Bill on Butter
Nov 20, 2007 cooking, general food
Today my Dad sent me an email about Kerrygold butter and asking if “I think there’s a difference with Irish butter?” and if there’s “anything like it here in the good ol’ USA?”
The short answer to both is yes.
The long answer is that butter, just like anything, is going to taste different based upon what the animal eats or the type of cow the milk came from. Furthermore, European butter generally has a higher fat content than American butter, and that coupled with a lower moisture content are the main reasons for using one over the other — especially where baking is concerned.
U.S. law states that anything labeled “Butter” must contain at least 80% butterfat by weight. As a result American style butter tends to be around 80% butterfat where as the European-Style butters can be as high as 85% or more.
Treading the middle ground, I personally buy Plugra. It is a butter which is made in the European style but is physically being manufactured in America by Keller’s Creamery. I was exposed to it as a cook as a higher quality butter, and I didn’t know this until today, but they state it is 82% butterfat.
Some of you I’m sure know this already, so the real reason for my post is that I’ve only ever bought Plugra in the one pound red wax packaging and have always wondered what the difference was between it and the Plugra in the half pound foil wrapped packages.
Only the packaging as I found out.
“Plugra is available in Trader Joe’s and some other stores in the red wax paper. The red wax paper is our food service packaging that TJ’s prefers. Because of volume that restaurants use, butter does not stay in the cooler long enough to absorb significant odors so the wax paper does not pose a problem. However, odors in a consumer’s refrigerator can get into any butter.
“Keller’s European Style is the exact same product as Plugra. We changed the name to be more “consumer friendly” after we heard a fair amount of negative acceptance about the name. But in the meantime, we confused those that were familiar with the brand.”
Butter incidentally freezes very well, so when next you’re looking to buy, try some Plugra if you’ve never had it. Remember to look for it in the red food service packaging as it retails for about the exact same price as the half pound foil wrapped product, and freeze what you don’t use.
Tags: Butter-Rules, European-Style-Butter, margarine-sucks, plugra
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December 1st, 2007 at 7:22 pm
[...] think the key here was Plugra butter. I got the tip from STL Bites. Quality butter does matter. Here’s the [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I am partial to Echire. It’s from Frenchyland and SUPER good. I ate some pile high on fresh toast from 222. You could have told me George Bush was going to be in office for another 4 years and I wouldn’t have cared…it was that good…plus I was in my jammies and all snuggly with a cup of tea watching Project Runway reruns. Heaven.