Matt Powell

I've made a couple of batches of cultured butter using local grassfed cream and yogurt for fermentation - they've turned out great and the entire process isn't too messy or too much work beyond the washing step. Currently I use a 16-cup Magimix food processor for the churning, then press by hand using a colander and mixing bowl to get out the buttermilk remnants. This last part requires a good deal of manual labor and to be honest I'm never 100% comfortable that I got enough buttermilk out to stop it from going rancid. Hasn't been an issue yet but the butter also gets parceled out between myself and a couple of friends and disappears quickly. I'm wondering if anyone has experimented with other ways of washing the butter - I was thinking of draining the buttermilk from the processor, adding back a quantity of water and running again, emptying and repeating the process several times. Either that, or switch to using a stand mixer for the process and doing this with the paddle attachment rather than relying on the food processor vortex.

I'm having some small issues with my VP112 - wanted to get some clarification on possible help for them. With a standard 8-10oz. ribeye, I have to run the VP112 for 50 seconds to hit ~28.5Hg, then a 5 second seal - any less than this and I tend to get floaters. Even then, the vacuum isn't as tight as I expected. (Broadly speaking, I've had the same issue with other meats and when trying to do liquor infusions of fruit.) My first question - I've seen some references to filling the chamber better, would it do any good to get a few plastic cutting boards to take up space in the chamber? My second - for now, should there be any issues with meat texture with such a long vacuum? I haven't noticed any, but in the fruit infusions, 50 seconds definitely started to get cold liquid closer to the boiling point.