Gourmet Butter vs. Basic Butter

Whether you’re spreading some on an English muffin or sautéing vegetables for dinner, butter is an essential ingredient found in kitchens across the country. Some butter lovers are loyal to a certain brand or style, but there are major differences between different kinds of butter.

When you wander down the grocery store aisle, how hard do you think about the butter in your cart? Like all foods in your local supermarket, butter is regulated by trade organizations to ensure uniformity, quality and safety for everyone who eats it. By law, butter must contain at least 80% butter fat. Don’t cut butter out just yet based on that percentage. Butter fat is especially important for baking and helps you absorb the nutrients in the rest of your food. It’s made of 12-15% saturated fats, which makes it a rapid source of fuel with antimicrobial qualities. The higher quality butterfat you use, the better your food will taste. That’s why you should reach a little higher on the shelf.

Butter is such an important ingredient for staple meals that it’s worth going for the gourmet butter instead. Butters with high butterfat are less moist, easier to spread and have a better mouth feel. Unfortunately, many store-bought brands go through heating and cooling processes, are full of preservatives, extra hormones and other chemicals. When you purchase a butter that is this over treated, all the original nutrients are gone.

Gourmet Butter is Pure

The supermarket-standard may be uncultured butter, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t gourmet. This variety has less butterfat, but can be purified quickly without losing its quality. Great butter, cultured or uncultured, comes from healthy cows in good environments. Chef Shamy gourmet flavored butters come from milk cows untreated with rBST growth hormones. It’s also MSG and gluten free, kosher and halal. Gourmet butter is a great addition to every kitchen. Learn more about Chef Shamy and our series of flavored spreading and sautéing butters to make every meal a little more gourmet.