Is It Really Cheaper To Make Your Own Butter?

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With the cost of living crisis getting worse and worse and everything going up in price, many people are looking to cut the cost of their weekly shopping as well as all their other bills.

I’ve seen a lot of posts on TikTok recently talking about how it’s cheaper to make your own butter and wondered whether it was true.

Is making your own butter actually cost effective?

Before we get started, I want to preface this, by saying that making your own butter is both fun and delicious. I am not saying you shouldn’t try making your own butter, because you should.

Your whole house will smell like butter, it’s amazing!

However, I’m not sure it’s quite the money saver people are making it out to be, and even if there is a saving, my thinking is it’s likely to only be pennies and doesn’t factor in the cost of electricity or having to wash up extra bowls afterwards!

Just to add, I’m only comparing the price of making actual real butter here and not including spread which tends to be cheaper.

Is It Really Cheaper To Make Your Own Butter?

When thinking about whether or not it’s cheaper to make your own butter, there are a lot of factors that come into play including;

• The cost of butter vs cream (price per 100 grams)
• Where do you usually shop
• The cost of electric
• How much do you value convenience / whether you have time to make your own butter
• Extra washing up – I used three bowls, a sieve and an electric whisk when making mine this week

The Cost Of Making Your Own Butter

Figuring out whether it’s cheaper to make your own butter isn’t easy, as using 300mls of cream doesn’t equal 300 grams of butter.

In fact, when I made my own, 300 ml of cream only made around 140 grams of butter.

There was some buttermilk leftover which can be used for pancakes or making fried chicken but I am going to leave that out of the equation.

There is also a massive variation in supermarket prices for both cream and butter.

The cheapest option for making your own butter- Cheapest Cream Vs Cheapest Butter

Prices are correct from Trolley.co.uk at the time of writing and are subject to fluctuation. You can also use a price per 100 grams calculator if you want to do your own calculations. 

So first, I thought I’d take a look at the cheapest butter vs the cheapest cream currently available.

Co-op Butter 250grams £1.50 – 60p per 100 grams

Aldi Cream 300mls £1.05 (makes 140 grams of butter)  – 75p per 100 grams

So making your own butter according to this equation is definitely not cheaper.

However, if you wouldn’t usually shop around, Aldi’s own brand butter is £1.75 per 250 grams making it ever so slightly more expensive than making your own butter.

In this instance, by making your own butter you’d save around 5p and have around 15 grams of extra butter.

Now, it’s up to you whether you think that saving is worth it or not.

Having had a good look across all of the supermarkets prices of both butter and cream can vary.

In many places (I’m looking at you Morrisons) butter is around £2.

However, Morrison’s cream is also more expensive at £1.25 making the butter cheaper to buy per 100 grams.

Some supermarkets do a larger tub of cream (600ml) but even then it’s usually only around 5p cheaper than buying two 300ml tubs.

These equations don’t take into account the cost of electricity, washing up, greaseproof paper, salt or the time it takes to make the butter yourself.

Is It Ever Cheaper To Make Your Own Butter?

All of the above considered, there still may be the odd occasion when it is cheaper to make your own butter.

As the cream is a perishable item, you’ll often find it in the yellow sticker section in supermarkets.

If you can get it reduced to 50p or less for 300mls then it’s time to stock up and make your own butter!

How To Make Your Own Butter

Finally, I thought I’d finish but giving a quick tutorial on how to make your own butter, as you might want to give it a go whether it’s cheaper or not!

1. Whisk the double cream until it forms soft peaks either using an electric whisk, stand mixer or balloon whisk. If you’d like salted butter, this is the time to add a couple of pinches of salt.

2. Keep whisking until the cream splits and then start to separate. Eventually, it’ll separate into the butter and buttermilk. It looks a bit like scrambled eggs at this stage!

3. Carefully gather the butter into a ball and squeeze out the excess liquid. Once the liquid is extracted, gently dip the butter in a bowl of cold water to rinse off the last of the buttermilk.

4. Transfer the butter to a butter dish or greaseproof paper. This should last for around a week if kept in the fridge.

5. Keep the buttermilk in an airtight container in the fridge, it can be used for a range of dishes including buttermilk chicken and buttermilk scones.

Is It Cost-Effective To Make Your Own Butter? – Final Thoughts

In conclusion, generally speaking, making your own butter is only going to save you pennies and that’s before electricity and extra washing up are accounted for.

However, if you’ve seen the trend and think it’s something you’d like to try, you absolutely should. Making butter is great fun and it’s delicious too.

Time to start looking out for those yellow sticker tubs of cream!