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.
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.
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.
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.
Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail 