Jan 16 2010
The big butter blowout: a taste test
Today’s fun and games involved Malcolm dishing up tasty slices of 6 different brands of butter atop oatcakes to answer that timeless question: Is it worth paying more for a better butter?
Since we’re such butter junkies — I’d guess we go through something like a pack a week — we thought finding this out would be be both fun and illuminating. In our case, is it worth dishing out the extra money for Lurpak and President over the cheaper ones? A blind taste test is the only way to find out.
Handily, it’s also a good excuse to eat lots of butter.
Butter taste test ready to go
Ode to butter
One of the great joys of Britain for me is their butter. Oh how I love it so. Having grown up on margarine (because we all thought it was healthy didn’t we?), I was a latecomer to the Way of Butter, but when I moved here I stumbled across all the different European butters right in the grocery store aisle. The love affair began, and to this day our guests at our table marvel at the thick slices of butter we cut as if it’s cheese.
I say, you’re missing out if you carefully cut only the stingiest bit of butter for your bread or porridge or crumpet or scone. And God help you if you’re still using margarine. Get thee to a creamery!
In any case, I highly recommend holding your own Butter Blowout. Here’s what you need to do:
Holding your own Butter Blowout
Stock up on your usual favourites and add the most high-end and cheapest butters.
The six brands
In our case, I usually beg to have Lurpak, which is Danish or President, which is French. We actually have a local butter, Walliwall, which I initially loved but had recently and didn’t like the flavour of. It’s unpasteurised, so perhaps I left it out too long. So we bought all those, plus Kerrygold (Irish), which I remember liking and Malcolm scoffed at, and Tesco’s generic. We threw in goat’s butter, which I’ve never had before, at the last minute for fun.
Malcolm did the preparing and lucky me, I did the tasting.
Yikes, too much salt
What amazed me straightaway was how salty most of the butters were. Three of them I pretty much dismissed because all I could taste was salt. My top 3 were noticeable in taste and my very favourite really stood out as by far the best.
My guesses
Malcolm had me try to guess which one was which brand. Here were my guesses of which brand alongside my rankings:
#6 (last place): Tesco Salted
#5: Kerrygold
#4: Lurpak
#3: Goats butter
#2: President
#1: Walliwall
Walliwall has a different texture — more like crumbly cheese — so it’s hard to disguise. It has a marvelous creamy, slightly sweet flavour with a richness I associate with Orkney Ice Cream. Yum. As I mentioned before, it’s unpasteurised and I think that might be partly why it tastes so delicious — you aren’t killing off the flavour through overheating.
But I got the butter brands wrong otherwise.
The actual butter rankings
Here’s what they actually were:
#6: Lurpak. Doh! All this time I thought it was my favourite, but it was just SO salty. Next time we’ll try unsalted.
#5 Tesco’s. Yep, it’s crap, as suspected.
#4 Kerrygold. OK, but still too salty.
#3 President. Yummy, but with a smell I didn’t like and not as good as…
#2 Goat’s butter. Delish.
#1 Walliwall. Superstar. Anyone with access to it simply must try it.
So that was fun. Walliwall is the hands-down winner and it’s local!
Next time…
We’re going to do it again but with less salty underpinnings, like water crackers instead of oatcakes. We’re also going to be a bit more aware of how much salt we’re eating since at the end of the session, I had a sore throat and 30 minutes on, I’m still feeling it. So we’re going to get the unsalted butters next time.
Let the buttery times roll…
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Yum, yum, yum! Local Orkney butter, wow, sounds fantastic. And a butter taste test, what a great idea. Get *me* to a creamery!
Rachel, you are a girl after my own heart
But then we already knew that!! I love the Walliwall. Frances introduced me to it when they first started, and if I’m quick I can get it from Arogo’s. I confess I’ve not tried the goat’s butter because I was put off goat dairy products as a child: we had goats and we got goat-everything. I’m up for giving it a go though. Where did you get it from? Hope to get out to see you soon. Miss you both loads.
We’re big fans of the Delamere Dairy butter in your photo (produced just up the road from us), a butter taste test sounds like the perfect night in for me!
SO funny that the two top ones were good choices!
I remember liking goats butter and unpastuized sounds great.
As a vegan we stick to pure (sunflower) or vitalite but if you have to have animal products I think its better to pay for local and natural reared products.
Butter may seem luxurious (ok…maybe not the tesco value
) but it can still come from factory farmed, unhealthy, animals who pass this all through the milk to you.
Let me know if you taste test anything vegan..I’ll be first in line
I’ll definitely look out for a vegan butter alternative at our local alternative food shop, Shearer’s (Sam, that’s where the goat’s butter is from) since that would be fun. People always think we’re vegan anyway!
Wow, I like your style!
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I am a big butter fan too, if you’re going to eat butter, you need to eat the real stuff, not some manufactured vegetable product (understood that vegans don’t have that choice).
Here in France we usually buy butter (and cream) from our local cheese producer, which is always yummy.
I think if you are going to do another test, you need to choose all unsalted versions to make it fair.
There is also the sea salt butters, which are even more naughty! I usually have these on bread with honey, to give that bitter sweet yumminess
xx
Hi
I only ever use unsalted butter these days – you’re right that most of them are far too salty – better to have a jar of salt flakes to hand – or even try smoked salt if the food you are eating warrants it! Also nicer to knock up a batch of cokkies or cakes etc using unsalted – and pan frying with unsalted gives a better taste! Now following you on twitter!
Laura Kidd, you have to remember that butter is also manufactured, My husband once worked (briefly, he had to leave after seeing how it was really done) on a dairy with processing plant and butter doesn’t come straight from the udder you know
Also please remember that a normal “commercial” butter will have gone (as milk) through pipes where highly corrosive chemicals are pumped (and often not cleaned properly) for “hygiene”. Again,,,this is a first hand experience not a vegan perspective.
But while we are on the subject I think pressed oil is still more palatable than another animals lactation (and the yummy things like mastitis and infect that come with it).
Ok, totally not a dairy anti/for post I know, but I thought I’d set the record straight.
Hey, reading this article again, I wonder what time of year it was that you had and didn’t like the local butter. Cows eat different stuff in summer and winter and their butter/milk can taste different in different seasons. Sometimes you can almost taste the grass in the summer butter. I don’t mind it, but I remember overhearing someone complaining (to the farmer! the nerve!) about it at our farmer’s market. Just a thought. Mmmm, butter!