I love Kerrygold butter on any type of bread or pancakes, basically anything you put butter on.
But for cooking, I use the inexpensive store brand, I’ve always thought that Kerrygold might be too rich for most recipes. Kinda like using super premium ice cream for a milkshake.
Am I incredibly stupid? At this stage in my life, money for butter definitely isn’t a factor.
I usually do what you do. If it’s a very butter-forward dish, or a sauce, I’ll often use the good butter for that (whether Kerrygold, Finlandia [my usual choice – also grass fed like Kerrygold], Plugra, or some boutique cultured butter). But there’s no reason not to use it in your cooking if you’d like. I’m just a cheapskate and save it for butter-forward applications. If I used much butter in my baking, I probably would also use the nicer stuff for that.
I’m the same way with my olive oils – there’s some I use mostly for finishing or enjoying on its own; some I use mostly for cooking.
I use Kerrygold for anything done on the stovetop like sautés and sauces. For baking, I’ll use something cheaper if I’ve got it on hand, but I’ll use Kerrygold if the alternative is a special trip to the store.
This pretty much summarizes what I was going to post as well.
I use what I have on hand, but for the last decade I have been gravitating towards pricier, fancier butters, imported or domestic. I get the cheaper stuff if I’m picking some up at the corner market because I’m running low and don’t feel like making a longer trip - it’s perfectly fine. I get the imported or fancy local grass-fed stuff if I’m going to a specialty market or large grocery store - it is better. Just not enough for me to get all that worked up about making a special trip for it. When it comes to smaller items like butter I’m pretty price insensitive in general.
I picked up some imported Italian unsalted buffalo butter a couple of weeks back. I actually wasn’t particularly impressed. It’s fine, but I think I prefer cow.
Luckily, In Australia the unsalted butter rated best in taste by Choice is also the cheapest. It is Aldi’s Beautifully Butterfully Butter Unsalted which is made from all Australian ingredients and is half the price, or less, of the quality imported butters. It is all that I use.
We use it if the butter matters, as seems to the be consensus here. If it’s an incidental part of something then it seems like a waste.
I do something similar. I keep Kerrygold on hand in a butter bell/dish at room temp for spreading on bread and general eating. It’s good stuff. But then I keep some high-end organic sticks of unsalted butter in the fridge or freezer for cooking. I don’t really do it to save money, the organic sticks I buy are close in price to the Irish stuff, but I find the sticks easier to cut to measure. I also like to use unsalted in baking and salted as a spread, so having both types is convenient.
I’m not a zealot about organic stuff, so I’ll buy the cheap store brand stuff if it’s a really good BOGO sale or something and I can stock up, but most of the time I’m not super budget conscious so I get what I like.
Until a few years ago, I didn’t keep butter around. I don’t bake and I don’t butter bread, pancakes, corn, anything. I bought some Kerrygold for some reason and do use it a lot more than I used to. So while I do keep KG onhand now, it’s still not used often. I doubt I go through two pounds a year to fry leftover boiled potatoes or the odd egg here and there.
i have the kerrygold salted and unsalted. i use them for pretty much everything. as omniscient mentioned sticks are easier for measuring, i do the same; keep sticks of butter around for when one needs to be exact.
I used to buy imported Kerrygold all the time in Moscow, but don’t think I’ve seen it in Canada. It’s lovely stuff.
I’ve never used Kerrygold, but I have given up margarine, that’s for sure. Butter is much better tasting, and also less bad for you.
Does anyone here use ghee? That’s Indian butter, which has had the solids removed and can be stored without refrigeration, at least until the jar is opened. I haven’t tried that either.
This seems silly to me. Unless your eating a pound of butter a day the money is, as you say, immaterial. Stocking two kinds seems like more trouble than benefit.
IMO/IME, store brand butter is 50% added water. We’ve discussed this here before, and we can’t exactly find the FDA regs on the allowable water content of butter. But it seems clear to a consensus of our cooks that cheapo butter is cheap mostly because of the greater water. Whether it’s literally added, or the milk has been partly de-creamed before churning hardly matters. The end result is butter that yields little fat or flavor but lots of steam.
ISTM if you want butter in a recipe you want it for the buttery flavor & the fat content. Not because it’s a sneaky way to add an extra teaspoon or two of water.
I have a jar of ghee (and I usually have one around.) It’s a form of clarified butter, but it’s cooked a little bit more so has this distinct nutty taste to it. I use it mostly for Indian dishes where I want that flavor. And I store it at room temp even after opening (Googling shows that it can last up to six months after opening at room temp and a year in the fridge.)
Huh. I never knew you bought ghee. I’d only ever encountered it on cooking videos, and they always seemed to show someone making it by clarifying and straining their own butter.
Unfortunately, I can’t have dairy, so I wind up using non-dairy margarines. The best I’ve found that cheap and tastes good is Country Crock. While most other margarines seem to include dairy unless you get the “lite” version, the regular version of CC seems is non-dairy, and has a lot more flavor.
I do miss real butter sometimes, though.
FDA regs are that the minimum fat in butter is 80% and higher quality, European style butters are generally around the 84% mark so there’s a small difference in the water content.
Good to know. Which makes me wonder what, other than the flavor from culturing, is the driving difference between the two.
OTOH, turning the percentages on its head, Good butters are 16% water & other stuff whereas the cheapest of the cheap is 20% water & stuff. So 25% more water & stuff in the cheapest than the good stuff. That might be noticeable.
Costco’s in the Seattle area have several brands of big plastic jars of ghee.
Kerrygold never really impressed me.
For the US, I like the Costco organic butter. If you can find it, the big giant rounds of Amish butter is pretty awesome.
Kerrygold is 82% butterfat, so just 2% more than standard American butter, but it seems to make enough of a difference. The milk is from grass-fed cows, so there is a taste difference there, too, I think. It’s noticeably yellower than bog standard American butter (but I believe you can elicit a more yellow color from what you feed the cows or add to their feed.) There is definitely a different taste to it that I think is from the diet of the cows and the slightly higher butterfat.
That said, I really like the cultured butters, but those are definitely different tasting as they are made from cultured milk, so there is a tang from the bacteria and a bit of cheesiness to those kinds. Kerrygold is not cultured, though, but some of the boutique butters and imported European ones are made with cultured butter. That clearly tastes different, and it might not be a taste everyone likes, but good God do I love cultured butter. And you can make it yourself, too, if you culture some heavy cream and then use it to make butter. I do that from time to time when I’m bored and in the mood for some tasty butter, but it’d be even better if I could get access to better cream.
Strongly disagree on this one. I used to be a regular buyer of Amish butter logs and while it’s better than the mass market/store brands it’s not up to the quality and flavor of Kerrygold. I suspect there’s variation between different Amish brands, and in some cases they might be suffering from the same problem as Land O Lakes w.r.t. cattle feed, but in my experience Kerrygold blows even those away if they are sold in the grocery store. Perhaps you can get higher quality Amish butter in farmers markets or similar, but he stuff that lands in the megamart isn’t special.