What about us folks who LIKE hard butter??
Ohhhhh, baby!
Now we’re talkin.
Blocks in the fridge, bulk (Amish or similar) butter in the French Butter Keeper (Bell).
We use a lot of butter. I bake bread once a week, and we use it for cooking.
America’s focus on Kerrygold “irish” butter does kind of make me giggle. While I’m not dissing it, the style of butter (cultured) is also known as “European butter”. Trader Joe’s carries a cultured butter from Brittany, France that is delicous and affordable, albiet the salted version is a bit too salted for some dishes. We can also get Lurpak and Plugra, usually from fancy stores or deli departments. Organic Valley and several smaller creameries are now making cultured butters. None are exactly the same as another brand but all are delicious.
We keep a stick of it on the table in a butter-bell-like dish (shaped for a stick of butter, not round like the actual bell). The water in the bottom seems to help it last better.
If we didn’t have air conditioning in the summer, that might not be sufficient, but it works well enough and makes the butter much easier to deal with.
am I the only peasant that uses the stuff in the tubs? and we never use real butter unless a recipe calls for it …
my question is : is there a difference between sticks and tubs? ive seen some sticks say " use for cooking and baking only "
Nice! Thanks for the tip! I do have a Trader Joe’s by me but I usually avoid it because there are never parking spots even far away. I only think Kerrygold is marginally better than typical commodity butter, but its one of the only common alternatives. I can’t wait to try the Trader Joe’s kind… Forgive me arteries.
I believe the “cooking and baking only” thing would be for unsalted butter and/or something like a serving suggestion.
Basically its the ingredients, If it’s pretty much “Cream, Salt” on the ingredients, its butter. If there are any other oils or what have you in it, it’s not. I used to get the stuff in the tubs, which is more akin to margarine with a small amount of butter to cover up the vegetable oil taste in it. Its supposed to be healthier, but not by much considering how much you have to use to get even close to the flavor profile of butter. Can’t brown things or sweat vegetables as well either, though olive oil comes close (I think they have tub kinds with that in it).
All I know is it’s better than the Great Value crap at WalMart, and Kerrygold has done an admirable job of making their product available for purchase. I couldn’t care less if it was Irish, Welsh, French, or Hungarian–point is, it’s different and yummy. I’m pretty sure only a handful of folks are under the impression it’s special because it’s churned by leprechauns.
Would it have stayed in GD if it were about which way the toilet paper should hang?
I keep my butter in the fridge. I use it to make eggs and butter the accompanying bread. I just slice it thin and it melts on the toasted bread fine by the time the eggs are done. I don’t eat untoasted bread since we keep the bread in the freezer and have to toast it to defrost it anyway.
Hey, speaking of butter . . .what’s the deal with the little plastic/foil restaurant supplied butter packets?
I’ve taken them home with my leftover bread, and the butter behaves differently in the frying pan.
Well, I’ll be the way outlyer here, I put my butter in a butter dish, and I’ll leave it out for months. I’ve never had it go bad and I’ve never gotten sick. It stays covered, but there are times I will not use it for quite a while. The rest of my butter stays in the fridge til I am finished with one stick.
Does anyone else put the unused sticks in the freezer?
My wife will only eat Land O’Lakes butter, so I buy a lot when it goes on sale, often BOGO, and put some in the freezer if it looks like we won’t consume it all by the expiration dates. I let it thaw out in the fridge, and it seems just fine.
Did I marry **Orwell **and not realize it?? I stock up on LO’L which is the only butter I will use or bake with, and freeze it till I need it.
Well, that would be one quirk I’d be used to. I tried buying Sam’s Club butter - you get three pounds in a package for a good price - but my wife swears it doesn’t taste as good. I can’t tell much difference.
Hah! I’ve noticed that too. I think its because of a preservative or something that keeps it soft.
I grew up in a non-air conditioned house in Texas in the 1950s where EVERYTHING went stale or rancid if you left it out (f the heat didn’t get you, the humidity would.) Hell, I kept peanut butter in the refrigerator until just a couple of years ago, when my family promised me they could eat an entire jar before it would go bad.
In the fridge, because butter, like cream or any Milk fat based substance, tastes so much better when cold or hot. Room temp is boring and disappointing.
I miss my Lurpak, that I used to get at Metro. The only thing I have now is whatever brand Costco sells. 