I’d suggest an English muffin, but use what you’ve got. Room temp is an essential starting point though.
From the Amish Minerva Dairy website:
" Using the hand butter-rolling technique employed by the Amish at the time, we were able to form rolls of butter to exact measurements. Likewise, Amish butter refers to a classification of butter that has 84%-85% butterfat (as opposed to commodity at 80% or European at 82%-83%). "
So it’s Amish style. Land O’Lakes has 82% fat content, which is pretty close, but not quite there. I don’t think I’d pay more for just that. Fat content and what the cows eat are big factors in how it tastes.
Also, Land O’Lakes has an Extra Creamy Unsalted Butter, and I think some kind of European Style butter which may be a salted version of the same thing. Never had it, positive it will cost more. I’d try it though.
In general, we don’t eat buttered bread much. Butter is for cooking and slathering on pancakes and French toast, and LOL is good enough for that.
I did a little bit of a butter deep dive too and discovered LOL Extra Creamy just now. Interested in trying it. I believe that only the LOL Extra Creamy is at 82% fat, standard LOL is 80%. I think that’s the only distinguishing feature since the milk and cow feed will be the same for all their lines.
Good to know that Minerva isn’t actually Amish butter, but just a bogus marketing term for high-fat butter. I suppose that’s a benefit, but after tasting it I think I can confirm that it’s not the higher butterfat content that makes Kerrygold and Finlandia taste better…it’s the milk.
One of my other staple butters is Organic Valley https://www.organicvalley.coop/products/butter/cultured-butter/cultured-unsalted-butter-1-lb-4-quarters/. I like this butter better than basic LOL butter but not nearly as much as I like Kerrygold. So I don’t think it’s strictly the “cultured” feature that makes all the difference either.
That appears to be correct, got my pages crossed before. I think Kerrygold must come from better fed cows. It is very good, just not enough need for it for me.
I see the LOL extra creamy is available from Stop&Shop. $5.99/lb. instead of $4.89/lb. for the regular. I want to try it too. They have Kerrygold for $8.98/lb.
I buy my Kerrygold at Costco, price ranges from $8.99-12.99 for 2 lbs. No brainer.
We buy Land O’ Lakes, the company that removed the picture of a young Indian woman painted by an Indian from their packaging, it is the best tasting butter we have found, but then I’ve never heard of the other brands mentioned.
I made it one time. It was in Sunday School and I think I was about four. The teacher brought in a jar of cream and we passed it around the circle shaking it as hard as we could. There was some sort of story to go with it, but I don’t remember that. I think she was just trying to wear out all that four year old energy.
I don’t have the room for six four-year-olds, so I’ll just keep getting the store brand at HEB.
I made butter once in kindergarten. 
I, also, plan to buy my butter.
If you get sick of toast, a grilled sandwich might be good. Grilled cheese or tuna melt, maybe.
I remember rolling a jar of cream back and forth between me and a sibling across the kitchen floor. It was ok.
Yeah, we made butter in kindergarten when we visited a local farm. I still have the class photo with me on a huge horse. I was terrified.
Got me some Kerrygold yesterday. Love it! Thanks to all who recommended it.
I don’t have the number of buying options that posters in more populated/urban centers have, but Kerrygold is generally available at Costco, along with a smattering of other well-known and house brands. Last time I made a Costco run, the Kerrygold was only a few cents more per pound than the other options - so by choosing Kerrygold, I probably spent 15 to 30 cents extra on the 5 pounds of butter I purchased, which was worth it to me.
But I was quite surprised at how close the prices were; maybe it was a fluke based on the amount of inventory they had or local demand patterns. I don’t know if they’ll be that similar next time I go.
Where I shop, Kerrygold is nearly twice as expensive as Land-o-Lakes. ($3.99/8oz vs. $4.29/lb) And i quite like Land-o-lakes. I do think Kerrygold is a little better, but not twice as good. And we go through a fair amount of butter, mostly cooking with it.
You may be right. I have seen it at costco, but never checked the price. The one I bought was at Whole Foods and it was close to $7. I bought it because I needed butter, and I thought I’d give it a try.
I wouldn’t buy it at costco because I wouldn’t use it in such a large amount. As it is, I keep my butter in the freezer because I just don’t use much of it. But when I want it for cooking or for meals, I do use butter and not margarine.
Oh, for sure - not that it matters, but I only go to Costco about 4x/year (it’s a 90 minute drive one way to get there, so a pretty big expedition), and I fill my pantry and freezer from each trip. It takes me months to go through 5 pounds of butter, so all but a stick goes straight into my giant freezer.
Try butter on a cracker with a slice of radish.
I did a butter taste test today. I toasted 3 half-bagels, spread each with butter, and called it lunch.
- Unsalted land-o-lakes. My household standard
- Unsalted Kerrygold.
- Salted cultured Trader Joes brand. (They didn’t have an unsalted version.)
Obsevations:
- Yeah, Kerrygold is a little tastier, more buttery, than LOL. But LOL is very good. I may try using both in baked goods and see how much difference it makes there.
- Salted butter is nice on toast. Most of my butter is used for cooking, and I’m not going to switch to buying salted. But it was a nice zing.
- Despite liking the salt, I didn’t really care for the TJ. It was fine. It was butter. But I liked both of the others better. I’d still like to try one of the more talked-about cultured brands, but I won’t be buying this again.
I bought some Isigny Ste Mère beurre d’isgny butter a couple of weeks ago, and just finished it up today. I just wanted to say it was fabulous. I bought the unsalted. It’s a lot more buttery than land of lakes. It was very pricy, but i may buy it again anyway.
Butter is really easy to make from cream. It’s a common kids’ class exercise, to shake a jar of cream until it turns into butter. You can make it by accident by trying to make whipped cream but over-whipping it.
Cream though, you have to get from a cow.
I always buy salted. While I sometimes bake recipes which recommend unsalted, those recipes tend to always call for salt separately. So I just reduce or eliminate that ingredient and let the salt in the butter do the job. Butter isn’t salty enough to throw off the recipe in 95% of cases so even if I forget to adjust, no harm done.
I like this approach better because salted butter as a spread is SO much better than unsalted. If I am making a recipe where unsalted butter is absolutely required I don’t mind adding it to the grocery list and buying a box of half-sticks and tossing the leftovers in the freezer for the next bake.