The Best Homemade Garlic Butter Recipe for Canning
This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Click HERE to read my policies & disclaimers if you're interested. I will only link products I use and personally recommend. Thank you for your support, friends!
It is a crime to run out of my homemade garlic butter recipe on my pantry shelves. This stuff is my favvvvv. It is amazingly flavorful and useful for a lot of meals, mainly though for a pizza crust dipping sauce for this household. If you’re like us and enjoy the seed oil garlic “butter” from chain pizza shops but don’t enjoy the stomach ache that comes with it, you gotta try this because the best part is, actual butter is much better for you!
This perfect blend of fresh minced garlic, dried parsley, and butter (duh) needs to be on your shelves because having room temperature, ready to go, fresh garlic butter at your fingertips is never a bad thing. Think of it as a shelf stable compound butter that only gets better as it sits; this is seriously the best homemade garlic butter recipe…. I’m biased, but also, I’m not canning something that’s gross. Slather on homemade fresh milled French bread for a quick garlic bread, brush on the tops of dinner rolls or garlic knots, or toss a glob into hot pasta.
Get seriously creative because garlic butter can take an every day meal and a variety of dishes to the next level with some simple and basic ingredients. There’s lots of different ways to use it! Having a way to can butter instead of taking up freezer space is also a good thing when you have your own milk cow and you’re drowning in homemade butter.
Tips for Canning My Homemade Garlic Butter Recipe:
- Use dried herbs. Using fresh parsley gets pretty weird after canning, I’ve found. Dried herbs work much better for infusing in oils. You can add more herbs if you like! Make it your own!
- Use good quality butter, preferably some you made homemade from fresh cream or found on sale! And REAL butter. Nothing plant based.
- Use salted butter, or at least half of the butter should be salted. Nobody wants flavorless unsalted :D (you can use unsalted… I will forgive your actions).
- Can more than you think you’ll use because once you try it, it won’t be on the shelves for long!
But You’re Not Allowed to Can Butter!
Goodness me. I guarantee I hear this every time I can something dairy. It has simply not been tested by the NCHFP. Untested never equates unsafe.
My personal opinion here? I’ve been canning butter for years and years and it’s fine. Plenty of other folks do, too. Everything we do in life comes with inherent risk, whether it be riding in a vehicle, boarding an airplane, swimming with sharks, eating at a restaurant, or rebel canning.
You choose your risk. You want to fly in a metal box over the ocean for 6 hours to get to Hawaii, I want to can butter. God gave us a brain and a bit of critical thinking and research will allow you to make an informed decision on what works best for you and your family. Don’t like it? Don’t do it.
If you have no idea what rebel canning is, it’s canning outside the rules set forth by the canning powers that be… namely the NCHFP and any other entity that does its own testing. Did you know that testing of recipes involves inoculating jars with botulism and other pathogens far above what they could possibly normally contain in the name of safety?
Look into that. They’re creating unrealistic conditions within jars and then claiming it’s either safe, unsafe, unapproved, or the likes. I mean… you definitely can’t water bath something low acid that’s been inoculated with 1000x the normal amount of potential botulism spores that would ever be present. Really look at the words and verbiage, too.
Plus, it’s really hard to find anything at all on the testing processes to begin with. The scientific process involves sharing your methods and questioning them, not blindly following what someone tells you to do; even me. BUT. This doesn’t mean just start rebel canning willy nilly for the sake of rebellion. You can absolutely follow the rules and do perfectly fine. It’s all within your comfort and knowledge level.
Learn to can by the rules and then when you start questioning the rules, you’ll know how to safely break them if you want to. But, guess what, nobody is forcing you to do anything. Not even me by sharing this rebellious post on how I can butter in my house and feed it to my family, not yours.
Learn about how I can real butter and also clarify it into ghee. I do both for different reasons and explain such in the blog posts :)
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to canning this delicious homemade garlic butter recipe!
Equipment:
- Stock Pot
- Pint or smaller mason jars, lids & rings
- Pressure canner
- Jar funnel
- Jar lifter
Ingredients:
- Salted or Unsalted Butter
- Dried Parsley
- Fresh Garlic Cloves
- Garlic Powder
- Salt
- Black Pepper
This recipe makes approximately 1 – 1.5 pints of our homemade garlic butter recipe, using 4 sticks/1 lb/2 cups of butter. For a larger batch, feel free to double, triple, or more this recipe.
Step 1: Melt Butter
To a small saucepan, melt 1 pound of butter over medium-low heat.
Step 2: Prep Jars & Lids
While the butter melts, wash jars and lids in hot soapy water. Rinse well and place on a clean kitchen towel to set aside until they’re needed.
Step 3: Add Seasonings
Add in:
- 3 tablespoons dried parsley
- 3 tablespoons minced garlic (this was 6 cloves of garlic for me)
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
Stir and taste butter and add a pinch of salt & black pepper to taste (salt amounts depends on if you add salted or unsated butter).
Step 4: Fill Jars
Ladle melted butter & herb mixture into prepared jars to 1-inch headspace.
Wipe jar rims thoroughly with a vinegar soaked cloth.
Add clean lids and secure with bands to manufacturer’s specifications.
Pressure can pint jars and smaller for 75 minutes at your elevations recommended weight for low acid food. (<1000ft is 10 lbs; >is 15lbs).
Step 5: Store
Once pressure canning time is done and it has depressurized, remove jars from canner and set aside to cool on a heat proof surface covered with a towel.
Wearing an oven mitt, shake the jars every 15-30 minutes after they seal to ensure the herbs and garlic and dairy solids remain suspended in the butter. I generally begin shaking the jars once the butter has changed from a translucent yellow to a more opaque color, signaling it’s begun to cool. This takes an hour or so, so don’t start canning at midnight :D If you do forget, all the garlic and herbs sink to the bottom and you have sad butter at the top, so really, really try to remember to shake it!
Once jars have cooled enough to leave the herbs and garlic suspended, allow them to sit and cool undisturbed for 12-18 hours before removing rings and testing seals. Wash jars, label, and store in a cool, dark place away from direct sunlight. Cool and dark is preferable, but anywhere away from direct sunlight and extreme temperatures will do the trick to store canned goods. As long as your jars aren’t boiling or freezing, you’re good!
​Notes:
You can use fresh herbs, like parsley and even fresh chives (YUM) for this butter, but I have found that dried herbs can much better and look more appealing than fresh in the end product.
Use whatever herbs you like in this homemade garlic butter recipe and feel free to adjust to your liking. Just be sure the herbs can well and don’t turn in the end product like sage does. Bleh.
Don’t want to can it? No problem. Take room temperature butter and whip the ingredients together; season with salt & pepper to your liking. Store in a freezer-safe container and freeze or in a sealed container in the fridge for a week or two, instead.
And there you have it, a shelf stable homemade garlic butter recipe available on your shelf for whenever the mood strikes or pizza night demands it!
Equipment
- ladle
- Small Stock Pot
- jar lifter
- Canning jars, lids, & rings
Ingredients
- 1 pound butter salted or unsalted
- 3 Tbs dried parsley
- 3 Tbs minced garlic
- 2 tsps garlic powder
- salt & black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add butter to a small stock pot and melt over medium heat.
- Add in parsley, minced garlic, and garlic powder. Stir well.
- Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. This really depends on if you use salted or unsalted butter.
- Ladle into prepared jars to 1" headspace.
- Wipe rims really well with vinegar soaked cloth. Add lids and bands, securing to manufacturer's specification.
- Pressure can at your elevations recommended weight for 75 minutes for pints or smaller jars
- Once canner is depressurized, remove jars to a heat proof surface. Shake well using an oven mitt every 15-30 minutes until butter completely cools and solidifies to keep butter solids, herbs, and garlic suspended in mixture.
Our family loves garlic butter! Hard to find in the store and this is even better.
Homemade is always better! Hope you love this!
Can this be water bathed?
Yes (even more rebelliously though) but if you’re comfortable with that, I would process them for 2-3 hours in a boiling water bath depending on which times you prefer to follow (US or German).
So using one pound of butter would net how many pints or half pints?
1 pound of butter will yield around 2 half pints or 1-ish pints.
How long do these last after canned?
Love canning butter. Never tried to add flavoring to it. Excited to try this. So will it make it go bad faster when u pop it open to use. I usually let my canned butter go 6 weeks in a fridge. But rarely last more than a week or two.
you’ll have to let me know what you think if you try this recipe :)