CAIRA: From the New York Times, you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CHRISTINE: Hey, everyone. It’s The Wirecutter Show. I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times.
CHRISTINE: Each week we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better.
CAIRA: This episode of The The Wirecutter Show is called: “Let’s Go To Butter School.”
[SOUND EFFECT] Knife scrape on bread
ROSIE: Christine, Caira, I just today learned that you are not in fact the same person. That you have at least one big difference between you. It’s epic.
CHRISTINE: No.
CAIRA: Never.
CHRISTINE: No, never. We’re totally aligned on everything.
CAIRA: The same twins.
ROSIE: I know for a fact that I’m right about this. Two strong stances on a type of food.
CAIRA: Which is?
ROSIE: Christine is a butter fiend.
CHRISTINE: Oh, I love butter.
ROSIE: And Caira, you don’t even eat butter.
CAIRA: Yuck.
CHRISTINE: Oh, I don’t understand this Caira. This is weird.
CAIRA: I’m sorry. I am.
ROSIE: Powder keg. This is a powder keg.
CHRISTINE: No, I shouldn’t say that. It’s not weird. I just mean I…
CAIRA: It’s a shame.
CHRISTINE: I want to know why. Why don’t you eat butter?
CAIRA: It’s a dietary thing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t by choice.
ROSIE: Yeah, before you neg her.
CAIRA: Yeah. How dare you, Christine?
CHRISTINE: I’m so sorry.
CAIRA: No, I’m kidding. It’s lame. I’m not even going to lie. It sucks to not be able to eat butter, especially when you go out to eat because it’s on everything.
CHRISTINE: Right. My family loves butter. That’s why I was so excited to see one of our newest food reviews, a taste test we just did at work, butter. We did salted and unsalted butter.
CAIRA: Tasting butter.
CHRISTINE: Tasting butter, Caira. I’m sure you were sad to miss that day. But our kitchen team tried 17 butters that are widely available all over the country, and they figured out which ones are the best for spreading on bread, which ones are the best for cooking with and baking with. And that’s perfect timing because we’re just about to Thanksgiving and it’s time to bake some pies for a lot of people. And I’m personally really looking forward to my favorite Thanksgiving dish, which is buttermilk biscuits slathered in butter.
CAIRA: Okay. But do you really need different butters for eating, baking, cooking? That just seems like a little much.
CHRISTINE: Oh, come on, Caira. Don’t be a butter hater.
CAIRA: I attempt to bake, but mainly I cook and I do use alternative butters like vegan butters. I like Earth Balance. To me, it kind of does seem like old-school margarine. I don’t really understand the difference, but it’s fine. We’re going to talk a little bit about that today. But really the star of the show is traditional butter. Right?
CHRISTINE: Yeah, traditional butter. But we did actually at the same time that we published this regular butter guide, we also did a vegan butter guide. So we do have some vegan recommendations.
CAIRA: Not as good as the good stuff.
ROSIE: Honestly, even if you’re not on team butter, you have to admit butter does make everything taste and look better. So I want to know, what are we doing today? Who are we talking to?
CAIRA: So today we’re bringing on Lesley Stockton, who is one of our longtime senior kitchen writers and a friend of the podcast. She’s reviewed everything from peanut butter to grills for wire cutter. She’s got 20 plus years working in pro kitchens, developing recipes and testing gear. So we talked with Lesley last week about the essential kitchen gear you need for Thanksgiving, but in that episode, we really didn’t get into baking. Lesley is an ace pie baker. For more than 15 years, she’s made at least three pies for every Thanksgiving dinner, and she’s developed pie recipes for magazines.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. Lesley is a phenomenal baker. I love her pies. After the break, we’re going to talk with Lesley about how to pick out really good butter the next time you’re in the supermarket. We’ll be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Our guest today is Lesley Stockton and she’s been reviewing kitchen gear for Wirecutter since 2013. Before joining the Wirecutter kitchen team as a staff writer, she was a restaurant cook, a food editor at Martha Stewart Living and Everyday Food magazines, a cookbook contributor, a food stylist, and a culinary producer. Her resume is stacked. She also headed up our recent taste test of butter at Wirecutter.
ROSIE: What can’t she do?
CHRISTINE: Lesley, I’m so pumped to have you back here. We talked to you last week all about the sort of essential Thanksgiving things that you need to have for making the turkey and all the sides, which was awesome. Thank you for coming then.
LESLEY: Thank you for having me.
CHRISTINE: And this week, we are going to dig into a little bit more of a niche topic, but one that also relates to holiday cooking and baking, which is butter. This is a huge topic. You just finished a review of 17 butters. But before we get into talking about butter, I want to just take a walk down memory lane because Lesley, you and I met maybe like 15 years ago when we worked at Martha Stewart. We were working on a cookbook together. I remember that you really developed a lot of things that involved butter. So I remember you worked on recipes that involved making pies, slab pies, and other delicious treats using butter.
LESLEY: Right. I used a lot of butter. We used a lot of butter in developing that cookbook. We used to joke that the vegetable purees in that book were 50% butter. They kind of were.
CHRISTINE: That’s true. There was a French chef in charge of that book, and it was all butter all the time.
LESLEY: Pierre.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Pierre.
LESLEY: Yes. And at Martha, if you’re cutting a solid fat into some flour and sugar, it’s butter. It’s never shortening. My whole baking pies, because my grandma taught me how to make pies, she used Crisco. I learned how to make pie crust with butter at Martha Stewart.
CHRISTINE: And they were delicious pies. I ate them.
LESLEY: Delicious.
CHRISTINE: They were delicious. Now, butter is a really big topic. It’s a complex ingredient that I think is more complex than people realize, and there’s a lot that goes into what makes a butter… That gives a butter its flavor and texture, which is what you sort of dug into in this review that you just did. You worked with one of our other kitchen writers, Ciara Murray Jordan. And this episode, I want you to essentially take us to butter school. We’re going to drag our dairy-free friend, Caira, here along for the ride.
ROSIE: Kicking and screaming.
CHRISTINE: So first question, this is our freshman year. Walk us through what makes a good versus a bad butter.
LESLEY: Well, it all starts with the cream. We’ve all heard that you are what you eat, but you are also what you eat eats. And so what that means is, butter churned from cream from a cow that has had a grass-fed diet is far superior to a grain-fed cow’s resulting butter. And I will elaborate on that.
So cows that graze at pasture, grass has beta-carotene which is what gives butter that butter yellow color.
CHRISTINE: I always thought it was dye.
LESLEY: Sometimes it is.
ROSIE: I think yes.
LESLEY: So we’ll get to that later and stick a pin in that. Whereas cows that are fed a grain diet, there’s no beta-carotene in grain. And so if you look at two sticks of conventional commercial butter store brand or whatever, and then I don’t know, some Kerrygold or some European-style butter, you can see the difference. That stick is very pale, but it’s also kind of hard because grain-fed cows produce butter that’s kind of crumbly almost, whereas grass-fed butter has this smooth… Even right out of the refrigerator, it just cuts like, well, butter.
ROSIE: Cows eat grass.
LESLEY: Cows should eat grass. Yeah.
ROSIE: Cows make milk. Cows make milk. Milk turns into cream. Cream turns into butter.
LESLEY: Cream rises to the top. The cream is skimmed off, churned into butter.
ROSIE: So you’re saying that the process for grass-fed cows, you’re getting that grassy flavor almost in the final product.
LESLEY: You are. Sometimes you get a straight-up pasture funk, which I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. It’s awesome. It’s delicious. And sometimes the grass can impart like a hazelnutty, sometimes walnuts. It’s crazy. You are what you eat eat.
CHRISTINE: Is there a tell for the flavor or texture of a lower quality butter, like one of these sort of grain-fed butters?
LESLEY: It’s crumbly. It’s hard, and it kind of tastes like nothing, especially if it’s unsalted because salt is a driver of flavor. So if you get salted butter, you will get more of a flavor because salt drives the flavor. But with these less expensive butters, you will find that they add “natural flavoring” because there isn’t much flavor to it. That’s where you kind of veer into that movie theater popcorn butter type of thing.
CHRISTINE: Which is like a mood.
LESLEY: It’s a mood.
CHRISTINE: I feel like that is not always the worst thing if you’re actually making popcorn, but…
LESLEY: Right. Right.
ROSIE: But that flavor is added because the actual grain-fed cream that becomes butter doesn’t have enough flavor.
LESLEY: Doesn’t have much flavor. Exactly.
CHRISTINE: Let’s continue on this educational journey that we have embarked on, and I want to talk a little bit about the difference between domestic and European butters. I noticed reading our guide that all of the favorite butters in this guide are all European. So we’ve got Kerry…
LESLEY: Most of them.
CHRISTINE: Most of them. Okay. But the top tier ones, they’re European.
LESLEY: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
CHRISTINE: You’ve got Kerrygold. You’ve got, let me butcher this for everyone, Isigny Ste Mere.
LESLEY: Isigny Ste Mere.
CHRISTINE: Oh, wonderful. Okay. That one’s a French one. The first one is Irish. Kerrygold, right? And then Finlandia, which I would assume is Finnish. So you’ve got these northern European countries. This is where these butters are coming from. Why?
LESLEY: Yeah.
ROSIE: What are they doing to the cows over there?
CAIRA: What are they doing?
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Happy cows.
LESLEY: Okay. Yes, they’re grass-fed because Europeans understand that good dairy comes from grass-fed cows. It’s actually better for you physically. Grass-fed cows make delicious milk.
CHRISTINE: Right.
LESLEY: Period, case closed. But also that French one, Isigny Ste Mere, that is a cultured butter. Cultured butter is very popular, and I’m going to explain what it is. Basically most butter that you’re going to buy in France is cultured butter. And what they do is they ferment the cream for 24 to 48 hours. It’s a light fermentation before churning it. And what that does is it gives it this little tiny little flick, little zing, little treble note at the end in the finish. And it really rounds it out, especially if you’re dealing with a really nice butter that has those hazelnut notes that it gets from the pasture and nice crystals of salt. And then you get this little surprise at the end, it just rounds it all out.
CHRISTINE: So it’s like one step towards cheese.
LESLEY: One step towards cheese.
CAIRA: But what about the other parts of the European butter that makes it better? Because they’re not all cultured.
LESLEY: No, no, no. It’s the grass.
CAIRA: Okay.
LESLEY: As we said before, the beta-carotene gives it that rich yellow color. I remember my Irish friend when she moved to the States for a few years, she turns to me and says, “Why does your butter look like lard?” And I’m like, “Well, because it does.” So that’s a big difference right there. European butter has a slightly lower water content than American butter, so it’s richer. I think people assume that the lower water content in European butter is the reason why it’s kind of smoother when you cut into it, especially if it’s refrigerated and it just has that velvety smear. But that’s because of the grass-fed diet. That’s the pastured cows.
CHRISTINE: So these European butters are kind of expensive, I’ve noticed. I think that our picks range from five to $7 for two sticks, like a half a pound, which that’s a lot of money, if you’re like my family and they eat four sticks a week. Were there cheaper butters that you liked than these kind of higher tier ones?
LESLEY:Yeah. Trader Joe’s European style cultured butter, $4 and 70 cents for, if price is a concern, go to Trader Joe’s, get the European style cultured butter. It is not “cheap” by any sense, because you can go to the supermarket and get a store brand pound of butter for $4 and 70 cents. Yes, some of these butters are very expensive. However, if you really love Kerrygold and you have a Costco membership, you can get four blocks. That’s the equivalent to eight sticks at Costco for about $14. And compared to retail, you’re basically buying three, getting one free. But then Costco also has their house brand, Kirkland Grass-fed Butter Salted. It only comes in salted, and that one’s even less expensive. I think that one’s like 11 for four blocks. Again, the equivalent to eight sticks. I think that one’s like New Zealand Dairy, I think. So. If you have a Costco membership and you really want a really nice quality butter, you can get those without breaking the bank. Consider that.
CHRISTINE: That’s salted.
LESLEY: And that is salted. That’s for eating. For baking, Costco’s Kirkland, Unsalted is a screaming deal. I think you get four pounds for under $10.
CHRISTINE: Wow. That’s insane. And it’s good.
LESLEY: And it’s good. It made a flaky pie crust that I would be proud to serve, and it made a great shortbread. If you need butter for, you know how some people do these massive holiday cookie bakes and just treat bakes, go pick up some Kirkland for that.
CHRISTINE: Love it.
ROSIE: So I’m curious how you’ve taste tested all of these butters. What were you doing? Were you just chomping on sticks? Were you making butter lollipops?
LESLEY: I’ve been known to.
ROSIE: Judgment free zone.
LESLEY: Yeah. No. So we did research. We culled down to 17 butters. Because it’s just so much to eat and palate fatigue is real. At some point you’re like, “I don’t know anymore.” There were two categories of testing. There was eating and there was baking. For eating butter, we did salted butter. For baking, we did unsalted. So it’s very important to make that distinction.
ROSIE: Is that partially because there’s usually salt called for in baking recipes?
LESLEY: Exactly. Because baking recipes are written for unsalted butter. But for the purposes of this guide, we designated salted butter as eating butter and unsalted butter as baking butter.
CHRISTINE: Okay. Yeah.
LESLEY: So we thought 17 was on the high end, but we muscled through it. So for the first round of tasting, we tasted each butter cold and at room temp both on bread. We had sourdough bread and we had sliced potato bread. Now, why we had that soft sliced bread is because is it going to rip that bread?
What you get is what is the texture of these butters cold versus room temp? And also what flavors are we getting from the butters when they’re at those two different temperatures? And there was a real difference. One of the butters, I can’t remember which it was, but when it was cold, it was still spreadable and nice and the fat dissipated very well, and it didn’t leave a mouth feel. However, when it was room temp, it did leave an oily mouth feel. When things like that happen, I’m just like mind blown.
ROSIE: How do you cleanse your palate?
LESLEY: Personally, I do seltzer with a giant squeeze of lemon.
ROSIE: So how else did you test? You tested for spreadability on bread. You tested straight up.
LESLEY: The butters that just did not pass, we just eliminated and then we cooked noodles and just tossed them with some butter and ate them. And first of all, so comforting. It was such a cozy day.
CHRISTINE: It’s my kid’s dream meal. That’s what they want to eat every meal.
LESLEY: Honestly, it’s still my dream meal and I can’t handle pasta anymore. And so you have the heat from the noodles. So we did cold, room temp, and now we’re tasting it hot but not melted and separated because it’s still kind of emulsified with the starches from the noodles. And what kind of flavors come through there? Does it emulsify well or does it kind of separate and kind of give you this grease slick? Does it leave behind an oily mouthfeel that is stubborn and will not go away?
ROSIE: And then in an unsalted baking category?
LESLEY: Shortbread first because it’s a baking recipe that uses very few ingredients. It’s butter, flour, sugar and salt. So you really taste the butter. Our favorite shortbreads were kind of ripply towards the edge, but had this flaky, buttery crumb interior, but it was also kind of sandy and crumbly at the same… It was just this perfect Venn diagram. Right?
CHRISTINE: How did I miss this day of testing in the office?
LESLEY: I don’t know.
CHRISTINE: I love shortbread. It’s my favorite cookie.
LESLEY: We still have a bunch in the freezer.
CHRISTINE: Well, don’t tell me that, but maybe I’ll get some next week.
ROSIE: And then pie. Right?
CHRISTINE: And then pie. Did you make pie?
LESLEY: I made pie crust. So I blind baked pie crust, and blind baking means when you have to make a pie and the filling is not cooked in that pie. What you have to do is what you call blind baking a pie crust. So you roll out your pie dough, put it in the plate, flute your edge. That means making it pretty on the edge. And then you put some parchment paper down and you fill it with beans, pie weights, whatever, to kind of weight it down. And you bake that until it’s kind of dry. It doesn’t feel like dough on the surface. And then you lift all those pie weights out, you put them to the side, you put that pie across back in the oven until it’s thoroughly baked through, nice and dry on the top, caramelly, beautiful on the bottom, which you really can’t see unless you use a glass pie plate but yeah.
ROSIE: No soggy bottoms.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, no soggy bottoms.
LESLEY: We don’t do soggy bottom pies in this house.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. Very, very important.
CAIRA: And then you just test pie crust on its own? no filling?
LESLEY: Basically, yes. I think I put out some jams or something, but yeah, we were basically just munching on pie crust.
CHRISTINE: All right. Now that we’ve completed our butters one-on-one course, I think it’s time for us to do a pop quiz.
ROSIE: Let’s do a taste test.
CHRISTINE: Oh, yes.
CAIRA: I’ll just be sitting here watching.
LESLEY: So I brought three of our salted butter picks, and so we have some baguette and I want you all to try them. I think they have come up to room temp and it’s a little afternoon snack for us.
CHRISTINE: Let’s go. It’s a guilty little pleasure for the afternoon. I’m very excited about this.
ROSIE: Let’s not look at the labels though so that we can determine what it would be like.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. No, let’s do this totally…
LESLEY: You don’t have to…
CHRISTINE: As one would in a testing…
LESLEY: You don’t have to look at the labels.
CHRISTINE:… at Wirecutter’s offices. So we’re all going to take a chunk of this amazing baguette that I brought, which is…
ROSIE: Did you go to Paris this morning?
CHRISTINE: Yes. So I’ve got this one. I think we have to keep track. I’ve placed the three butters in front of me. I’ve got #1 to the far left, #2 in the middle, #3 to the far right
ROSIE: So what are you getting? What are you… A croissant? Yeah. Go ahead.
CHRISTINE: It’s salty. I taste the salt.
ROSIE: This is a little movie theater for me.
CHRISTINE: Okay. I’m going for the second one.
LESLEY: All right. What are you getting?
CHRISTINE: Oh, this one. I like this second one. It’s like it’s kind of rich. It’s salty, but not too salty. The first one was a little saltier than I like, but I really like the mouth feel of this second one.
CAIRA: What does that mean? It’s soft. It’s [inaudible 00:21:39]
CHRISTINE: It coats my mouth in just the right amount of fat.
ROSIE: Silky. I agree with that.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. It’s got a really nice texture.
ROSIE: It’s nice. It’s lighter. It’s a little more, it feels like cloud-like to me.
CHRISTINE: Cloud-like, I like that.
ROSIE: It’s smooth. It’s giving me a less buttery…
CHRISTINE: Pronounced butter.
ROSIE: Yeah. Butter flavor. In a way that I really love.
CHRISTINE: It’s a little bit more subtle. I think it’s a little bit more subtle.
LESLEY: I would say that number one is a little hoofier.
CAIRA: Hoofy.
ROSIE: I didn’t like the hoofy.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
ROSIE: Okay. Here’s the third.
LESLEY: I do like that. I like that.
CHRISTINE: Okay. The third one. Okay. I’m going to…
ROSIE: This is the palest one, I would say.
CHRISTINE: That’s the palest one. Yeah. I want to take some bread.
ROSIE: I feel like I’m in France.
CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh.
ROSIE: I’m getting beta-carotene.
CHRISTINE: This is good.
ROSIE: It tastes like I died and went to the pearly gates and Peter was like, “Do you want a welcome snack?” And I was like, “You know what? Give me a piece of sourdough with your best butter.” And he was like, “I got you girl.” And this is what he gave me. Heavenly.
LESLEY: Okay.
ROSIE: The big reveal.
LESLEY: So the one that we are cooing over currently is the Isigny Ste Mere.
ROSIE: I’m fighting you to take this home.
CHRISTINE: I knew it.
LESLEY: You can have it.
ROSIE: Unreal.
LESLEY: It’s yours. It’s yours.
CHRISTINE: Now where can you get this? Can you get it at Whole Foods?
LESLEY: I found it at Whole Foods. I have found it at random supermarkets all over New York, but Whole Foods is a pretty safe fit.
CHRISTINE: But we also checked around the country and people can find this butter all over. Right?
LESLEY: Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is…
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Yeah. Widely available. Okay, so tell us what’s the second one we tasted that we liked a little bit more than the first one, but less than the third one.
LESLEY: That’s Kerrygold.
CHRISTINE: Kerrygold. Nothing wrong with that. That was good. I like that.
LESLEY: Okay. So what I want to ask is the Isigny Ste Mere is cultured. And Kerrygold is not cultured, right?
ROSIE: Okay. No, that’s right.
LESLEY: So do you see the complexity of the flavor? Do you get the…
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
LESLEY: Because Kerrygold is kind of this platonic ideal of this dairy-rich butter. You get some of the grass and you get some of that nuttiness that you get from cows that have been at pasture. But with the cultured, you get a little more roundness, you get a little zing at the end, and that really actually does come through when you bake with it, which just blows my mind. Am I going to spend $7 to make a pie crust? Possibly. Depends on how rich I’m feeling and who I want to impress but…
CHRISTINE: I would get it to eat it on bread.
LESLEY: Yeah.
ROSIE: That mouthfeel is impeccable.
CHRISTINE: What about the first one? What’s the first one?
LESLEY: Okay. So the first one, that is the Kirkland Grass-Fed, and it’s hoofy. When I say hoofy, barnyardy. But I love that. That’s why I love…
CHRISTINE: A lot of people liked it in the testing. Right?
LESLEY: I love Pecorino Romano because it is barnyardy.
CHRISTINE: I like a barnyardy cheese. But I think… And you know what? If I hadn’t tasted this Kirkland next to these other butters, I might’ve been like, “Oh my gosh, this is really great. Yum. Yum. Yum.” Especially for the price. I mean it’s like half the price of the other two.
LESLEY: Right.
ROSIE: I was not wild about the mouth feel on the Kirkland.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
LESLEY: Well, look, it’s not as good as Kerrygold, but it’s still very good.
CHRISTINE: Okay. So just to recap, what makes a good butter is the quality of the milk. You want, ideally, grass-fed milk. If you can, find some cultured butter because it’s going to have a little extra zing, a little pop to the flavor. If you’re shopping in a store and you can’t find any of our picks, you want to avoid brands that have natural flavoring in the ingredient list. You want to be looking potentially for grass-fed on the label, and usually those are going to be a little bit more expensive.
CAIRA: So now we’re going to take a quick break and then when we come back, we’re going to move beyond our basic butter education and we’re going to talk with you, Lesley, about holiday baking with butter. Whether you’re making pies for Thanksgiving or cute little holiday cookies, you’re going to want to know Lesley’s tips for when you want a good butter and when you can get away with a cheaper one. Be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Lesley, you’ve made a lot of pies. A lot of pies. You baked pies for this butter review. You’ve developed pie recipes for magazines, and you also bake at least three every year for Thanksgiving. Do you always make your crust with butter?
LESLEY: Yes, every single time.
CAIRA: Okay, why?
LESLEY: Because it tastes delicious. And even if it’s like a graham cracker crust, it’s butter.
CHRISTINE: What’s the difference in quality or the taste and the texture, if you make it with really high quality butter we just tasted versus sort of a lower quality butter?
LESLEY: It’s going to taste more like that dairy-rich butter flavor that you all just experienced in your mouth and that flavor really, it’s such a nice complement to tart fruit, especially apples. Butter and apples and cinnamon, come on you all.
ROSIE: So you’re just not getting as punchy flavor. You’re not getting necessarily that richness coming through if you’re using a lower quality butter.
LESLEY: Right. It adds more complexity to the finished product. You’re not just getting the tartness of the apple and the cinnamon. You’re getting this sweet cream butter flavor to round it all out and make it a cohesive thing.
ROSIE: What about other fats? You mentioned that your grandmother used to cook with Crisco. Mine did too. Her pies were unmatched, but this is going back a couple decades.
LESLEY: But also Crisco changed their formula. It was softer, it cut into flour differently. The flake on the pastry was just different. Everything was just different. Now it’s still good for frying chicken. I will give it that, but yeah, something shifted in Crisco.
ROSIE: That’s so interesting. So if my meme was still here and she made her same recipe that she made for me in the nineties that today it would not necessarily taste the same.
LESLEY: She’d be cursing under her breath.
CAIRA: Yeah. My grandma’s always like, “The food is so different these days,” every time she cooks anything.
ROSIE: That’s so fascinating. What about cookies? Do you need to use high quality butter in cookies in the same way that you do in a pie?
LESLEY: It depends on the cookie. I think if I’m making a Toll House cookie, I’m not going to be too picky about it. But if I want to make…
ROSIE: Why?
LESLEY: Because you have the vanilla, you have the chocolate chips, you have the walnuts. You don’t have just regular white sugar, but you also have brown sugar involved and all of those things just clobber a butter. Now, if you want to use a really expensive butter in a Toll House cookie, invite me over because I want one of those. But I would go for a less expensive butter. And butter affects how a cookie spreads. Right? Because a shortening cookie is just going to hold its shape.
CAIRA: You all know I don’t bake, but let’s just say theoretically I want to branch out beyond my sad little vegan lemon squares. I’d have to use alternative butters. And I know the kitchen team just published a guide to the best vegan butters, written by Mace Dent Johnson. I would love to know what you found through that testing.
LESLEY: I think vegan butter is great because a lot of people don’t do dairy or animal products, and it has come a long way. Mace did notice that even though the Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil was the closest thing that behaved similar to butter that they tested, it was not a perfect dupe. And the cookies that they made with them still spread too much. So as much as companies have tried, there’s just no plant-based dupe yet.
CAIRA: Waiting for the day. I hope they hear this.
CHRISTINE: I’m hoping for you too, Caira.
ROSIE: I was intrigued to see the Trader Joe’s one. That’s the one that we keep at home because I try not to eat butter on the regular, which is why this salted butter is such a treat. But I think it was interesting to see the Trader Joe’s as a cost-effective option for the vegan butter on that list that Mace made. This is a question I’ve long wondered, Lesley. How are you supposed to store butter? Is it okay to keep it on the counter is essentially what I’m wanting to know.
LESLEY: Okay. Yes. The receptacle and the frequency of use are very crucial here and temperature, because if your house gets really hot, your butter is going to go rancid. Yes. You can store butter on the counter. Get a butter bell. Do we know what a butter bell is?
CAIRA: Nope.
LESLEY: Okay. So a butter bell is, it’s a crock, and it has a lid. Connected to the lid is like this bell-shaped receptacle where you put the butter, you spear the butter in there and you put a little bit of water in the bottom of the crock, and then that butter goes upside down. And so the surface of the butter touches the water so it doesn’t get contact with air. Okay. That helps to keep it from going rancid oxidation, what have you. Now, it still doesn’t matter if your house is hot or if your kitchen is very hot, you have to be going through that butter probably in a week. You should probably fill your butter bell once a week.
CHRISTINE: That’s never a problem for me.
LESLEY: Right.
CHRISTINE: It would be like three or four times a week.
LESLEY: No, totally. And you can get a bigger butter bell.
ROSIE: Well, to that end, Christine, you’re going through so much butter. Can you freeze butter?
LESLEY: Oh, I freeze butter all the time. I buy the Kerrygold from Costco and I put it in the freezer.
CAIRA: But what if people just have the ick when it comes to leaving dairy out? What if you really feel like…
LESLEY: Then keep your butter in the fridge.
CAIRA: Any special container for that?
LESLEY: I like to. Okay. So butter is fat. Fat absorbs smells. If your fridge frequently holds pungent foods, it’s probably your best bet to keep your butter in an airtight container, Tupperware, what have you. So I’ve bought butter a few times from various markets in Brooklyn, and I know when they clean their walk-ins with Fabuloso because the butter has absorbed the Fabuloso smell. And now I have Fabuloso in my mouth.
CHRISTINE: Eww. That’s disgusting.
LESLEY: I hate Fabuloso so much and I get so mad when my butter tastes like Fabuloso.
CHRISTINE: I feel like given your immense butter expertise at this point, very curious what butters you would pair with different recipes. You did so much testing, you guys did so many different types of recipes, and you also are just a very experienced cook. So I’m going to run through a lightning round of questions with you rapid fire to see what type of butter you would use for different recipes. I don’t want you to overthink this. Just tell us immediately what the butter that you would pair with this is. Okay. You ready?
LESLEY: Yes.
CHRISTINE: All right. Fruit pie.
LESLEY: The Kerrygold.
CHRISTINE: Butter on bread.
LESLEY: Isigny Ste Mere.
CHRISTINE: Brown butter noodles.
LESLEY: Isigny Ste Mere.
CHRISTINE: Bulk Christmas cookies where you have to buy a ton of butter.
LESLEY: Kirkland Unsalted.
CHRISTINE: Nice. Buttercream frosting.
LESLEY: Kirkland Unsalted.
CHRISTINE: Baking for your worst enemy.
LESLEY: Vegan butter.
ROSIE: Not even Fabuloso.
CHRISTINE: I thought Fabuloso would be the pick.
ROSIE: Or Fabuloso butter.
CHRISTINE: Wow. Okay. Lesley, before we wrap, we like to ask our guests one final question. What’s the last thing you bought that you’ve really loved?
LESLEY: I had a lot of deadlines approaching and gummy candies are my deadline comfort food. So I walked down to BonBon in the Brooklyn… I know.
CHRISTINE: Is that the Swedish place?
LESLEY: Yes.
CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh. That’s gummies.
CAIRA: It’s Rosie’s favorite.
LESLEY: I know, I know. And I grabbed a bag and a scoop and I made myself… I bought $50 worth of gummies and salted licorice.
CAIRA: What?
ROSIE: Before you judge her, did you make that deadline?
CHRISTINE: Well, you do what you got to do.
LESLEY: That place is my happy place.
CHRISTINE: So delicious. So good.
LESLEY: Yeah. Go get it.
CHRISTINE: Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Lesley. This is a treat.
ROSIE: Thanks, Lesley.
LESLEY: I loved having you. Thank you. I loved it. Thank you.
ROSIE: This was my favorite episode that we’ve ever done.
CAIRA: You like that taste test?
ROSIE: I can’t quite put my finger on why, but…
CHRISTINE: There’s a lingering flavor of this episode.
ROSIE: Lesley is so much fun. Lesley is so knowledgeable. I feel honestly armed with some really good ideas.
CHRISTINE: I personally feel ruined. I can’t go back to cheap butter after tasting that butter.
CAIRA: What was the name of the really fancy one?
CHRISTINE: Isigny Ste Mere. Is that what it was?
CAIRA: Now spell it.
CHRISTINE: Oh, no.
ROSIE: What are your takeaways from this episode?
CAIRA: For me, unfortunately, I think my personal takeaway was that vegan butters just are not going to live up to the real thing. And I just have to get over that.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, sorry. There are just some things you have to accept in life and move on.
CAIRA: Yeah. But the butters that you guys tasted looked really good. So I can look at a butter now and tell you probably like, “Oh, that one has movie popcorn flavoring in it because it looks a little too yellow.” Versus the good stuff.
CHRISTINE: Well, actually color was one of my takeaways. I always assumed that the yellow color was dye and that meant a cheaper butter. But now I know that some of the nicer butters are actually getting that yellow color from the quality of the milk. When it’s a grass-fed cow, they produce milk that’s going to give that yellow color. So that was one of my takeaways. And then my other takeaway was that European butter isn’t just fancy. It is actually better. You always think that European cheese and butter, that’s just a fancy thing and you’re paying extra for it, but honestly, it’s just a better quality for the most part.
ROSIE: My takeaway similarly is this idea that you can taste the ingredients that the cows were eating, so that kind of grassy flavor is going to end up in the butter eventually. The other takeaway for me is that cultured butter. That’s it for me.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
ROSIE: I love the funk. I love the fermentation. I love the idea that it’s sort of almost is cheese like.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. A little cheese.
ROSIE: Oh my God. It’s so good.
CHRISTINE: So good. And also just do not leave your butter out on the counter if you’re cleaning with chemically smelling things. Right?
CAIRA: Fabuloso.
ROSIE: Yeah. Fabuloso tinted butter is not it.
CAIRA: What do you mean? I love my purple stick of butter.
ROSIE: That’s it for us this week. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter’s coverage or if you want to check out the products we recommended or Lesley recommended today, you can go to nytimes.com/Wirecutter or you can find a link in the show notes. You can check out all of the other butters the folks at Wirecutter taste tested. Until next week, thank you so much for listening.
CHRISTINE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel, editing by Abigail Keel, engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop and Diane Wong. Wirecutter’s Deputy Publisher and Interim General Manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin.
CHRISTINE: Make sure you’re following the show on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss it. Thanks for listening.
