You don’t need me to sit here and tell you why butter is good and important, do you? I don’t have the energy, you don’t have the time, and we all already have 17 sticks of the stuff waiting for us when we get home. I don’t mean to imply I—or you—get home from a very exhausting day and nibble through a butter bar or 17 butter bars just to feel something, but should that be the case, you know deeply why butter is good and important…and why it’s so important to stock yourself up with good butter.
And so, as we are wont to do, the SE team has pulled together 11 brands of unsalted butter that you’re likely to find in your local supermarket, and methodically, empirically, scientifically! tasted its way through them all in a quest to identify the very best. And we loved every minute of doing it!
The Contenders
- Finlandia Butter Imported Unsalted
- Vermont Creamery Cultured Unsalted Butter
- Land O Lakes Unsalted Butter
- Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, Unsalted
- Beurre D’Isigny French AOP Unsalted Butter
- Organic Valley Unsalted Cultured Butter
- 365 Butter, Unsalted
- Vital Farms Unsalted Butter
- Horizon Organic Unsalted Butter
- Breakstone’s Unsalted Butter
- Plugrà Unsalted
The Criteria
Butter’s smell should be good. Suggestions of grass, cream, and far-away movie theaters are all nice things. Whiffs of oil, acid, and nearby movie theaters are significantly less nice. All the above applies to taste as well. Nature: good! Not nature: oy!
As for the color of butter, this team went in convinced they could identify Kerrygold from a rocket ship (in a good and comforting way) because of its signature yellow color, so we aimed to eliminate this variable from the taste test itself in order to determine what actually tasted the best. All this to say: I spent a very long time giggling in the test kitchen galley attempting to spread equal 1/4-inch layers of 11 different butters onto many, many salt-free saltines and then flipping them upside down into little communal bowls while Slacking “do NOT look through the holes of the saltines when tasting—this is a serious taste test!!” at my coworkers frantically. (Credit where it’s due: Our new senior social media editor Kelli very graciously helped me spread butter after she saw me struggling. Don’t worry—she did not see the key to the test and did ultimately test sight unseen.) It turns out this team enjoys all colors of unsalted butter!
Also worth noting: There should be nary a hindrance to using an unsalted butter, whether that be for baking, for greasing, or for, well, buttering. You should be able to unwrap it, dip into, and spread it with ease. It shouldn’t take physical effort or dexterity to evenly coat your desired surface with the stuff. In order to gauge each sample’s true spreadability, we let the blocks sit out at room temperature for just over three hours. By the time we sampled, each of the 11 butters measured temps somewhere between 57-62 degrees.
This! wasn’t! easy! No, stop! It wasn’t! If you say you like butter so much, you try eating back-to-back pats of the stuff slapped onto unsalted crackers, all the while straining, straining your jaw to note all your helpfully pithy butter sample-specific nonsense. Then we’ll talk!!!
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Big Picture
If there’s one thing to take away from this tasting, it’s that there wasn’t a huge difference among any of these butters. Below, you’ll see a scored ranking and comments from tasters, and yes, technically, that’s how these butters scored. But we were all struck by the fact that it was pretty damn hard to tell any of these butters apart, aside from the faint tang of some of the cultured options. It’s worth noting that almost all of the scores hovered close to a very narrow one-point range.
Were there differences? Sure. Were they dramatic, life-altering, or at least butter-purchasing altering? No, not really. There were differences and some of us did feel that one or two brands truly rose above the rest, but they also all more or less tasted like…butter.
Take that as good news: Approach the butter section of the market free of the kind of decision-making anxiety that can freeze you in the cereal section for 43 minutes. You really can’t go wrong.
The Rankings
Vital Farms Unsalted Butter, 3.84/5
A resounding round of applause for this guy right here. It smelled sweet, but not too sweet. It tasted grassy and milky, but not too grassy and milky. It ate smoothly, it wasn’t greasy, it evoked images of rolling hills and gentle background cows. It made a bad thing (see: old salt-free saltines) better. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this butter has the highest butterfat content of the group at a whopping 84 percent (the others ranged anywhere from 78.6 to 83).
Plugrà Unsalted, 3.6/5
Megan described this offering as a “robust buttery butter,” which I adore as both a butter taste test descriptor and a tongue twister. Despite the room temperature-ness of it all, Plugrà held just firm enough. Each tester noted and approved of its solidity and distinct dairy flavor. Daniel wrote: “Good!” which, as always, felt important enough on its own to include. IYKYK, etc., etc.
Finlandia Butter Imported Unsalted, 3.6/5
There comes a time in every Serious Eats when Genevieve identifies a sample as “like what I think ‘the thing we’re testing’ tastes like.” This one is what Genevieve thinks butter tastes like! It’s “lightly, lightly sweet” and the aroma was striking in, like, a pastoral way. This was another sturdy butter; Daniel noted its dense texture while tasting, and it held its own for long after the taste test concluded (See: It was seamless to handle and re-wrap). Finlandia specifies its unsalted butter runs between 82-83% butterfat, for what it’s worth.
Horizon Organic Unsalted Butter, 3.42/5
A creamy yet neutral offering among the bunch. This was a departure from richness and hay bales butter and an introduction to “I am late, I have nothing in this fridge except butter, that’s OK, a buttered English muffin is one of life’s best things sometimes, this is gonna be great” butter. It was thinner, easier to spread than the above offerings, and smelled perfectly of dairy and dairy alone.
Breakstone’s Unsalted Butter, 3.33/5
Three of our testers made a point of mentioning the smoooooothness of this butter. They noted how “smooth,” “really smooth,” and “very smooth” it was, to be specific! Megan also specified her approval of its “mild buttery, almost nutty smell,” while Genevieve appreciated the butter’s “plain and straightforwardness.”
Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, Unsalted, 2.8/5
…There comes a time in every Serious Eats taste test when each and every participant just knows they can pinpoint their real-world favorite. This group of Kerrygold enthusiasts went in confident and came out less so. They enjoyed Kerrygold, to be clear (its cultured tang, its funky aftertaste, its lovely texture), but they did not automatically or collectively pinpoint it as their favorite.
Land O Lakes Unsalted Butter, 2.75/5
It is here we begin to enter “it’s not you, it’s me” territory. We can’t particularly tell you why we’re not ready to move in with Land O Lakes, but we appreciate it and can’t picture our lives without it, we swear. (Megan enjoyed its “good, sweet buttery smell.” Otherwise, the stuff was pleasantly neutral. And sometimes neutral is exactly what you want.)
Beurre D’Isigny French AOP Unsalted Butter, 2.75/5
The experience of eating Beurre D’Isigny French AOP Unsalted Butter on a salt-free saltine, from what I can glean from my coworkers’ notes, is kinda like chugging movie popcorn butter and then eating the popcorn itself. It’s not a bad thing—you get to experience butter smell and taste, you get a nice little snack in the process; it’s all just very sensorily intense (gonna chalk that up to the lactic starter listed in the ingredients of this flavorful cultured butter).
365 Butter, Unsalted, 2.6/5
At this point, our team was prepared for at least some kind of dairy-driven smell with each sample. This one didn’t smell like anything, which in some ways worked in its favor: “A surprisingly buttery flavor for a butter that has no discernible aroma,” Megan wrote. Daniel gave up on giving aroma notes about five samples ago, noting for this offering that he “literally couldn’t tell any of these apart.” Again, take it from me: High praise from the Serious Eats team. Kinda.
Vermont Creamery Cultured Unsalted Butter, 2.5/5
Neutrality on neutrality on neutrality here. “Neutral, but good?” said Daniel. “Good for cooking when you want a more neutral flavor,” opined Megan. “Nothingness!” wrote Kelli, which, in a way, is a synonym for “neutralness,” yeah?
Organic Valley Unsalted Cultured Butter, 2.34/5
Interestingly, Organic Valley Unsalted Cultured Butter has the same percentage butterfat as our top-ranked selection (84 percent). And yet…they did not taste, spread, or eat the same.
Our Tasting Methodology
All taste tests are conducted completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
