Casual Conversation @lemm.ee jet @hackertalks.com 3w ago

What should be in butter?

I looked at my butter today, the ingredients are:

butter oil
milk powder

What the hell is butter oil? I tried googling it, but I get VERY contradictory results, nothing from a reputable source I could find.

27 comments

Checking the ones that I usually buy the ingredients are:

Butter

Or, if I go for salted versions:

Butter

Salt
Thats not Butter
I think it's illegal, at least in Europe, to call something butter when its not.
- You're right and i love it. Customers shouldn't be taken for absolute numbnuts.
Butter oil is, in my understanding, the fats from butter after everything else has been removed. In that sense it's not unlike clarified butter, but probably made with a centrifuge rather than heat. Adding milk powder (and presumably some water) sounds like basically adding back in what got removed to make the butter oil. I would hazard a guess that this is done because both butter oil and milk powder separately have far longer shelf lives than butter does

So I think that it's basically the same components as regular butter, they've just been separated out and then recombined. I have no idea if this does anything to the flavour
- Might also be to get a consistent product , fat percentages probably vary, by taking it apart and putting always the same amounts together again they can always make it taste the same. I believe they do the same with orange juice
Just start making your own. It's actually really really easy.

Required equipment:
Big mixing bowl
Electric mixer

Required ingredients:
Extra thick double cream/whipping cream

Optional ingredients:
Salt
Garlic
Wild garlic
Insert herb here

Process:

place cream in bowl.

whip until it separates, folding the chunks back in and stop when there's only butter and

decant newly made buttermilk.

wash butter to remove buttermilk by filling bowl part way with cold water and just squeezing the butter. Switch water and wash until no visible milkyness comes out of the butter.

add extras by folding or blending it through the butter.

store any butter you're not likely to use within a few days in the freezer, I like to portion it out into 100g bits, so I know I won't be wasting any of it.

There, now you'll never have to wonder what your butter is made from again!
- Salt is not an optional ingredient.
  
  Unsalted butter is a crime against cuisine.
  
  Thank you for self-reporting, criminal. Please stand by, the butter police will arrive shortly.
  
  I would like to say that while this is clearly made in jest, unsalted butter is a requirement for some really great recipes, and also some people are on say a low sodium diet. I put it as optional, because I'm a mature person and don't yuck other people's yum.
  
  Salted butter is a condiment.
  
  Unsalted butter is an ingredient.
  
  Do you eat butter straight? When you cook with butter you can add salt as needed, it's much harder to remove salt that's already there.
  
  Unsalted butter should be used when cooking specifically because you can control the salt level yourself directly by... Adding salt. It's easy to add salt, but very difficult to rebalance a dish when something is too salty.
  
  Salted butter should be used when you're adding it to something that's already done, like when buttering toast.
- Or as some people want to do, whipping cream, sugar and whip. Then get distracted and come back to sweet butter and buttermilk.
  
  One way to get there
Does your butter say just "butter" on the label, or something like "butter product?" Check the fine print, because that's not butter
That's not butter then.

Butter should include 100% butter, full stop.

Butter oil sounds like clarified butter that's been thickened up with milk powder or something?
Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, MSG, Butylated Hydroxyanisole, Propyl Gallate, Diacetyl, High-Fructose Corn Syrup (obv.), Tartrazine, Monosodium Glutamate, Salt, and traces of butter solids. Mmmmmm. Tasty.
Oil. From butter. Duh. /s

p.s. You're gonna love it when you find out how much cacao is in "white chocolate".
Butter should only contain milk fats from cream, plus the emulsified milk sugars, etc. that give it its colours and flavours.

Anything else is adulterated and probably tastes like crap.
Upon further inspection:

Ingredients :

Butter Oil 80.5%

Milk powder 2%

Salt: 1.5%

Contains milkd powder and may contain soy products.
- 16% other.
  
  That's a really excellent point. I suppose the other includes the soy products
Honestly I can’t believe it’s not butter

27 comments