Canned Butter

First I ordered came from the source you listed.

Then I ordered another case from these guys because they had a special on at the time ( Email them to see if they still have it going....it's one of those "we have it if you ask" kinda deals )

hitp://www.mredepot.com/servlet/StoreFront

My take on the butter is it's not quite the same as the stuff I buy in the store.....not that it's bad or anything, just different. But in the absence of ANY butter, it would be REAL GOOD !

I also have a couple cases of the Kraft canned cheese. Again, not quite Velveta, or up to a good wheel of Gouda, but melts well on grilled cheese sandwiches, and not bad just carved right out of the can.....little 'rubbery' in consistency, better if you cool it down below 40 or so......but just like the butter, in the absence of what I normally eat for cheese, this stuff will do fine.

Some 'comfort' foods in a SHTF situation will go a LONG way IMHO to keep morale up......just like a hot shower makes the whole world seem like a better place.

Both have a high order of placement in my preps.

 

Mmmmmm.....if it is from NZ then there is every chance that the livestock involved in it's production has been "tampered with"....

I have not seen that here but I should check I guess.....not use to looking for butter in the canned foods section....

 

Butter Addict Here...

Found a cool link on canning your own butter:

http://www.endtimesreport.com/canning_butter.html
​

I'll be looking for 1-pint jars today, and try canning tonight or tomorrow.

I was going to buy a bunch of canned butter and cheese, but, after finding the above article, I dropped the butter and doubled up on cheese. We've already tried some and it's not bad at all.

It's funny -- after the cans arrived, my wife was saying we can buy that at the Filipino store. Same stuff: Kraft cheddar. If I remember, I'll stop and check the price.

 

Thanks for posting good to know...

 

I made canned butter tonight

Followed the directions from the site posted earlier
(http://www.endtimesreport.com/canning_butter.html)
and made a small batch of canned butter.

There were a few gotchas listed below, but it was quite easy. The stirring, although long, wasn't so bad; my wife even helped me a little. She asked me twice why I was doing it :^) and I repeated: "in case we lose electricity"... (gotta say there's a lot of other stuff that needs preserving too).

• It's hard to tell when the butter is boiling -- except for the big "gurgles", which can make a big mess in a hurry. I kept stirring at medium+1 heat for about 30 minutes, then simmered for 15 minutes.
• I thought my big cooking pot was big enought for 8 1-pound-sticks, but it needed to be a little bigger. Next time I'll use a big-ol' pot and do more, rather than not finish all the 12 jars in a case
• Off-season canning jars were hard to find for a good price, but I finally found some at Albertsons. The searching wasted a lot of time, but I found other things for my BOB that were helpful
• Keep on top of shaking the jars! Since it was cold in the garage, I kept all the jars out there and worked on my gear organization. Don't get too involved in something and forget to shake the jars.
• I got the wide-mouth jars to be able to reach all the way to the bottom and sides with a butter knife. Regular size mouth is proabably fine too.

If you like butter (for me it's also a thing against hydrogenated/hydrolyzed oils), then this is a great alternative.

Each 16-oz jar of butter cost a little less than three dollars to make (just raw materials):

• 2 packs butter at Costco about $16 (total of 8 1lbs pkgs of butter; makes about 9 pint jars of butter)
• 12-pack of 1 pint Ball jars at grocery store about $10

The biggest variable will be the fluctuating price of butter, so buy on sale and freeze it.

Hope this encourages someone else to do this; we're talking high-calorie food in a small package.

-nvBeav

PS: Self life is listed at 3 years, but the original author says he's gone a lot longer. YMMV depending on storage conditions.

 

Very Cool, thanks for the report and tips!

 

If you are going to can butter.. the above method isn't canning.. it is melting and pouring into jars and sealing by the process of a vacuum due to the heating of the jar by virture of the hot butter... but the fat in the butter will still go rancid as does any oil.

to can butter----using unsalted butter, heat the butter to melt on a low fire and skim off all fat. Once that is done, pour the clarified butter (ghee) into jars and process.

great information on making ghee;
http://www.ayurveda.com/online resource/ghee_recipe.htm

to can: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1766,129183-240192,00.html

while neither way is condoned by the USDA, canning ghee is a process done world wide.

 

I wondered if any of our "Mrs. Survival" imports would get in on this. I tell ya guys, they "got it goin on" over there for canning/food preservation stuff. Very nice addition to the Monkey.

 

For a treat, add pecan bits and a little sugar to that ghee. Easy to do, and is great. Other additives will work well too.

jim

 

"Canning" Butter

I'm also interested in hearing any more opinions about the process. It would certainly be painful to lose my 9 pint jars to rancid fat.

My process not only melted the butter, but it also cooked it for a half-hour, not to mention the "simmering" for another 15 minutes. Being the first time I've ever "canned" something, I thought this was a pretty reasonable cooking time... I've got a lot to learn.

Hope to learn some more before I poison myself with botulism or worse :^(

 

The less moisture there is in fats the longer it will take for it to go rancid, as well as being properly stored. Think of canned lard. Also I know I made up some cream/lotion from lamb fat rendered (3 times to remove as MUCH liquid as possible) last spring and it has been stored at room temp and still isnt rancid, its also about the consistance of soft bar soap.

It sounds like it should work and at worst should just get a nasty taste to it (as opposed to becomeing deadly), so my thought would be to do up a batch and check it over the coarse of a year or so and go from there.

 

hangs head... I am from mrssurvival.

I have heard in other forums people talk about melting butter into jars in the oven, shaking the jar to blend until cooled.

I am just worried that if you are dependent on this method, you will find 2 or 3 years later that the butter is rancid due to the fat content of the butter.

I only offer a method I know personally is tried and true and will last on your counter unprocessed for months. I prefer to process in a canner.

This is where crisco butter comes in handy.. did you know crisco lasts forever unopened? or so the company says... lasts 18 months opened. If looking for butter to put on breads, use fruit butters.

I use ghee in my cooking.. nothing more really then drawn butter, expensive to purchase and usually found in an Indian or middle eastern store, but very easy to make. I have both a water bath canner (stock pot with a lid and rack in the botton) and a Pressure Canner (not a pressure cooker! and there is a difference)

USDA http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/questions/FAQ_canning.html#33 the last entery.

brook

 

My "canned" butter is well into it's second year, and so far, so good.

 

I did run across lard the other day in plastic containers I never really looked at and what caught my eye was no refrig needed.

I know people use it on bread like butter and I noticed the calorie content was 120 per serving which I supppose was around a tsp of it.

Think I'll add a gallon bucket to the stash for $24.95 next time I'm in the "SHTF looters market."

 

I guess I was just thinking in different terms on the storage of it. I was kind of thinking in terms of 'store what you eat and eat what you store' to where you might have say 6 months or a year supply and would be rotateing that asyou used it so that a shelf life of a year to 18 months would suffice. I would imagine that there would be a some good likelyhood of it going rancid after 3-5 years or some such even with the moisture all out. The method you mentione would probably be better if it was for indefinate storage.

 

Great link. Never thought to can butter. Have any monkeys tried this and if so how long storage. It says three years + any follow upon this? I like the suggestion of wide mouth jars, it makes sense.

Great link. Had never considered canning butter. Any monkeys t

 

I've done it according to BexarPrepper's video. I made a huge mess as usual but it turned out great. Like she says, it's a ghee not butter like you're used to, but for us that was a bonus because the Mr. uses that veg oil spread crap and since the end result with this is very spreadable he happily made the switch over. Which meant we went through butter 3x faster than usual. I don't know how long it'd last because we ate it within a year and I haven't done it since. Keep meaning to tho...

And no it's not "canning" but it works so I'm ignoring the nannypants crowd wringing their hands and warning of botulism. It's already been established that I'm stupid with a bad attitude when it comes to the right way to do things, and I'd hate to let anyone down on that score.