We have started eating butter in place of margarine and "spreads" as not only does it taste much better, but i feel that something that has ingredients you can recognise has got to be better for you than a tub of chemicals and additives.
The only problem is how to make it/keep it spreadable, i remember as a kid my mum having some sort of plastic insulated butter dish, but the only ones i can find now are over 20 quid and they don't have great reviews ! I have tried sticking it in the microwave on defrost for a few seconds but the centre turns to liquid before the outer has softened.
Any ideas anyone ?
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I believe the "professional" butter users melt a little and spread it with a pastry brush.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Tue 8 Mar 11 at 18:45
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Buy the "Spreadable" Lurpak or similar, the supermarkets have own brand ones. They are blended with vegetable oil -"Contains no, additives, artificial colourings, preservatives, hydrogenated fats or oils" to quote from my Lurpak pack.
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Lurpak!!!!
Why import the stuff when there are English farmers in need of support? You should be ashamed of yourself PP. I buy Yorkshire butter or Country Life if I can't get that. When on holiday I buy the local stuff.
John
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we have a double insulated stainless steel butter holder
came from lakeland probably? knowing the wife,anyway it works perfectly and is always left on the kitchen worktop
i buy my butter in netto 99p tastes great to me,cant do with margarine and agree too many mollypastyrights are added by big spouts in some factory
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thats the one
easy to wash clean too, as i can testify...........
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Thanks, i will pay a visit to Lakeland at Bluewater in my lunch break tomorrow.
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We find Clover the best compromise, it tastes like butter though is more healthy.
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"is more healthy"
They change their minds every few weeks, hence they have no credibility and I ignore them.
John
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>> They change their minds every few weeks, hence they have no credibility and I ignore them.
Yes.
Read some of Dr. Joseph Mercola's stuff about cholesterol reducing drugs, for instance, if you want the (currently) contrarian view.
Last edited by: AnotherJohnH on Tue 8 Mar 11 at 20:57
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I don't entirely get the insulated dish idea. It's not thermostatically controlled or anything. If it's 14C in the kitchen overnight your butter's going to be hard in the morning, insulated dish or no.
I suppose it will smooth the swing out a bit - might avoid the melting butter when the oven's been on for an hour or two.
Looks like a reasonable butter dish though. At least it won't break like the glass ones with the cow on the lid I keep buying, and she keeps dropping.
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Tooslow - I buy what I want, from where I find it, and SFAIK, neither Yorkshire butter nor Country Life make what I require. Nothing imported in your house? I see mention of Honda, Passat, Golf, Xantia, Clio. Suggest a garage clear-out or calm down a bit!
Last edited by: Perky Penguin on Tue 8 Mar 11 at 19:47
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You can in fact get "Country Life Spreadable" which is the same sort of thing that Lurpak do. Can taste the vegetable oil in both though
Personally I don't use much butter but I think that the best in the world comes from Normandy.
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Interesting thread, and I'm interested in the insulated butter dish, but I doubt that we'll get around to acquiring one. We do, however, have the problem with our butter being too hard. My usual technique is to use the microwave - preferably with a fairly small amount of butter. I've not got it down to a fine art, yet - but it is generally fairly acceptable.
As for spreadable alternatives, most of them have vegetable oils added, and don't taste like butter. The exception is Kerrygold Softer Butter, which is real butter.
See www.kerrygold.co.uk/index.php?p=faqs,3
It isn't quite as soft as the spreadables, but it is much better.
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Real butter without any spreading additives, solid proper pottery butter dish with a good fitting lid, and it does not live in the fridge, but in the kitchen at room temp, always spreads, lovely.
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I'm a real butter fan too, my butter dish stays on the kitchen worktop, and like tyro I pop it into the microwave for 5 seconds at a time till it's soft enough to spread.
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There is no substitute for Butter. Life is just too short to eat crap.
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LIDL butter is good @£0.98 I think the last lot we had came from a Welsh supplier, Evan Rees.
Shirgar Welsh Butter is not cheap but is lovely.
On the subject of dairy - I urge you to try Pembrokeshire mature cheddar. Comes in a red re-sealable pack. Blooming gorgeous!
It's made by a farmers co-operative in the old St. Ivel cheese factory in Haverfordwest.
Morrison's stock it I believe.
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I'm never keen on hardened oils (marge and the derivatives with seductive names) because of the use of raney nickel as a catalyst in the hydrogenation reaction. Now, as some have pointed out, a catalyst is not consumed in the reaction. But, the nickel is subject to attrition, and therefore is consumed. Thus, yer "healthy" marge contains a small proportion of nickel. Not good. Possibly carcinogenic, but highly avoidable.
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There is no substitute for Butter. Life is just too short to eat crap.
Absolutely. Many years ago, when I was a student, and money was scarce, I used to buy Tesco own brand sunflower marg. I'm glad those days are long past.
OK - it did spread nicely, and perhaps some people actually prefer the flavour, but other than that, there is little merit in the stuff.
The health benefits of eating butter substitutes, are, I suspect, vastly over-hyped. I once knew a GP who took a very serious interest in nutrition, (and was respected enough to be interviewed by the Food Programme on Radio 4 a few years ago) and his conclusion was that butter is probably better for you than margarine, simply on the grounds that it was natural. There may be some people who, for congenital reasons, benefit from low cholesterol spreads, but there are not many.
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Like Perky....Lurpak spreadable..kept in the wall cupboard with the cups.
Always spreads....no problemo !
No guilt, got lots of other things made abroad.
I can't understand why cafes always keep the little wrapped pats of butter absolutely rock hard. ! If you call in for soup and a roll, the roll is usually a nice soft one which the butter rips apart. I usually balance my cup of tea on the butter pat ( still wrapped ) for a few minutes.
It can't be rocket science to work out how many you need for the coming day and get them out of the fridge when you unlock in the morning.
Ted
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Try unsalted butter. Keep mine in the pantry summer and winter, stays spreadable in the winter and even in all but the height of summer does not turn into a puddle of butter oil at the first sign of the mercury indicating double figures (degrees C). Also helps reduce salt in the diet.
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Try Normandy butter with small grains of rock salt in it, if you really don't care about your cholesterol and/or blood pressure!
tinyurl.com/4jnpaq9
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I was brought up to regard spreading butter as very vulgar. The correct procedure is to cut off a chunk from the butter in the dish, using the proper butter knife, and put it on your plate. Then you eat the bread or bun putting on one thin sliver at a time, with jam/marmalade/honey added by a similar process.
Spreading it is what they do in works canteens, using stuff called marge.
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Benecol spreads rather well.
:-)
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I use Kerrygold Softer Butter. It is real butter without any additives, and spreads easily if you leave it a few minutes when you take it out of the fridge.
Lovely on toast, and far better than any of the spreads or butter / vegetable oil mixture.
Last edited by: Robbie34 on Wed 9 Mar 11 at 09:33
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>>Benecol spreads rather well.<<
I wouldn't waste me breath on em bruv :)
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>> I was brought up to regard spreading butter as very vulgar. The correct procedure is
>> to cut off a chunk from the butter in the dish, using the proper butter
>> knife, and put it on your plate. Then you eat the bread or bun putting
>> on one thin sliver at a time, with jam/marmalade/honey added by a similar process.
>>
>> Spreading it is what they do in works canteens, using stuff called marge.
>>
How very suburban; presumably the reason your butter was too hard to spread was because your parents turned the heating off in order to afford the cleaner's wages! ;-)
Pray tell, do you therefore have a marmalade knife to add a slice at a time? Us commoners use a spoon.
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I always eat peas with honey,
I've done it all my life,
It sure makes them taste funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.
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It is also incorrect to slice a bread roll in half and spread your butter/jam/marmalade on it!
Correctly, pieces should be broken off the roll and as mentioned, buttered and consumed individually.
It also pains me to see TV adverts promoting bread products, or products normally eaten within bread slices, which show children grabbing a whole sandwich with both hands before biting off a great chunk.
Similarly unsettling are shots which show full meals being eaten, not from a table, but on people's laps.
I understand an astonishingly large number of families do not even possess a table and chairs, preferring to graze, rather than eat in a civilised manner.
Poor manners are thus passed onto a new generation.
Last edited by: Roger on Wed 9 Mar 11 at 23:17
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"It is also incorrect to slice a bread roll in half and spread your butter/jam/marmalade on it!"
Who ordained it so?
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>> "It is also incorrect to slice a bread roll in half and spread your butter/jam/marmalade
>> on it!"
>>
>> Who ordained it so?
A rhetorical question presumably as I doubt you expect that information to be available. No doubt Debretts ordains it now.
I distinguish between manners and etiquette. Eating noisily and masticating with open gob is bad manners. Bisecting one's bread roll and spreading butter on it isn't. Somewhere at the far end of the continuum is U and non-U. As I am non-U anyway, I please myself and much prefer settees to sofas.
This lot probably observed etiquette prior to trashing the restaurant -
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-435875/Camerons-cronies-Bullingdon-class-87.html
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Eating noisily is, I understand , considered the polite thing to do in China. Slurping your noodles shows appreciation. There are no absolute rules of etiquette, just local customs.
The Americans for example find the European manner of using both knife and fork to eat a meal rather uncivilised preferring to transfer the fork from left to right hand once the food has been cut up.
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Having taken a bite from a sandwich I was always told "put it down, no-one is going to steal it". It annoys me no end as MiL waves her sandwich around while talking with her mouth full. Yeuk!
John
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>> Having taken a bite from a sandwich I was always told "put it down, no-one
>> is going to steal it". It annoys me no end as MiL waves her sandwich
>> around while talking with her mouth full. Yeuk!
Some of the worst offenders are those who put their sandwiches down, but not before filling their mouths to capacity by first taking three or more large bites in quick succession.
Now that really is Yeuk.
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My nearest office colleague takes a bite of apple. Then in quick succession another bite. And yet a third. Then his mouth will not shut so he chomps away with his mouth full and open. I generally have to leave the room.
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>> I was brought up to regard spreading butter as very vulgar.
What did you spread on your cucumber sandwiches then? Dripping?
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>> There is no substitute for Butter. Life is just too short to eat crap.
>>
And it quickly becomes even shorter if you live on butter.
Dairy free sunflower spread for me ("Pure" brand). Tastes great and can be used in any recipe calling for butter.
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>> >>
>> >>
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>> And it quickly becomes even shorter if you live on butter.
>>
>>
>>
I don't think anyone is advising living on butter, unless you happen to be a Tibetan nomad living on rancid yak's butter.
Margarine is nasty slime made in a factory. It can't possibly be healthier than a natural product we have evolved to eat over thousands of years.
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>> It can't possibly be healthier than a
>> natural product we have evolved to eat over thousands of years.
>>
I would question the statement that we're suited to eat dairy products to be honest. We have certainly evolved to eat meat, and most liekly our intelligence has evolved to the level it now exists at partly as a result of doing so. But dairy products are a recent addition to our diet and we would hardly have had time to evolve into a state where they are suitable for us.
Don't get me wrong, I love my cheese and recently spent two years without dairy and missed my cheese enormously. But I seriously doubt whether it's any good for us.
High fat dairy products are proven to be a factor in heart disease, after all.
For me *some* butter subsititutes are better tasting and healthier than butter itself, but there aren't any cheese substitutes which can emulate the real thing yet. They're all awful.
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>> >>
>>
>> I would question the statement that we're suited to eat dairy products
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
By "we" I mean north Europeans with blood group O.
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>> High fat dairy products are proven to be a factor in heart disease, after all.
That should be "the excessive consumption of...."
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>> Margarine is nasty slime made in a factory.
Where do you think mass market butter is made? Pixie Hollow?
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>> >> There is no substitute for Butter. Life is just too short to eat crap.
>>
>> And it quickly becomes even shorter if you live on butter.
>>
>> Dairy free sunflower spread for me
You won't live any longer by substituting sunflower spread for butter. It will just feel that way.
I have never felt worse than when I have stuck to a 'healthy' diet. Bring on the butter, Yorkshire puddings, roast beef, and almost anything with custard.
I had a stir fry with brown rice tonight. Wonderful - that's a bit of credit so I can have the full breakfast on Friday :-)
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If you have sex you can have a Mars bar free as the calories cancel themselves out:)
Pat
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>> If you have sex you can have a Mars bar free as the calories cancel
>> themselves out:)
>>
>> Pat
You could combine the two?
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>>You could combine the two?<<
Marianne F ;}
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>> >>You could combine the two?<<
>>
>> Marianne F ;}
Indeed.
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>>>Marianne/Mars
And then there's the legendary Led Zep fish.
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"If you have sex you can have a Mars bar free as the calories cancel themselves out:"
Try telling that to my x-wife who never moved a muscle. I sometimes wondered if she'd died in the night.
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>>Try telling that to my x-wife who never moved a muscle. I sometimes wondered if she'd died in the night<<
A bad workman always blames his tools.
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>> Dairy free sunflower spread for me ("Pure" brand). Tastes great and can be used in
>> any recipe calling for butter.
How can anyone rate the above post as offensive?
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>> How can anyone rate the above post as offensive?
Have you tasted it?
(wasn't me BTW)
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>> Have you tasted it?
No. It's Benecol for me.
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>> How can anyone rate the above post as offensive?
>>
I hadn't noticed that! How utterly hilarious!
I expect it was someone who's never tried that particular product, though. Lots of opinion on here from people I susupect haven't tried it either.
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>> >> Dairy free sunflower spread for me ("Pure" brand). Tastes great and can be used
>> in
>> >> any recipe calling for butter.
>>
>> How can anyone rate the above post as offensive?
Perhaps it was the "And it quickly becomes even shorter if you live on butter".
Wasn't me either BTW :)
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>> Perhaps it was the "And it quickly becomes even shorter if you live on butter".
Maybe, but offensive? Blimey, I take offence easily but that really would take the dairy-free biscuit.
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I think that is a problem with the rating system.
The opposite of like (or thumbs up) is dislike (or thumbs down) , but we don't have that option.
There's a lot of middle ground between liking and finding offensive and could be why the system isn't used as much as it could otherwise be.
Pat
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Yes I liked it when we briefly had the thumbs down as well as the thumbs up so at least the overall was an average of opinion. The offensive button was, to my mind, meant for something you wanted to complain about rather than rate.
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>>Yes I liked it when we briefly had the thumbs down as well as the thumbs up<<
Same ere.
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>>Yes I liked it when we briefly had the thumbs down as well as the thumbs up so at least the overall was an average of opinion. <<
Same here.
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These thumbs up/thumbs down things are terribly infantile and tedious. There are other problems with such a system, too. I don't bother with it.
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Sorry PP, didn't mean to offend. I do my bit to support local producers when I can. I cannot see the point in importing butter when there is probably someone within a few miles of you making the stuff and it is every bit as good if not better. Second best is to buy one of the national brands. There's no real comparison with buying a car/tv/etc.
John
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Thanks John - other posts have pointed me in the direction of a British product which can be spread "from the Fridge" but achieves this without mixing with oils. I shall try one over the weekend and not be ashamed about it!!
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"Guns will make us powerful, butter will only make us fat."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model
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Guns didn't seems to do our people much good in Libya. Went tooled up for mischief and came home minus weapons, comms stuff, false passports and a helicopter. Send more butter!
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...Send more butter!...
That's what they asked for, but the message didn't get through.
"Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance."
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Lurpak spreadable slightly salted for day to day use in our house. Country Life for dinner parties.
I was brought up on a farm in the 50's and my mother would make our own butter from the milk of our own cows and I was churn turner in chief..
Nothing tasted better than Mums hot home baked scones with home made butter and strawberry jam......
.......Wipes dribble off keyboard.............
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I buy Cornish butter from Aldi. It's the best I've ever had from a shop. It comes from Trewithen Farm Dairy in Lostwithiel.
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Lidl's German butter (which they no longer seem to stock) was excellent too.
I guess margarine is useful for preventing rust when smeared on the underside of cars. Must be better than used engine oil.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Wed 9 Mar 11 at 12:46
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>> Lurpak!!!!
Gets my vote.
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Keep some out of the 'fridge "ready-to-use" in a container. It needn't be a whole 250g pat.
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Butter .....
Its only a form emulsified cow liquid protein after all .......
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5-DD2ll2es
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I like butter and hate margarine (which we had to eat during and just after the war, butter being severely rationed). It goes well on bread or some form of toast, improves spaghetti sauces and also improves boring soup, mashed potatoes, peas and so on.
However I can't use it much when I do the cooking because my wife is lactose intolerant - something like that anyway - and butter, milk and cream upset her stomach, poor darling.
I doubt very strongly that butter does anyone without this condition any harm unless they eat absolutely masses of it. In any case I wouldn't want to be taken for that despicable creature the 'Flora man', mincing about like a wally until he's 110.
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For any of you with a liking for Dr Alice Roberts, here's a recent Horizon presented by her:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z6zc7/Horizon_20102011_Are_We_Still_Evolving/
during which the business of lactose tolerance gets a brief airing.
As mentioned, it's a Northern European "evolution" - cause/effect being of farming stock.
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Learn something new every day.
The same is said of red hair, an adaptation originating in Northern Europe which allows us to manufacture our own vitamin D in the skin, in places where there is limited sunlight.
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And the downside of red hair is you have to stay in the forest, preferably:) So long as there is Lurpak (or similar lactic/ripened butter, i.e Dutch or German) on the table I don't mind.
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This is nice, offered with our meals on our bike trips to Bavaria.
www.kitchenproject.com/kpboard/recipes/KRAUTERBUTTER.htm
Never seen it here...it's very tasty.
Ted
(link edited - swearfilter blocked part of it for some reason)
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 9 Mar 11 at 16:39
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As reported further up, only butter will do for cooking.
I sautee in a mix of butter and olive oil. Butter goes in my sauces, and provides a nice "sheen" in gravy.
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a nice "sheen" in gravy.
>
>>>>>> you mean a torry canyon slurry on top surely?
yuck............
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>> (link edited - swearfilter blocked part of it for some reason)
>>
k raut perhaps?
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 9 Mar 11 at 22:36
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You'll never put a better bit of butter on your knife ........... www.sterlingtimes.org/memorable_images50.htm
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.
Last edited by: Perky Penguin on Fri 11 Mar 11 at 16:45
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A butter question - Dave_
