un-salted butter Vs butter/margarine

stop animal cruelty

Making a lemon loaf & its says to use un-salted butter. I don't have any, just normal butter and margarine.

Whats the differenece between these?

And would it matter if l used regular butter or margarine?

I know yer thinking, just do what the receipe says but l'd like to use up what l have if it doesn't make a difference...

Seaneh

just use normal butter.
It won't make much of a difference.

IF there is salt added elsewhere in the recipe reduce or omit it.

phormium

Will make absolutely no difference, most recipes that specify unsalted are non Irish recipes where unsalted is more the norm than here. The only think I use unsalted for is buttercream and even then I wouldn't bother using it for a strong flavoured, eg chocolate buttercream, mainly just for plainer type ones as I do think it makes a nicer buttercream.

As already said if the recipe includes added salt just omit it. It's much more expensive than ordinary butter but Lidl are now doing it at a better price than others.

Faith

Yeah I always use salted butter unless, like phorium said, it's something delicate. Just leave out the salt that will surely be listed too.

I did recently see nigella saying that she was told that salt is added to bad butter, so unsalted stuff is better but I don't know if that's really the case. I recently made a cake with unsalted butter and forgot to add the separate salt. I ended up with the blandest cake in the world .

dudara

Salt was originally added to butter to preserve it - back in the days of no refrigerators. Plus it adds a nice taste to the butter. Salt is a flavour enhancer after all.

In terms of baking, I pretty much always use salted butter. I would just omit/reduce any salt added later in the recipe.

But, I would always use butter over margarine. It's infinitely better tasting.

rubadub

Faith wrote: »

I did recently see nigella saying that she was told that salt is added to bad butter, so unsalted stuff is better but I don't know if that's really the case.

I did hear unsalted butter on a supermarket shelf is likely to be a more recently produced butter than the salted, which makes perfect sense.

By 'bad butter', did she mean lower quality from the get-go, or butter which has gone bad.

I hear a lot of crap from TV chefs, it is not like they are lying, more like Chinese whispers and the real fact is lost along the way as they do not understand the fundamental reason.

Tree

Realistically, salted butter in Ireland isn't going to be "bad butter", as it's effectively the only butter we produce. I never go looking for unsalted butter, I find the salt improves the taste of most things, especially caramel (ALWAYS make caramel with salted butter, it's extra nom).

As regards margarine, it makes less sense to use marg these days now that butter is nearly the same price. If you are going to use marg, use it in recipes where there are lots of other strongly flavoured ingredients and the marg isnt a large proportion of the final product. I used to make brownies with margarine, and they tasted ok, but now that i use salted butter, they taste amazing.

stop animal cruelty

Butter it is! Thanks everyone

CJhaughey

Lidl are selling unsalted Irish butter now in 227g pats.

Lucyn

There is absolutely no comparison between something made with butter and something made with margarine. Butter gives a better bake every time. Salted or unsalted makes no difference. But butter or margarine makes a huge difference.

Seaneh

Faith wrote: »

I did recently see nigella saying that she was told that salt is added to bad butter, so unsalted stuff is better.

Absolute nonsense.

Faith

rubadub wrote: »

I did hear unsalted butter on a supermarket shelf is likely to be a more recently produced butter than the salted, which makes perfect sense.

By 'bad butter', did she mean lower quality from the get-go, or butter which has gone bad.

I took it to mean lower quality, but I suppose she could have meant either.

rubadub

Found some of her comments

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/salted-caramel-sauce

Final note: I use unsalted butter as was told when young that salt is added to inferior butter to mask any rancidity or unpleasant flavours and also because I prefer to be in control of salinity myself.

LaChatteGitane

rubadub wrote: »

Found some of her comments

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/salted-caramel-sauce

How odd. Seeing she doesn't mind taking shortcuts when cooking with pre-prepared hummus, sundried tomatoes, chorizo, lardons, pancetta, cheese.... where she also doesn't have controle over 'salinity'


btw, I'm not judging her for the shortcuts, just so we're clear

Faith

Oh that's it, I was looking at that recipe a few weeks ago.

rubadub

LaChatteGitane wrote: »

How odd. Seeing she doesn't mind taking shortcuts when cooking

Good point, I saw her making some nutella cake or cheesecake and commenting about how she knows its all just basically packet/jarred food mixed together, and is not overly fussy in general about having the most supposedly premium/best ingredients.

A search for "salted butter" on her site,
http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/Quatre-quart-cake-5468

Ingredients

200g Salted butter (not a mistake – the salt works well!)
200g Self-raising flour

A lot of other recipes call for salted butter with no warning.
http://www.nigella.com/kitchen-witter/view/nanaimo-bars-48

I only used salted butter because I'd run out of soft unsalted and was too impatient to wait for a packet to lose its chill from the fridge.

So not too fussy. BTW Mary Berry was on that bake off masterclass program and showed a way to soften butter. She cut it into small cubes and just put it in a bowl of lukewarm water for a few mins and strained it off.

phormium

The Lidl unsalted is actually a 250g block so even better value than the 227g Avonmore one.

Pigwidgeon

One of the first things we did in college was clarified some salted butter and unsalted butter. Give the milk solids a taste and it's unbelievably salty. If it's a savoury recipe I'll usually just use salted, maybe add a little less salt later on if it's required, I usually go by taste. If it's something sweet or as the others have said unless I'm really desperate. There generally doesn't seem to be a huge difference, it's all about tasting as you go along.