As a kid, I remember my mom had margarine for just about everything, we only had butter around when it was time for the Christmas baking. As a typical boy, I put margarine on pretty much any bread I was served. I’d put bread in the oven, cover it in margarine, and then bake the toast. We had some fairly awful loads of bread that were made tolerable by spreading margarine on it.
So, I get to college, work in restaurants, and I discover that even on a college kid budget, it always has to be butter as the price difference isn’t that substantial.
Margarine became popular when butter got a bad rap for contributing to high cholesterol. Our grandparents called it oleo. Sometime in the mid to late 90’s, studies came out that said: Hey, butter isn’t actually that bad for you, and it’s actually better for you than margarine. So consumers began buying more butter and margarine got relegated to being a non-dairy substitute.
The taste of margarine isn’t as obviously different from butter as it used to be. When I was a kid you definitely could believe it was not butter. Some of the newer blends have to be sold as ‘spreads’ and not margarine because of their contents. It is used for some dishes traditionally for it’s different flavor, and in baking the different amount of fat and lack of water in margarine make a difference in the outcome so substituting butter and margarine won’t be a one for one exchange. The smoke point of margarine is higher than butter, but clarified butter is quite high also because the milk solids are removed.
I will use it for Buffalo wing sauce (usually, but not always.) But that’s it. Why? Because it seems to stick better and incorporate/emulsify better, and because that’s what I’ve been told [and researched] is what is supposed to be used with Buffalo wings. (And the sauce does actually seem to incorporate better.)
Dairy-free margarine as a butter substitute in meat dishes when cooking for people who keep kosher, or in any dishes when cooking for vegans or other dairy abstainers.
For all other purposes, butter in small quantities isn’t significantly more expensive than margarine. And recipes that call for butter in large quantities generally require the particular flavor/texture characteristics of butter to an extent that margarine won’t satisfactorily supply.
I currently use margarine for most of my baking. I went decades without buying margarine, because margarine had unhealthy trans-fatty acids, didn’t taste as good as butter, and wasn’t hugely more expensive. But in the last year or two butter has gotten much more expensive. Nowadays, if you look you can find reasonably priced margarine that is made without trans-fatty acids and that works well in most recipes (80% vegetable oil margarine sticks, not the more spreadable 50% oil tub type). When it’s incorporated into a batter or dough and baked at a high temperature for a long time (e.g., cakes cookies, bread), it’s hard to tell the difference in taste or texture.
I still use butter exclusively when it’s not baked: on toast, in buttercream frosting, in custard, etc. Also, pie crusts made with a mixture of butter and lard has much better taste and texture than crusts made with a mixture of margarine and lard.
I haven’t eaten margarine in decades - as soon as I was in charge of my own kitchen, I switched to butter. This was in the early 1980s, before margarine got a bad rap, but my husband and I both instinctively felt that the less processed, more natural food was bound to be better, regardless of what the nutritional pundits were saying at the time. It took a little while for my tastebuds to adjust, as I had been raised on margarine and at first liked it better than butter. But now I love butter.
I now buy butter out of habit, so I have no opinion on modern margarine. The bibliophage approach seems reasonable, though.
How much you paying for butter? Where I shop, I find it at about $2.50-$3/lb, but it’s been that way for a few years now. I haven’t noticed any major price jump (as I have in other grocery items.) Now, granted, margarine at the same places is like under a buck a pound, so I understand buying it for that reason. But I haven’t noticed a huge spike in butter prices around here.
Butter burns (or at least turns dark) faster than most margarines. So if you’re using one of them as a fat in the frying pan, you may prefer one or the other for that reason.
My Mom left us a fried chicken recipe that we still use. She was a first generation Italian-American, but got the recipe from my Dad, who was from Mississppi. It uses margarine and Crisco in equal proportions to fry the flour coated chicken. We only do that about once a year, but its real good.
I don’t even buy butter ever. I only use margarine for everything. I hate hard butter but hate it more when it’s left out to soften. Margarine is always soft enough for spreading. According to the replies so far, I’m in the minority which I find surprising. I buy Becel olive oil margarine.
I always have a tub of Country Crock.You know the one. My kids grew up on it and that’s all they will eat. I like butter myself. For eating and cooking.