Not long ago I went to a dinner party where one of the guests brought a ramekin of lovely hand-churned butter as an offering (she made it the low-tech way: filling a mason jar with heavy cream and shaking it). So I was interested to discover Churncraft, an updated take on the classic butter churn from an entrepreneurial Connecticut family. “Using a butter churn is a dynamic social activity that brings people together in the kitchen,” the Freys say. “Go back to basics, unplug, and do it yourself.
“The churn represents our American heritage and a deep commitment to the future of food. We wanted to build a bridge from the past to the future, so integrity of design was essential—compelling shapes, solid engineering and honest materials.”
Made by hand in a Connecticut workshop, the churn has a cast metal frame from Canada, stainless steel shafts and a shaft collar machined in Connecticut, bronze bushings, a wooden handle milled in Maine, and precision gears imported from Germany.
N.B.: The Churncraft won a prestigious Red Dot award for product design in 2017.
For more low-tech kitchen ideas, see:
Chef David Tanis’s Low-Tech, Economical, and Beautifully Soulful Kitchen in the East Village
10 Easy Pieces: Editors’ Essential Low-Tech Kitchen Tools
5 Favorites: Sculptural Vintage Wooden Potato Mashers
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