As American chef, restauranteur, and cookbook author Alice Waters once said, “everything tastes better with butter.” I’m sure classically trained French chefs would agree.
A staple ingredient in every home cook’s kitchen, butter’s been around for thousands of years. Neolithic humans, especially in the colder north, figured out how to make butter as one of the many ways to preserve milk.
Nearly every household in colonial America churned its own butter until the Industrial Revolution brought people to the cities and the production of food became the task of specialized farms and processing plants.
These days, very few of us grow our own gardens, raise our own cows, and churn our own butter. Considering how easy it is to get out of touch with the ingredients we eat, it’s more important than ever to learn about what they are — and how to select them.
We’ve put together this guide to butter to help you achieve exactly that.
What Is Butter?
Butter is an ingredient we are all familiar with, but do we really know what it’s made of?
Butter is a cooking fat of dairy origin made up of roughly 80% butterfat, 15% water, and 5% milk solids. It’s solid in the fridge, semi-solid at room temperature, and melts when heated.
If the butter is heated to its melting point and the butterfat is separated from the milk solids in it, the golden oil that results is called clarified butter (also known as ghee).
How Butter Is Made
Butter is made from milk. The milk is collected from dairy farms, trucked to the processing plant, and then inspected for quality. If it meets the quality requirements, it’s used in the next stage of production.
The milk is passed through a centrifuge that separates it into cream and skim milk. The cream is used for butter. Skim milk is pasteurized. To make semi-skim and whole milk, some of the cream is added back to the liquid.
The cream is also pasteurized by being heated to a controlled temperature for a controlled amount of time, which eliminates the bacteria naturally present in raw milk. It’s then treated with cultures and allowed to ferment, which, like yogurt, develops the cream’s flavor.
Once the cream has matured, it is churned. Traditionally, dairy farmers did this by agitating the cream in a wooden barrel with a wooden churn dasher. Nowadays, this is done in large, automated butter churns that hold tens to hundreds of gallons of cream at a time.
According to the website of Anco Equipment, a producer of stainless-steel tanks for dairy farms, 1 gallon of milk yields roughly 4 pounds of butter. The butter is taken out and blended for smoothness before being packaged and sold.
Types of Butter
Most butter comes from cow’s milk. However, butter can be churned from the milk of any dairy-giving animal, including goats, sheep, buffalo, and, in rare cases, yaks.
There’s also sour-cream butter, which has a distinct tang akin to yogurt. Sour-cream butter, although flavorful, can be hard to find in most supermarkets; it’s typically sold at farmer’s markets and in specialized dairy shops.
Butter can be salted or unsalted. Salted butter has 1 to 1.5% added salt, which is equivalent to 100 to 150 milligrams of sodium per serving (1 tablespoon / 14 grams). Unsalted butter, in line with its name, has no added salt.
Butter can also be plain or flavored (also called “compound” butter). Flavored butter has add-ins, both savory and sweet, including bacon, berries, garlic, ham, and fresh herbs. Plain butter is usually used for cooking, while flavored butter is used in sandwiches or melted over cooked foods, as the add-ins it contains may burn more easily.
Choosing the Best Butter
The best butter has the shortest ingredients list. When you’re picking out your butter in the supermarket, read the label and look for just two ingredients: (pasteurized) cream and (bacterial) cultures.
(If you’re buying salted butter, the third acceptable ingredient is, of course, salt.)
Don’t fall for “natural” or “all natural” claims. This term has no real meaning when it comes to butter’s origin and quality; it’s a marketing gimmick more than anything else.
Avoid butters with colorants, flavorants, and preservatives. These ingredients have no place in high-quality butter. Flavored butter is a boon, but plain, unsalted butter is the most versatile — you can always add salt or add-ins to it later.
Organic butter is made from the milk of cows raised and fed on organic, pesticide-free pastures. Since pesticides can seep into the foods we eat, we think organic butter is worth the splurge.
Grass-fed butter comes from cows fed primarily grass. Compared to butter from cows fed grains, grass-fed butter is said to be more nutritious and potentially healthier.
When it comes to quantity, there’s a trade-off to make: Smaller sticks of butter cost less to buy once, but larger sticks are cheaper to stock up on. By buying wholesale or in bulk, you can typically get more value for your money.
Storing Butter
Store your butter in the fridge for the longest shelf life. Keep unopened butter in its original packaging. Wrap opened sticks of butter tightly with plastic wrap, or seal them in airtight food storage containers.
Not everyone knows that butter can also be kept at room temperature for a certain amount of time. This is best done in a butter keeper in a cool area on your kitchen counter, away from the cooktop and dishwasher.
The key to storing butter, whether in the refrigerator or kitchen countertop, is to keep it cool and in its own container. Otherwise, the butter may pick up off odors from other foods in your fridge or turn into an appetizing target for flies, which can cross-contaminate it with bacteria.
Butter’s Shelf Life
If stored correctly, butter can last up to a week at room temperature, one to three months in the fridge, and up to a year in the fridge.
Since freezing foods at 0 °F (-18 °C) makes them indefinitely safe to eat, frozen butter will stay safe to eat beyond the one-year mark, though it will start to lose its richness of aroma and flavor.
Don’t eat or cook with butter if it looks moldy, smells off, or tastes foul. As there’s no way to tell if the butter is safe to eat, the gamble with your health is simply not worth it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you sear a steak in butter?
Don’t try to sear steak in butter. The butter will burn in the hot skillet, and your steak will be ruined. Instead, use cooking oil or clarified butter. If the recipe calls for butter, remove the skillet from the burner at the end of the sear, then allow the butter to melt in the residual heat and spoon it over the steak, basting it.
What butter goes on steak?
Plain, unsalted butter goes perfectly well on steak, especially if the steak has been seasoned well. Still, if you want to take it to another level, try melting herb butter or garlic butter.
Do you cook burgers in butter or oil?
Cook your burgers in oil, not butter. Butter burns at 300 °F (150 °C), at which point it blackens and turns acrid quickly. The only exception is clarified butter, or ghee, which can withstand temperatures as high as 450 °F (230 °C).
Can you use butter in cast iron?
Yes, you can use butter in cast iron pans and pots, just like you can any other animal fat or cooking oil.
How do you use butter in cast iron?
Cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens hold a lot of heat. If you’re cooking with butter, don’t crank up the burner too high to avoid burning it. If the butter becomes too dark, add other ingredients or lift the pan from the burner to cool it down.
Will butter burn in the oven?
The answer depends on how hot you’re setting your oven. Because butter burns at 300 °F (150 °C), butter can burn in the oven if you crank it up too high. If you’ve incorporated the butter as an ingredient into your baked goods, however, it probably won’t burn, as their internal temperature won’t go as high up.
Can you substitute unsalted butter for salted butter?
Why, yes, you absolutely and positively can! You can substitute unsalted butter for salted butter if you don’t happen to have any in your fridge. Bring the butter to room temperature, then work in ¼ teaspoon salt per every ½ cup.
Does butter go bad?
Like all perishable ingredients, butter eventually goes bad. If you kept your butter for longer than the recommended time or suspect that your butter has gone bad, don’t eat it. Old butter can go rancid and make you sick.
Does garlic butter go bad?
Garlic butter shouldn’t be left to sit out at room temperature for more than two hours, and will only last for four days to a week in the fridge. Improperly stored, garlic butter can cause life-threatening botulism.
Can butter be substituted for margarine?
The short answer is yes. Butter can be substituted for margarine in a substitution ratio of 1:1 in your recipe. Simply use as much butter as the amount of margarine that the recipe calls for.