they say. I hope the next viral trend involves sitting on the couch reading sci-fi short stories.

  • Churning And Burning

    By this point, there is a good to great chance you have seen one of the viral TikTok videos about making butter while you run. There are quite a few out there by now, but I believe this one here is the O.G.

    @momcallsmebirdy

    Churn🧈 and burn 🔥 baby!!! We woke up yesterday and wondered “can you churn butter and run at the same time?” Well, there you have it! Is this an original experience asking for a friend. #churningbutter #farmlife #runningwhilemakingbutter #trailrunning

    ♬ suara asli – Gado-Gado Semesta (Gagas) – Visnarey

    The science behind why this should work is fairly simple. Milk is an emulsion of fats in water. Since fats and water are famous for not getting along well, it is easy to agitate the mixture enough to separate the fat from the water. The up-down and side-to-side motion of running a good distance can be used to do just that. Pour some heavy cream into a bag. Run long enough to agitate the bag sufficiently. Separate the fatty part (butter) from the watery part (buttermilk). Profit.

    With that in mind I bought some heavy whipping cream from Walmart.This shit cost me $2.96 for a pint. That comes out to $23.68 for a gallon. With prices like that I’m surprised no one is blocking a strait or something to control the supply.

    I poured the cream into a one-gallon storage bag and then put that bag into another bag. Got to double bag it to prevent any little accidents from running around nine months from now. No salt added to the bag because I prefer unsalted butter. If you disagree, you can add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of salt either at this step or after the run.

    Me trying so hard not to make the obvious jokes about filling a bag with my delicious cream.

    I slipped that bag into the back of my hydration carrier and took off. I went for a six mile jaunt around town. Once I got back I checked out the results of my exertion.

    It is tough to tell from the picture, but my results were less than stellar. What I found was something definitely solid, but not very solid. There also was essentially no separation and no liquid phase. Whatever I had made was not cream anymore, but was also not butter. I scooped it into an 8 oz container and pondered what had transpired.

    This looks like whipped cream instead of butter. But the ultimate test for any food is the taste test. So I pulled out some brown bread I had also bought from Walmart and smeared this abomination all over it.

    Buttered bread and chocolate milk. Two-thirds of the ideal post-run meal.

    Okay, it actually tasted very good. Tasted enough like butter that in a blind taste test I would have said it was butter. I have no illusions that it is butter or that I could use it in any recipe in lieu of butter, but it does have some value.

    So the whole thing was a failure but not a complete and total failure. Somewhere between “success” and “failure”. A “suck-ure”. From my past life as a molecular biologist, I know all about having experiments go tits up. The important thing is to go over what happened, do research, and try again with some tweaked variables.

    Here are some of my observations:

    • The heavy cream I used was ultra-pasteurized and contained polysorbate 80. Ultra-pasteurized cream is more difficult to separate than pasteurized cream. Polysorbate 80 is a powerful emulsifier that helps heavy cream stay as heavy cream at a wide range of temperatures and other stresses. So, you know, it basically exists in the cream to stop me from getting it to separate like I want.
    • I pulled the cream out of my fridge, shook it up for about 5 seconds, and poured it into the bag. I should have let it get somewhere between 60 and 65 degrees before starting my run.
    • I ran on only improved roads for the entire time, so my up-down and side-to-side movements were limited. I should mix in some trail running to get a good slosh going. Six miles should have been more than enough time, but I could stretch out to seven or eight next time.

    In summation, I was not able to create butter while running. Next time I try (which, I do not know when that will be) I will use a different kind of cream warmed to room temperature and run longer over a rougher trail. I also should have done three minutes of Google searching before I decided to try this. Now I need to go and clean up all this shit in my kitchen.