"plugra" news and stories

Your supermarket shelf stocks more than plain old salted and unsalted bars of butter. Here, a few of our favorite choices.

While I have experimented with different butters in baking, I'm not sure that I'd want to participate in a butter taste test - particularly not when one of the tastings involves eating butters plain to "experience their melting properties directly on the tongue." That being said, I do appreciate the efforts of the tasters from Cooks Illustrated who participated in a premium butter tasting, eating butter both plain and on baguettes to try to pick out the top butter.

The butters tested all had butterfat contents of at least 82%, higher than the standard 80%, with the exception of Land O'Lakes, which was included as a benchmark. Every single butter tested - seven unsalted and six salted - were recommended including the non-premium benchmark butter, so it sounds like you can't go wrong by choosing a name-brand butter or a butter that is "european-style." The butters were ultimately ranked by preference, but not one was a loser:

Unsalted:

• Land O'Lakes Ultra Creamy butter
• Presidente Unsalted butter
• Celles Sur Belle Premium Churn
• Land O'Lakes Unsalted Sweet butter (benchmark)
• Organic Valley European-style butter
• Plugra European-style butter
• Jana Valley Imported Sweet Cream Butter

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Butter is usually sold either in large blocks, as Plugra often is, or in sticks that measure 1/2 cup each. It seems that people must not be using quite as much butter as they used to because Land O'Lakes has just released Half Sticks Butter. Each stick of butter is only 1/4 cup and the company is promoting the fact that you will not have to cut or store the sticks when using butter in recipes. Clearly, Land O'Lakes is assuming that everyone uses at least 1/4 cup of butter at a time. To help people get used to the new measurement, they have even provided a collection of recipes that specifically use the new butter size. Each package has four half sticks and is about $2.00 at supermarkets.

Interestingly, this idea was mentioned at the halfbakery - a website dedicated to new and sometimes off-the-wall ideas - a year ago.

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"European style" is a descriptor applied to butter more and more often these days. One of the most popular brands, Plugra, is appearing in more and more grocery stores alongside the regular butter, rather than being confined to the specialty stores it originally appeared in. The difference between the European-style butters and standard butters is the butterfat content. Regular butter has 80% butterfat and 20% water, while butters like Plugra have about 2.5-3% more butterfat. This gives them a slightly creamier, richer taste. In a direct comparison, the flavor difference is noticeable on toast, which is the most convenient way to taste-test butter without taking a bite out of the stick.

But is the difference noticeable when cooking or baking? For cooking, unless you are making a particularly buttery dish, I have to say that I could not tell the difference. Baking is another matter. A taste test between two batches of chocolate chip cookies (made with the same recipe) using both normal and European-style butters revealed that the European-style, higher butterfat cookies had a more buttery taste. The cookies were slightly more delicious than the ones made with standard butter because of the enhanced butter flavor. Especially considering that the prices for the two types of butter are much close than they were 5 years ago, it is definitely worth using Plugra or another European-style butter over the standard butters.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]