Ingredient Information

Butter

Fresh ingredients always have a place in great food. Use butter sparingly as a flavor enhancer and purchase the highest quality butter.

Butter is so wonderful. It is such a simple thing – fresh cream is churned, breaking up the fat globules that are normally suspended in water until the fat binds together trapping the water.

In the U.S. butter must contain at least 80% butter fat with the remainder made up of water and milk solids. The quality of butter is rated by the USDA based on flavor, aroma, quality of cream, texture and then given a “Grade Shield” – either AA, A or B. Quality butters start with the best cream and you should look for only Grade AA butter.

It used to be that there were only a few choices. Familiar butter like the venerable Land o’ Lakes is certainly very good quality
and is very consistent. There are, however, now a wide variety for you to choose from. In a lot of specialty markets (and even your grocery store) local dairies have carved out a niche for themselves supplying high quality butters. These are European style butters and have a higher percentage of butterfat — at least 82% but they can be as high as 86% – 88%. This, combined with specialty cultures and churning methods, produces a smooth creamy, rich product.

All of the recipes on the website call for unsalted butter (if not, it’s a typo: use unsalted butter). The amount of sodium in salted butter is minimal (a tablespoon has all of 115 mg of sodium). There is, however, a variation in the amount of salt added by different dairies, so using unsalted butter lends reliability to your recipes. This is especially true in baking where it is important to control the amount of salt, since subtle changes in ingredients can make a major difference in the final product.

Don’t be afraid of butter. Like a lot of ingredients it’s overused and if you keep the balance with the other ingredients in your
recipes, it’ll be just great.

1 tsp. unsalted butter = 36 calories, 4g fat, 2.5g sat fat, 1g mono fat, 0g protein, 0g carbohydrates, 0mg sodium, 11mg cholesterol