The obvious answer would be salt, right? Not so fast. The scone recipe below and some recent baking with a friend brought up the issue of salted versus unsalted butter, and I found myself explaining how salt is not the only difference between the two.
Salt is a preservative, and salted butter can last two to three months longer in the refrigerator than unsalted butter. So this actually means that salted butter is often much less fresh than unsalted, and sometimes has been made from cream that is less fresh as well.
Waah, I love salted butter so much! Any way of finding fresher salted butter? I can't buy both, I'll mix them up. And I hate having unsalted butter on my toast, it's horrible.
Anne (in Reno) - maybe you can buy both, and just keep the unsalted in the freezer (in its box, which is labeled), for baking only.
I use whipped salted butter in a little round tub for my toast and get the boxed sticks for everything else.
Thanks for the tip on freshness and salted butter. I always use unsalted anyway, but now I have one more reason.
So many foods we use overdo it with the salt. Particularly canned tomato products. When I'm making a pot of chili and using canned tomatoes and tomato paste, I won't even salt the meat as I brown it. Otherwise, the chili can end up overly salty. When possible, I buy no-salt-added diced tomatoes and paste, just so I can control the salt. For me, it's not a health issue--it's more the final taste of what I'm cooking.
I just use unsalted for everything and sprinkle my english muffin with kosher salt in the morning.
maybe i'm a control freak or maybe it's that i was brought up on unsalted butter but i totally prefer to do it myself. there's more of a play of texture & taste when you add your own salt (and what varieties of salt there are to choose from!). when you salt it yourself you get some bites of pure smooth creaminess, some crunchy saltiness -- and on hot sweet muffins or with a good brie, there's no salt to distract you.
The only food with enough salt is salt.
Does salt even preserve butter?
I'm talking out my butt here, but here's my thinking: Butter goes bad because of rancidification. At least, when my butter is noticeably bad, it usually has a visible ring of nasty rancidness on the outside. I assume that's mostly an oxidation reaction. Salt, IIRC just retards bacterial growth, so it shouldn't affect this. Maybe in the days before refrigeration it was necessary, but I bet it doesn't do too much today.
I think this salt thing is just a myth created by the unsalted butter mafia.
Am I the only one who thinks there's less water in unsalted butter? It seems that way to me anyway, which is why I think pastry always turns out better with unsalted butter.
I love unsalted butter for eating - I totally prefer it to salted. Maybe because it is fresher, which I didn't know till you told us.
Okay, I know this is a stupid question but it still confuses me. Whenever I look for unsalted butter, I find that the package says "sweet unsalted butter." So I'm assuming that butter comes in two varieties: sweet (aka unsalted) and salted. But is it really three? Sweet unsalted, regular unsalted, and salted? Or even also maybe sweet salted? Sorry I'm a doofus.
In general, salted butter does have more water in it then unsalted, I just can't remember who did the lab tests...probably Cook's Illustrated. Sweet butter refers to the lack of salt these days, although in the past, you could get a cultured (sour) unsalted butter, and you still can, but I think Organic Valley still labels theirs sweet unsalted even though it is cultured!
regards,
trillium
Yes, usually "sweet cream" will refer to unsalted - which is what totally screwed me up at Whole Foods recently. I grabbed sweet cream butter, got home and used it, then realized it was salted. It said in tiny, tiny letters somewhere - "Salted Sweet Cream," Very bad labeling. It's still sitting in my freezer.