Smooth as butter. Butter up. Bread and butter. Butter is as much a staple in our language as it is on our tables. And it’s no wonder—butter is the not-so-secret culinary trick to making everything taste better. It’s the foundation of patisserie, the cornerstone of a roux, and the saving grace of restaurant bread baskets.
We took on the task of testing butter with all the gravitas it deserves. We tasted 17 salted butters and baked with 11 unsalted butters to make our recommendations. When it comes to choosing a brick of butter, we know which side our bread is (thickly) buttered on.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe research
The best butters for both eating and baking
Top pick
Golden, grassy, and velvety: Kerrygold is the closest thing to the platonic ideal of butter in most supermarkets.
The first time you use Kerrygold in one of your favorite baking recipes, you can’t help but notice its pronounced buttery flavor and aroma—you’ll be hooked.
The experience of unwrapping a brick of Kerrygold Salted Butter is almost transcendent. Peeling back the golden foil, catching a glimpse of the similarly golden butter beneath, and you’re reaching for a knife and a slice of bread before you even know what you’re doing.
We missed out on all of this ceremony in our tasting, instead receiving a small pat of butter in a small container. And yet, every taster looked down at their little pat of butter and gushed about its sunny yellow tones.
Kerrygold was one of the few butters in our tests that spread well when cold, without crumbling or lumping too stubbornly on the bread. At room temperature it slid on the bread with one satisfyingly smooth motion, and rather than melting, it sat in a glossy, thick, even layer. The texture was luxuriously creamy, dense, and silky, without any mouth-coating greasiness.
It’s addictively salty, especially at room temperature, but it’s a well-balanced saltiness. The flavor of the pasture really comes forward in this butter, with fresh, grassy notes, alongside a slightly cheesy, animal flavor. It’s a true reflection of the verdant fields it hails from. To qualify as grass-fed in Ireland, cows must obtain 90% of their feed intake from grass (though most Irish herds exceed this minimum). Ireland’s climate is well suited to growing grass, and animals can stay on pasture for a significant portion of the year, which means Kerrygold butter is delicious year-round.
In our buttered noodles test, Kerrygold made a thick, glossy emulsification that evenly coated the noodles. It was extremely buttery and savory, with a fresh grassy flavor and a balanced salt level. The flavor was second only to the buttered noodles made with Isigny Ste Mère butter, by a slim margin. Whether you choose to make a sauce with it or just melt it straight on top of a dish, the flavor it adds does not go unnoticed.
If you’ve never baked with Kerrygold Unsalted Butter, do yourself a favor and use it in your next pie, pound cake, or batch of shortbread. Its full dairy flavor and hint of grassiness will bring more to your baked goods than most of the pallid sticks that make up most of the butter case at the supermarket. It’s rich but not unctuous, and its velvety mouthfeel dissipates into a clean finish without leaving behind a greasy coat.
Our tasters liked the shortbread we made with Kerrygold for its “sandy, soft, and melt-in-your-mouth” texture. This shortbread also had one of the strongest buttery presences of all the batches we made. When baked, Kerrygold’s slight cheesiness becomes more pronounced, adding complexity to sweet recipes—but it’s not overwhelming, just a balancing of flavors.
Kerrygold makes an incredibly flaky and crisp pie crust. It wasn’t the most tender crust, but we wouldn’t go so far as to call it tough. It was just a little sturdier than others.
Kerrygold is the butter of choice for many on the Wirecutter kitchen team because it’s excellent to bake with, widely available, and an excellent deal if you buy it in bulk from Costco.
Top pick
Tangy, fresh, cheesy, and interspersed with coarse salt, this is a butter to serve for a special occasion.
This butter is churned from cultured cream, giving it a slightly acidic finish that adds another dimension to your baked goods.
If the elegant packaging and rustic oval shape didn’t give it away, this is fancy butter. With a craggy surface and a scattering of salt crystals studded into pockets of butter, Isigny Ste Mère Salted Butter had the most irregular appearance of all the butters we tested; don’t be alarmed, but the salt crystals can cause a little weeping when the butter’s temperature changes. We felt this irregularity added to its artisanal appeal.
Beurre d’Isigny has a protected designation of origin, ensuring that all parts of production take place in Isigny-sur-Mer and meet specific criteria for quality. The cows graze on wetlands in a restricted area around Isigny-sur-Mer, giving the butter made from their milk a unique flavor.
It’s deeply buttery, cheesy, and tangy, with all the complexity of a cultured butter and the freshness that high-quality milk brings. There’s still some sweetness of the cream, with a hint of caramel. It’s also quite salty, though not off-puttingly so—the salt crystals add a crunch and an additional burst of saltiness in alternating bites.
And though you may be tempted to ration your chunk of Isigny Ste Mère butter and use it only for spreading, it’s truly transformative in other preparations, too. In our buttered noodle test, it melted into a thick, rich emulsion that clung to our noodles, almost a sauce in and of itself. The grassy, savory, and just slightly funky notes all came through, along with a good punch of salt, turning a bowl of spaghetti into a luscious, moreish meal.
If you want a little more complexity from the butter you bake with, cultured Isigny Ste Mère Unsalted Butter imbues your baked goods with a sweet, dairy-rich flavor and a slight tang at the end. That extra little zing is a pleasant foil to the sweetness and richness of many baked goods. Like its salted counterpart, Isigny unsalted butter tastes slightly cheesy, with a rich yellow hue that’s a result of cows raised on pasture.
Its flavor really shines in simple recipes like shortbread. In our tests, many panelists agreed that the Isigny Ste Mère shortbread had a somewhat dense yet tender crumb, with a flaky surface and pleasantly crisp outer edge. Our tasters also liked this shortbread for its intense buttery flavor and aroma.
The pie crust we made with Isigny Ste Mère Unsalted Butter was mostly on par with our other unsalted butter picks. They were all flaky and tender, and all crusts we’d be very proud of in a finished pie. The Isigny crust slightly stood out from the rest because of its hint of savory flavor and slightly crumbly texture in the center.
Even though Isigny Ste Mère is one of the spendier of our picks, we wouldn’t hesitate to use this butter for special-occasion sweet recipes, like an elegant dessert at the end of a dinner party. But if the term “savory” makes you shy away from using this butter in your next cake or galette, try it for your next chicken pot pie.
Top pick
Finlandia salted butter is light on the salt, but it’s fresh, simple, and fatty. It’s a rich butter that won’t overpower the flavor of anything you pair it with.
Buying Options
This unsalted butter delivers fresh cream butter flavor and slight nuttiness, with an unctuous mouthfeel that dissipates into a clean finish.
Buying Options
Light yellow and decently spreadable even when cold, the Finlandia Imported Salted Butter Bar was well liked by all of our testers, although they disagreed over their preference for it cold or at room temperature.
It’s fresh, a little grassy, and balanced, with a toned-down saltiness that doesn’t interfere with the sweet flavor of the cream. At room temperature, it’s smooth and glossy, spreading effortlessly across bread.
It’s a rich butter, but relatively neutral and straightforward, making it a good base for other flavors to shine. On buttered noodles, it was thinner than we’d like, and notably light in flavor. If you’re looking to make an especially luxurious, buttery sauce, we recommend using Isigny Ste Mère or Kerrygold instead.
The Finlandia Imported Unsalted Butter Bar is a great choice for baking if you like hints of nuttiness in your pies and tarts. Even though this butter has a distinct grassiness when tasted on its own, the sweetness and nutty flavor really shone through when we baked pie crust and shortbread with it.
The shortbread we baked with Finlandia unsalted butter had a distinct hazelnut flavor and aroma, along with a clean brightness (maybe the grass?) that set it apart from the other batches. It also had a strong, very distinct sweetness that can only come from the natural sugars in cow’s milk, not cane sugar. We liked the texture of the shortbread we made as well—crumbly, sandy, and a little flaky.
If you want to achieve the quintessential pie crust—flaky, golden, and crisp, yet tender—try Finlandia butter the next time you bake. In our tests, the crust was one of the flakiest we made, with a crispiness that provided just enough tooth before it melted away on the tongue. And just as with the shortbread, Finlandia butter infused our pie crust with a warm browned-hazelnut flavor.
Other butters for eating
Top pick
This is a butter for cheese lovers—grassy, nutty, and savory, with a slight barnyard funk. Slather it on bread and enjoy the burst of flavor it brings.
With a deep, buttercup-yellow hue, the Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter Salted (Costco’s house brand) stood out immediately from the pale tones of other store brands. When cold, it resisted spreading on soft bread, but at room temperature, it spread in an even, smooth layer, with a texture that testers described as “plush” and “dreamy.”
It’s notably complex, with grassy notes, a rich nuttiness, a cheesy savoriness, and some hay that leans barnyardy. It’s well salted, intensely flavorful, yet still bright, with a slight tang. It’s a butter that reminds you it comes from a cow.
The taste was divisive, with some testers considering it one of their favorites, and others finding the barnyard notes off-putting. It’s perhaps best suited as a complement to a loaf of sourdough, or anything that would appreciate its pungency.
In our buttered noodle test, however, the flavor fell surprisingly short of our expectations, with a lighter butter flavor and fewer savory notes than it had on bread. It coated the noodles evenly, but it didn’t make the thick emulsion we wanted.
Kirkland’s grass-fed butter is produced in New Zealand, where the grass-fed label has very similar standards to those in Ireland that Kerrygold adheres to.
Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter is not available in an unsalted version, so we did not include it in our baking tests.
Trader Joe’s Cultured Salted Butter is light yellow and notably dense: Straight from the fridge, it was dubbed “potato bread smasher,” and even at room temperature, it was still surprisingly solid.
It makes up for its odd thickness with a mild, well-balanced flavor. It has a long, strong salty finish, and clear sweet cream notes. Though the saltiness was pronounced, this butter still maintained a fresh and bright flavor. One tester described it as a “clean butter.”
In our buttered noodles test, the Trader Joe’s Cultured Salted Butter coated our noodles well and brought a nice, light butter flavor to the dish. It was creamy, salty, with just a hint of cheesiness—not as addictively savory as Kerrygold or Isigny Ste Mère, but a delicious bowl of buttery noodles nevertheless.
Trader Joe’s Cultured Salted Butter is not available in an unsalted version, so we did not include it in our baking tests.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTOther butters for baking
Top pick
Consider this affordable butter for those big batches of cookies, cupcakes, or whatever for large baking projects.
If you’re looking for a good-quality and affordable American-style butter for baking—one that’s milder in flavor and less rich than European butter—Kirkland Signature Butter Unsalted is the best choice. At around $10 for 4 pounds, it’s probably the best value we saw when researching this guide. It’s not as yellow or flavorful or luxurious as our other picks, so it wouldn’t be our first choice for spreading on bread. But it performed well in our baking tests and was the only one of the lower-cost butters that didn’t have a movie-theater popcorn butter flavor kicking around in our noses.
Since the Kirkland unsalted butter is milder than our other picks, we detected more pronounced sweetness from the shortbread we made with it. One tester commented that they were getting a frosting-type flavor from it (our shortbread recipe uses powdered sugar). But the Kirkland shortbread still was tender and sandy, with significant butter rippling on the surface towards the outer edge.
While the Kirkland unsalted butter made a fine pie crust, we did notice the difference in flakiness. The crust was tighter than the others (fewer air pockets and layers) and more crumbly. However, it still emerged from the oven with a pleasantly crisp golden bottom. All in all, it was a completely satisfactory pie crust that we’d be proud to serve.
Top pick
Even though it has a dense and almost paste-like consistency at first, this butter whips up beautifully and creates tender, flaky baked goods.
Rich, smooth, and almost paste-like, Vital Farms Unsalted Butter is another great choice if you want to bake light and flaky pastries. It’s one of the highest-quality butters we recommend that comes in individually wrapped sticks and not a half-pound bar, if you prefer that for easier measuring. Its dense consistency is most noticeable during the beginning stages of beating it with a mixer, but this doesn’t have any impact on how well the Vital Farms butter takes on air—it just requires a couple more bowl scrapes to get it going.
Like the other grass-fed butters we tested, it imparts strong buttery flavor and aroma, as well as a pleasant funkiness in shortbread that reflects the pasture on which the cows graze. Our panel of tasters praised this shortbread for its ideal balance of tenderness, rounded flavor, and sandy texture.
If we had to concisely sum up the pie crust we baked with Vital Farms Unsalted Butter, we’d call it ridiculously flaky. Looking at the cut cross section from any part of the baked pie shell, we saw distinct layers upon layers of delicate flakes punctuated with dainty air pockets. If you’re passionate about baking pies, Vital Farms Unsalted Butter might take your craft to the next level.
The salted version of Vital Farms butter isn’t one of our picks for spreading because, at room temperature, it left a greasy mouth coat that we didn’t detect in our unsalted pick.
Why you should trust us
Senior staff writer Lesley Stockton has spent her entire career in the culinary world. Before joining the Wirecutter kitchen team, she was a restaurant cook, food editor at Martha Stewart Living and Everyday Food Magazines, cookbook contributor, food stylist, and culinary producer.
Associate staff writer Ciara Murray Jordan, also on our kitchen team, was previously a cheesemaker on a small farm in Vermont. She worked with hundreds of gallons of raw milk on a daily basis, and is well acquainted with the entire process of dairy production: from the pasture and milking parlor to the creamery and caves.
For this guide:
- We tasted 17 salted butters over the course of two days, both cold and at room temperature, and made shortbread with 11 unsalted butters. We then made buttered noodles and pie crust with our salted and unsalted butter picks, respectively.
- We spoke to Marisa Mauro, founder of Ploughgate Creamery, an artisanal butter producer in Vermont.
- We researched everything butter, from the science involved in the milk production to government regulations.
- Like all Wirecutter journalists, we review and test products with complete editorial independence. We’re never made aware of any business implications of our editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTHow we picked and tested
We assembled multiple panels of testers to taste salted butter solo, on bread, and melted on fresh noodles and to taste unsalted butter baked into shortbread and pie crust.
We started by tasting 17 nationally available salted butters, which we cut into uniform squares and placed in individual serving containers to conceal their brands.
We tasted each salted butter cold and at room temperature and evaluated the butters independently at each temperature. Many people leave their butter in the fridge, so it’s important that butter is still tasty when cold. At room temperature, flavors spring to life, allowing you to pick up on notes that may have been muted at colder temperatures.
We eliminated four butters that fell short on our criteria then moved on to the baking test.
We baked shortbread with the unsalted counterparts of 10 finalists (two of our salted finalists did not have unsalted versions). With only four ingredients—butter, flour, sugar, and salt—shortbread highlights how much flavor your butter of choice is packing. Its texture and golden-brown color also depends on the quality of butter you use.
From there we narrowed our list to five salted and five unsalted finalists (with some overlap). We tasted the salted finalists in buttered noodles, mixing 2 tablespoons of each butter with 6 ounces of freshly cooked spaghetti. And we made pie crusts with our five unsalted butter finalists so we could provide notes about how each pick performed on one of butter’s most common baking tasks.
As we tasted our way through each round, we made note of the following:
Spreadability: To see whether each butter might mangle your bread roll, we spread them on sliced soft potato loaves and on hunks of crusty sourdough, both cold and at room temperature.
Texture: Good butter should have a rich, silky texture, with a tactile sensation of fattiness that gently blankets the palate for a moment before dissipating. Butter shouldn’t be crumbly, mealy, gummy, or so greasy that it tenaciously coats your mouth.
The type of butter you use can also have a big impact on the texture of your finished recipe. We found that European-style butters with higher fat content tended to yield textures that balanced between tender and slightly flaky, with a hint of sandiness. Whereas a few shortbreads we made from less-expensive American butters had a crumbly homogenous texture, with little dimension.
The texture of the melted butter matters too. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water, and when you melt butter, that emulsion breaks down. But depending on their fat content and structure, certain butters will retain some thickness and cohesion, and they will be more amenable to re-emulsifying into a creamy sauce when tossed with hot noodles.
Flavor: We tasted both cultured and sweet cream butters. Cultured butter is churned from lightly fermented cream that cultivates complex flavors and adds more dimension. Sweet cream butter is churned from fresh cream, and while it lacks the particular flavor profile of cultured cream, it can still be intensely flavorful (especially if it’s grass-fed).
We favored butters with enough flavor to carry through in a recipe. When baked in something simple like shortbread, less-flavorful butters are overshadowed by the sugar. A rich, flavorful butter adds complexity to even the most straightforward recipes, including pie crust.
Color: The soft yellow that we associate with butter comes from beta-carotene, the same pigment that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their orange color. Grass is abundant with beta-carotene, and cows who consume grass pass that pigment to the fats in their milk.
The amount of beta-carotene in a cow’s milk is partially dependent on a cow’s breed, but generally, if a butter is a natural deep yellow, you can bet those cows are grazing on pasture (and that the butter is imbued with those wonderful grassy flavors).
Conversely, cows fed a diet of grain and forages produce butter that’s almost white—save for the slightest tinge of yellow.
Not only does color impact how appealing butter looks on a piece of bread, but when you bake with butters that have a pronounced yellow hue, your pastries, cookies, and cakes will emerge from the oven with a more appetizing, deeper golden appearance than if you used paler sticks. The visible difference between those and the muted samples made from faintly hued butters is undeniable, especially in a side-by-side comparison.
Types of butter
European vs. American
In any conversation about butter, some people claim European butter is superior because it has a higher fat percentage. And while there’s some truth to that claim, it’s not quite so clear-cut.
The definition of butter in the United States and Europe is regulated by the US Department of Agriculture and the European Union, respectively. In the US, butter of any kind must have a fat content of at least 80%. In Europe, the fat content of unsalted butter must be at least 82%. If you’re buying butter for patisserie, you can be assured that any unsalted European butter will have the high fat percentage (and thus lower water content) that you need.
But these are just regulations on the minimum butterfat content butter can have—plenty of butter in the US is made with significantly higher fat content. In fact, one of our unsalted butter picks, Vital Farms, has 85% butterfat, higher than many European unsalted butters.
When it comes to salted butter, which most people use as table butter, European standards for fat content are the same as in the US, requiring only a fat content of 80%. Your salted European butter likely has the same butterfat content as your American butter (both salted Kerrygold and salted Isigny Ste Mère butter have a butterfat content of 80%).
Grass-fed vs. grain-fed
Cows that primarily graze on pasture (grass-fed) produce butter with aromatics from the grass that they eat. Grass-fed butter also has a higher beta-carotene content, which contributes to its yellow color, and higher unsaturated fatty acids, which contribute to its especially smooth texture.
Grain-fed cows are fed grains, forages, and protein supplements. These cows produce milder-tasting cream, which yields more-neutral tasting butter that tends to lack the subtle notes found in grass-fed varieties. Their butter also tends to be paler, waxier, and more solid at room temperature, due to a higher concentration of saturated fatty acids.
Cultured vs. sweet cream
Many European butters (and a small number of American butters) are cultured, which means cultures are added to cream, which is then left to ferment before it is turned into butter. Cultured butter often has tang, nuttiness, a slight cheesiness, and a pronounced butteriness, though its specific flavor profile is largely dependent on its producer. In fact, diacetyl, the chemical compound that is used as an additive to replicate butter flavor (and what we suspect is behind “natural flavorings” in butter), is a natural by-product of this fermentation process.
Sweet cream butter is made with fresh (uncultured) cream. Most butters produced in the US are sweet cream butters. Sweet cream butter lacks the complexity that culturing brings to butter, and it can be a bit simpler in flavor. But that doesn’t mean it’s bland—if grass-fed, it still has all of those flavor advantages.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe competition
At the end of the day, we wouldn’t turn up our noses at many of these butters that didn’t make the cut, save for the few that had prominent off-flavors (which we’ve noted). In most cases we wouldn’t be mad to smear these salted butters on bread or bake the unsalted ones into a sweet treat. Our picks were simply the standouts. Here are the rest:
Trader Joe’s Butter Quarters Salted were very pale, but the lackluster color did not match up to its taste, which was bright, with a balanced saltiness and a clear sweet cream flavor. It spreads well cold and very smoothly at room temperature, and it has a soft, fluffy texture that one tester said “begs to be made into buttercream.” Another tester considered it “as good as an American-style butter can get.” But despite its positives, it was still rather plain compared with our picks. Our tasters noted a slight off-flavor in the shortbread made with the unsalted version, as well as an oily mouthfeel that lingered after the finish.
Vital Farms Salted Butter is an unusual butter—our testers preferred it cold. Even cold, it’s adequately spreadable, with a nice yellow color and a sweet aroma. It’s salty, but not overpoweringly so, and light in flavor, with some fresh cream notes. But at room temperature, it coated our mouths in an unpleasant greasy film, and the buttery notes shifted from mild and fresh to synthetic movie theater popcorn.
Kate’s Sea Salted Butter is pale yellow, fatty, and well salted. When cold, it refused to spread, remaining in a lump on our bread, which was smashed and torn in the process. At room temperature, it spread well, though not impressively so. The saltiness, though appreciated, was the main flavor profile that came through. Otherwise, it was an inoffensive, plain—if not bland—butter. Our panel agreed that, in the shortbread baked with Kate’s Unsalted Butter, the sugar overpowered the butter flavor, and some noted that this shortbread was a little dry and tough.
Kirkland Signature Butter Salted was disliked by most of our testers. It’s pale, waxy, and tastes mainly of salt.
Nearly every taster picked up on a strong fridge flavor in Cabot Salted Butter. It has a salty finish, a slight sweet cream aroma, and a relatively good spread at room temperature, but the fridge flavor was oppressive and off-putting. The unsalted version didn’t bring much flavor or depth to the shortbread. Tasters didn’t hate it but also agreed that there wasn’t much to write home about.
Pale, but not white, the 365 by Whole Foods Market Butter Salted hits with salt at the start of each bite before mellowing out with some pleasant butter and sweet cream notes. But some testers found it a bit too waxy and a bit too greasy. When we baked shortbread with the unsalted version, our tasters were underwhelmed by its pale color and extremely mild butter flavor. Most commented that the shortbread tasted more like flour than anything else.
Mild, with a strong sweet cream smell that testers likened to ice cream and cake mix, Land O’Lakes Salted Butter performed as expected for a basic American butter. It had no off-flavors or unpleasant textures, but it was largely unremarkable. None of our tasters could detect much flavor from Land O’ Lakes Unsalted Butter in the shortbread. Most commented that the sugar and flour flavors dominated here.
Cabot Extra Creamy Sea Salted Butter was dense and slightly waxy, with a hint of sweet cream flavor and a strong saltiness. It blurred the line between tasting mild and flat. Our panel was split on shortbread baked with the unsalted version. Some liked its aroma and sweet dairy flavor, while others detected an artificial butter flavor. Either way, its faint butter flavor was easily masked by the sweetness of the sugar.
Great Value Salted Butter (Walmart’s house brand) was pale, overly greasy, and saltier than it was buttery. Multiple testers also picked up on a stale fridge flavor. We eliminated it after our first tasting.
The Good & Gather Salted Butter looked like a hunk of lard: So pale, it was nearly white, with an oily sheen on its surface. It tastes more of salt than butter, with any flavor it did have veering into artificial movie theater popcorn territory. We eliminated it after our first tasting.
Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter with Sea Salt was greasy and insipid, and it drew numerous comparisons to movie theater butter. We eliminated it after our first tasting.
Organic Valley Salted Butter was slightly chalky, waxy, and bland, with a stale fridge flavor. We eliminated it after our first tasting.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
Sources
Marisa Mauro, founder of Ploughgate Creamery, video interview, June 7, 2024
Meet your guides
Lesley Stockton
Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd.
Ciara Murray Jordan
Ciara Murray Jordan is an associate staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter. She previously worked as an artisanal cheesemaker on a small farm in Vermont.
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