Costco Has a New Kerrygold Butter Knock-off That Will Save You So Much Money

There's no doubt that Kerrygold butter is a top-notch butter product. If you aren't familiar, the Irish butter is made with milk from grass-fed cows giving it a deeper golden hue than traditional American butter and an arguably creamier mouthfeel. But this premium product also comes with a premium up-charge.

I've personally found that everything I bake (especially cookies!) turns out so much better when I use Kerrygold rather than generic grocery store butter. So to save a buck, I've been stocking up on it at Costco where I can get four gold bars (the equivalent of 8 sticks of American butter) for just $15.84. That's $6.52 in savings (more than $1 saved per bar of Kerrygold) over buying it at my local grocery store.

But last week on my monthly butter run I found a new product on the shelf next to the Kerrygold at Costco: Kirkland Signature Grass-fed Butter. It even comes in a shiny box similar to that of the Kerrygold packaging, signaling to me that this is Costco's house brand version of the popular butter.

How Does Kirkland Signature Grass-fed Butter Compare to Kerrygold Butter?

Like Kerrygold, the butter is made with milk from cows that (mostly) graze on grass year-round (the package does say the cows get about 5% of their diet from grains for nutritional balance). The nutrition labels even list the same amount of fat content, although it's also worth noting my generic grocery store butter also listed the same fat content despite Kerrygold's claim that its butter has a higher percentage of butterfat. The only butter I have found that lists a higher fat content on the nutrition label is the cultured butter I buy. The sodium content in the Kirkland brand is also slightly lower than Kerrygold (Side note: the Kirkland version is currently only available in salted, whereas Kerrygold is available in salted and unsalted, so to keep the test fair I only compared the salted versions). The other main difference: Kirkland's grass-fed butter hails from New Zealand, not Ireland, like Kerrygold.

But the biggest difference between these premium Costco butter offerings? The price. At my Costco 4 bars of Kerrygold (8 American sticks) costs $15.84, while the Kirkland Signature Grass-fed Butter costs only $12.01 for the same amount of butter. That will save you almost $1 per butter bar which, in this time of rising food costs, is a pretty big deal.

OK, but does it taste as good as Kerrygold? Actually, I think it's better. The first thing you notice upon peeling back the foil is that the Kirkland grass-fed butter is an even deeper golden color than the Kerrygold butter (something I didn't think was even possible!). First, we tasted each butter on its own blind (meaning we didn't know which butter was which), and all the tasters agreed that Kirkland's version had more butter flavor than Kerrygold.

Next, I tried both butters out in a sugar cookie recipe. The butters both performed the same in terms of how they creamed, how the dough handled, and how the cookies baked up. So again, we tried each cookie blind (without knowing which one was made with which butter) and again, all tasters agreed that the cookie made with the Kirkland Signature Grass-fed butter tasted more "buttery" than the Kerrygold butter.

The Bottom Line

While I still love Kerrygold, in the name of saving money, I'll be picking up Kirkland Signature Grass-fed Butter on my monthly butter run from now on.