Marcella Cooking Stuff • Butter Edition

Let's Talk About Butter!

I have a confession...I eat butter. I mean I take a little bite of butter to taste its flavor before using it. Yeah, I eat straight butter from time to time. Not a full spoonful just a little bite but still, I imagine some of you are probably making a cringy face at me right now.

Tasting your ingredients is one of the most important parts of cooking. Every ingredient has its own individual flavor and when you use it in a recipe, it contributes to the overall dish. So tasting ingredients like olive oil, vinegar, spices, salt, and even butter are important.

The thing is, I really really love butter. A few years back while shopping at Bristol Farms I noticed "fancy" butter. French butter, sea salt butter, and even butter in a can. Yes, that's a real thing, and its made by Red Feather. For my own enjoyment, I started trying new brands just for fun. I can't remember exactly what Red Feather tasted like but let's just say the whole can was consumed, Les Pres Sales was a repeat offender, I bought Straus butter often but my all-time favorite was Vermont Creamery's Cultured Butter Roll with Sea Salt Crystals. I even discovered a turkey-shaped butter that I now have on the table every year for Thanksgiving!

This was a few years ago and I'm now in Kansas City. I haven't really focused on butter in a long time. I mainly use Meyenberg Goat Milk Butter to accommodate Marco's allergy to cow dairy and I enjoy it. To keep costs down during my obsessive quarantine baking I started looking at Costco and found my options were limited.

So I thought, "What is the best grocery store butter?!"

I originally wanted to test "fancy" butter but let's be real, I'm not going to be ordering butter online regularly. I'm going to go to the grocery store, like everyone else, and pick up butter that's available there.

But which grocery store? For research purposes, I went to six. Costco for bulk options, Whole Foods a health food store that's available to almost everyone, Cosentino's a local "nicer" but overpriced store, Hy-Vee a generic midwest chain (similar to Kroger), Green Acres our local health food shop, and Trader Joe's which is...Trader Joe's. I figured this covered all of our grocery store bases.

Before we jump into the butter let's go over some important details...

Salted vs. Unsalted

I have strong feelings about this and my feelings are that unsalted butter is disgusting. When polling Instagram, 55% of people prefer unsalted butter, and all for the same reason. You can always add salt to taste, you have better control over the outcome (especially with baking), and salt content varies between brands.

Look, I get it, I really do. I studied baking and pastries for two years. Yes, you can absolutely add salt and control the outcome but I'm still not buying unsalted butter, and here's why:

1. It's disgusting to spread on toast. You may sprinkle salt on top but then you have salt crystals only on the top of your butter. You are still getting unsalted butter hitting your palette while you eat. With salted butter, the salt is evenly distributed throughout and you have flavorful salty butter hitting your tongue with every bite.

2. Who goes to the grocery store and buys a different brand of butter every time? I guarantee everyone reading this has a brand or two that they usually reach for at the store. I'm talking to you Kerrygold lovers, there are a lot of you. When you buy and cook with the same brand regularly, you learn how the flavor and salt content affects your food! Thus you adjust the amount of salt you add to your recipes.

Some key factors of cooking are being adaptable and tasting your food. So, bringing it back to tasting all your ingredients. You should know what that butter tastes like on its own, you should taste your food throughout every step of the cooking process, and add your salt accordingly.

If you love unsalted butter, I want you to keep using the butter you like. I personally am not into it and because of that, all the butter in this test are salted.

American vs. European Fat Content

In America, butter is only required to have 80% fat content to be considered butter. In Europe butter has to be at least 82% butterfat. Amish butter usually has a butterfat percentage of 84-85%.

The bottom line is the more fat it has, the creamier and smoother it will be. 79% of my followers prefer European style butter and I'm right there with you. Bring on the fat!

Cultured Butter

Cultured butter is made by adding bacteria or lactic cultures to cream and allowing it to sit and ferment for some time before churning. If you are saying "whoa that sounds weird" just think of yogurt. Yogurt is made by adding cultures to milk. It's a similar process and just like yogurt, it gives butter tangy flavor and provides healthy bacteria for your gut.

I like both sweet cream and cultured butter. The tangy flavor varies from brand to brand. I recommend trying some and seeing what you personally like.

Why is butter yellow?

Butter gets its yellow color from beta-carotene, which is found in grass. Cows that eat grass have more beta-carotene and their butter has a deeper yellow color. Cows that eat grain have less beta-carotene (or none) and their butter is more white.

Beta-carotene is also a great source of vitamin A and is high in omega-3s. If you ever see beta-carotene listed as an ingredient that means it was added to artificially color the butter.

How is butter made?

Butter is made by agitating milk until the fat separates from the liquid. Once separated, salt may be added, and the solids are shaped into the rectangular stick we all know or rolled into a log.

You can easily make butter at home and of course, I did! I put 32oz of heavy whipping cream into my Kitchen Aid Mixer and mixed for 10 minutes. Right before my eyes, the solids separated and I had butter. It was sweet, creamy, and delicious. Will I make butter again? Probably not regularly. It was a fun project but with all the options available there really isn't a need to. I may try culturing my own butter or making flavored butter but besides that, I'll stick to buying butter.

I included homemade butter in the first two rounds of tests but left it out of this newsletter. As tasty as it was, you guys can not buy my butter at the store so it was disqualified.

Let's Try Some Butter!

I did four rounds of testing...

1. Spoon Test - I took a straight-up bite of each butter.

2. Toast Test - I tried each butter on my homemade English muffins.

3. Blind Taste Test - I blindly tasted my top six butters to get the top four.

4. Pie Crust Test - I baked pie crust bites with my top four tasting butters to see which produced the flakiest crust AND had the best flavor when baked.

The brands of butter are listed in the order they were eliminated, you'll find the results from each test and my notes on each one. Let me tell you, I was truly surprised by the winner...

14. Kirkland - Salted Sweet Cream Butter
64oz - $7.99 - Costco
Price per ounce - $0.12

Packaging: 16 parchment paper wrapped sticks in 4 boxes.
Butterfat Percentage: Unknown, based on the nutrition label I'm assuming close to 80%.
Ingredients: Cream (Milk), Salt

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Fail

At the beginning of quarantine, I was baking so much that I purchased this butter because it helped keep costs down. I use it for my test runs because it is so cheap that if ruin a recipe I don't mind. That being said, this butter literally tastes like nothing. It is flavorless and not even slightly creamy. This is the cheapest butter but you get what you pay for here. I don't enjoy it, even for baking, and once I use the last stick (I refuse to waste them) I will never buy it again.

Final Thoughts: Don't bother.

13. Minerva Dairy - Sea Salt Butter
32oz - $10.99 - Green Acres
Price per ounce - $0.34

Packaging: One parchment wrapped giant roll.
Butterfat Percentage: 85%
Ingredients: Pasteurized Cream, Sea Salt

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Fail

Every time I'm in Green Acres I see this giant roll of butter and think "one day I'm going to try that big thing." I was super excited to finally have a reason to buy it and I was rooting for it super hard too. Minerva Dairy is America's oldest family-owned creamery, they use milk from Amish farms with pasture-raised cows, and they are local to the midwest located in Minerva, Ohio. Sadly, I just didn't like it. It was waxy and bland with an odd lingering flavor that I can not pinpoint. Part of me thinks it could be some refrigerator flavors that may have been absorbed at the store but I tasted from the middle and it was still there. I tried to like this one, I wanted to like this one, but I just can't. It tastes weird!

Final Thoughts: Weird flavor and waxy texture that just does not taste good.

12. Shatto - Pure Irish Butter, Salted
9oz - $3.69 - Whole Foods
Price per ounce - $0.41

Packaging: One plastic tub with a plastic lid.
Butterfat Percentage: Unknown, based on the nutrition label I'm assuming close to 80%.
Ingredients: Cream, Salt

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Fail

Here is a little bit about Shatto Milk Company. They are a 400 acre, 350 cow family farm in Osborn, Missouri, about an hour from Kansas City, and they sell their products locally in the KC area. Their milk comes in old school glass bottles that I absolutely love. I love to support local businesses whenever possible and I use their milk for all my baking projects. I was rooting for them HARD...

Now about their butter, well, I hated it. Before I even tasted it, I could smell it. It has a funk to it. Some may like it but I certainly do not. It almost reminds me of stinky cheese. It was unappealing, hard to eat, and just not for me. I didn't find anything about their butter being cultured so I'm unsure where this flavor comes from. My only other comments are how it is packaged. A tub is fine for sticking a knife in and getting a little for your toast but for any type of cooking purpose, it is unnecessarily difficult to measure.

Final Thoughts: Of all the butter this one stands out and not in the best way. It had a funky taste that was not appealing to me. I will not purchase it again.

11. Vital Farms - Pasture-Raised Sea Salted Butter
8oz - $4.99 - Whole Foods
Price per ounce - $0.62

Packaging: Two parchment paper wrapped sticks in a box.
Butterfat Percentage: 85%
Ingredients: Cream (Milk), Sea Salt

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Fail

To be fair, I pulled this Vital Farms butter out of my freezer. I had a box in there and because it was previously frozen it had a slight freezer taste. For the taste tests, I cut the stick open and tasted from the middle. This butter didn't taste bad but it did nothing for me. It tasted sweet and was pleasantly creamy but bland and not very salty.

Final Thoughts: There is nothing special about this butter. I wouldn't be mad if I had to use it but it doesn't excite me. Pass.

10. Lewis Road - Premium Sea Salt Crystals Butter
8oz - $5.99 - Whole Foods
Price per ounce - $0.74

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: Unknown, based on the nutrition label I'm assuming above 82%.
Ingredients: Cream, Sea Salt

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Pass

I spotted this butter at Whole Foods and was intrigued when I discovered it was from New Zealand. Lewis Road Creamery is all about grass-fed cows. Because of the weather, they are allowed to graze 365 days a year and you can tell! The first thing I noticed about the butter was its color. Look at that color guys!! It is bright and stands out from the rest.

The next thing I noticed was how soft it was. The trip home from the store was about 30 minutes and my fingers were making an indent as I picked it up to put away. I also felt crystals...on the outside? My immediate thought was "this is going to be salty," and it was.

This butter was a salt bomb. It was salt forward, the salt lingered, and it's finished with salt. I was disappointed that it was so salty I could barely taste anything else. After eating a few bites I could very slightly pick up a beautiful grassy flavor but it was so salty I didn't really want to eat it.

On toast, it was better. The salt complimented the bread but I was missing any notes of butter.

Final Thoughts: I would love to try their other kinds of butter but this one was overpoweringly salty and no way you could cook with it.

9. Plugra - Extra Creamy Salted Butter
8oz - $3.29 - Cosentino's
Price per ounce - $0.41

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: 82%
Ingredients: Pasteurized Cream, Salt, Natural Flavors

Spoon Test: Fail
Toast Test: Fail

A handful of people submitted Plugra as their favorite butter brand. In fact, a lot of people online love Plugra. It has rave reviews about how smooth it is and wonderful it is for baking.

Before doing a taste test one thing stood out to me on the ingredient list, natural flavors. What are "natural flavors" and why are they in this butter? Butter doesn't need "natural flavors."

This butter tastes like BUTTER. Like what you think of when someone says butter. That movie theater butter taste. Maybe a little artificial?

It had a beautiful mouthfeel, creamy and smooth, and tasted like butter. That's all I really have to say about it.

Final Thoughts: If you like it, then use it! I believe butter doesn't need flavors added to it and won't be buying it In the future.

8. Meyenburg - Goat Milk Butter
8oz - $6.09 - Green Acres
Price per ounce - $0.76

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: Unknown, based on the nutrition label I'm assuming 85%.
Ingredients: Pasteurized Goat Milk Cream, Salt, Natural Flavors

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Fail

Meyenberg butter is made with goat milk instead of cows milk because of that, it tastes different. It has a slight hint of tang. The same tang that goat cheese has. Goat butter has a different fatty acid structure than cow butter which gives it a lower melting point and makes it much softer at room temperature. You'll notice that it is white unlike yellow butter from cows. Goats transform the beta-carotene in their diet into colorless vitamin A and cows do not.

This butter is smooth, grassy, a little tangy, and perfectly salty. The tang flavors are similar to ones found in cultured butter. I am not a fan of the "natural flavors" though...

Final Thoughts: Because it is not made with cows milk and it has natural flavors added, I'm eliminating this butter. I do use it often and encourage others to give it a try.

7. Organic Valley - European-Style Cultured Butter
8oz - $5.59 - Green Acres
Price per ounce - $0.69

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: 84%
Ingredients: Pasteurized Organic Sweet Cream (Milk), European Cultures

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Fail

Oh, how I love this Organic Valley butter! It's light, sweet, creamy but...it's not salted. I love everything about this butter except the fact that it is unsalted. I can't bump it into the top six when the other contenders are all salted.

Final Thoughts: If you see this at the store, it is worth trying!

6. Challenge Butter - Salted
16oz - $5.49 - Hyvee
Price per ounce: $0.34

Packaging: Four parchment wrapped sticks in a box.
Butterfat Percentage: 81%
Ingredients: Pasteurized Cream (Milk), Salt

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Fail
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 6th

Challenge Butter tasted oddly nostalgic? It has a nice even salt distribution with a soft buttery flavor. In the spoon test, it had that classic butter cookie butter flavor. In the toast test, it fell short. It didn't add much and the flavor was lacking. This was the butter I saw the most across all the grocery stores and because of that, I wanted to keep it in for the top six blind taste test. Compared to the other five it tasted bland and kind of waxy, causing it to come in last.

Final Thoughts: It is the most readily available. I would use it for baking but not spreading on toast.

5. Vermont Creamery - Cultured Butter, Sea Salt
8oz - $4.99 - Hyvee
Price per ounce - $0.62

Packaging: Two parchment wrapped sticks in a box.
Butterfat Percentage: 82%
Ingredients: Cream, Sea Salt, Cultures

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Pass
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 5th

To clarify, this is not the Vermont Creamery butter I mentioned earlier. That butter has a higher butterfat percentage of 86% and comes in a roll. However, this butter has the same great flavor. It has a bite that lingers on the back of your tongue after you swallow and the salt isn't overpowering. However, it didn't stand out in the blind taste test coming in fifth.

Final Thoughts: Vermont Creamery makes excellent products and this butter is one of them. If you see this at your local grocery store it is worth trying for sure.

4. Lurpak - Slightly Salted
8oz - $5.99 - Cosentino's
Price per ounce - $0.74

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: 82%
Ingredients: Cream, Culture, Salt

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Pass
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 4th
Top Four Pie Crust Test: 4th

I found this butter tucked away with the fancy cheeses at Cosentino's and I'm glad I did. Lurpak is a Danish brand and my notes literally say "tastes like generic euro butter and I like it." It's smooth, smooth like butter, very salty, and pleasant.

You'll notice that the ingredients list includes cultures although they do not advertise this as being cultured butter. There is a slight tang there but it is on the mellow side.

I enjoyed it with a spoon, I enjoyed it on toast, but it wasn't my favorite baked into pie crust. There was a mild butter flavor present but the crust itself was a little dense and flat.

Final Thoughts: Absolutely buy this butter for toast, not for baking.

3. Kerrygold - Pure Irish Butter, Salted
32oz - $12.99 - Costco
Price per ounce - $0.40

Packaging: Four foil-wrapped bricks in a box.
Butterfat Percentage: 82%
Ingredients: Pasteurized Cream, Salt

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Pass
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 3rd
Top Four Pie Crust Test: 3rd

I'm gonna keep it real, I wanted Kerrygold to do poorly. Kerrygold was by far the most popular with my followers on Instagram. It was the number one brand that people wrote in as their favorite. When asked why all the responses were something along the lines of tastes good, smooth, rich, creamy, taste butter, and strong flavor. Then I had one person say "honestly I think I've just been conditioned to believe it's the best," and two people said it's "always available." BINGO!

My personal thought on part of why Kerrygold is so loved is because it is everywhere. Every grocery store I went to carries it. The only brand other than their own brand at Trader Joe's was Kerrygold and the same at Costco.

So then I asked the question, "If you enjoy Kerrygold have you tried any other European butters before?" Just as I suspected 65% of people had not.

Besides the fact that it is everywhere, Kerrygold butter is in fact really freaking good. It's rich, it's salty, and it's grassy. The grassy flavor shined in the toast test and I even went back for seconds with the spoon test. During the pie test tasting, I got those grassy flavors but it was flatter than to others and not as flakey.

Final Thoughts: Kerrygold is good. You can get it everywhere and I support everyone that loves this butter!

2. Kalona Supernatural - Organic Lightly Salted Butter
16oz - $7.99 - Whole Foods
Price per ounce - $0.49

Packaging: Four parchment wrapped sticks in a box.
Butterfat Percentage: 85%
Ingredients: Certified Organic Grade A Sweet Cream, Celtic Sea Salt

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Pass
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 1st
Top Four Pie Crust Test: 2nd

This was the last of the local midwest butters and it did not disappoint! All Kalona Supernatural's milk comes from local Amish and Mennonite farms around Kalona, Iowa. We are talking 35-40 cows small. This is one of only two butters in the test that are USDA organic and the only one that specifies what type of salt they use. Celtic Sea Salt is added to this butter which I find very cool. I'm a fan of using Celtic salt in the kitchen.

The butter has a bold grassy and milky flavor that doesn't leave any waxy feeling in your mouth. It was present on the toast test and there was a distinctively sweet creamy flavor in the pie crust test. It was the second puffiest and had a lovely crumble to it.

Final Thoughts: I have nothing bad to say about this butter!

1. Trader Joe's - Cultured Salted Butter
8.8oz - $3.69 - Trader Joe's
Price per ounce - $0.41

Packaging: One foil-wrapped brick.
Butterfat Percentage: Unknown, based on the nutrition label I'm assuming 82%.
Ingredients: Cultured Butter (Pasteurized Cream, Lactic Acid Cultures), Salt

Spoon Test: Pass
Toast Test: Pass
Top Six Blind Taste Test: 2nd
Top Four Pie Crust Test: 1st

Let me start by saying, I wasn't even planning on going to Trader Joe's. It wasn't until I drove by that I had the thought "oh yeah people love Trader Joes's" because in all honestly, I'm not a huge fan of TJ's. I only go for orchids and turkey jerky but now I will be going for butter.

When looking into this butter, you can find that it is made in France, and that's it. Trader Joe's did what Trader Joe's does best. They outsourced an amazing product and smacked their name on it.

In the first tasting, I was pleasantly surprised. This butter is salty, incredibly smooth, and sweet. It was delicious to eat on toast and in the blind tasting it came in second which I did not expect.

The pie crust test had a crystal clear winner and it was this butter. Of all four, it produced incredible flakey layers that were noticeable before I even took a bite. It was crisp, light, and airy. On top of that, it had a soft sweet butter flavor that was present in each bite. The other three lacked that.

I didn't think this butter would even be a top contender. I am surprised to say it is the winner.

Final Thoughts: Beautiful sweet-salty flavors, smooth and creamy, and bakes a perfect pie crust. This is the best grocery store butter I tried.

Which butter will I buy moving forward?

In all honesty, I will probably buy Kerrygold from Costco. Not only is it good but with the amount of butter I whip though, it's convenient to buy in bulk. If I am at a normal grocery store I will buy Kalona Supernatural, no question about that. On the odd day that I make a trip across town to Trader Joe's, butter is one thing I will definitely grab.

To wrap up this butter experiment I want to leave you with two things...

The parchment paper that butter comes wrapped in is not great for storage. Air is able to seep in and over time it will absorb fridge or freezer flavor. If you are planning to freeze butter or you just take a long time to use your butter, pop your butter in a Tupperware or plastic bag to help it stay fresh longer.

Lastly, it wouldn't be a Marcella newsletter without a cat photo. Here is a picture of my childhood cat, Butter.

You may be wondering what on Earth I am going to do with the 11 pounds of butter I now have. It's going into the freezer and when the holidays come, which are right around the corner, I will use it all up for desserts!

Next up I'm diving into...English muffins!

See you next week,

Marcella