Salted vs. Unsalted butter

sparchee · 7時間前

It is much harder to remove salt from a dish. If you start or finish a recipe with unsalted butter, you have the control over the salt level.

Lucretian · 7時間前

Often, it's precisely that reason: to control seasoning.

TheBongler · 5時間前

The only time I prefer salted butter is for pancakes and waffles topping. Salty butter and maple syrup great combination.

dkuznetsov · 3時間前

If I want salted butter, but only have unsalted one, I'll just sprinkle salt on it. I wouldn't be able to do reverse. Thus, I almost never buy salted butter.

YCYC · 6時間前

My granma was a farmer and despised salted butter. She used to say "a salted butter is a missed butter". Also the salt allows for a larger amount of water retention. During WWII she saw so many crooks selling shitty butter on the black market.

Lazdaa · 4時間前

I've heard salted for food and unsalted for baking.

Jendall · 6時間前

Doesn't unsalted butter go bad faster?

Bocconcini · 5時間前

I've noticed a difference in pie crust, and crusts when using salted butter vs unsalted. They never turn out quite right. I always bake with unsalted, but mostly cook with salted.

adambulb · 6時間前

The only reason I'd ever use salted butter is to spread on some bread. It always seemed weird to me that stores carry an even amount of salted and unsalted, when there's virtually no application for salted. I always just assumed it was a holdover from when salt had to be added as a preservative.

krum · 5時間前

I always use unsalted butter and add salt as required. The only reason salted butter is even a thing is the longer shelf life.

chefhanabal · 5時間前

The way it was explained to me in my cooking classes is that salt is a flavor enhancer. This means that the companies can use slightly lower grade ingredients and still have a flavorful product, while with unsalted, you have to have higher quality ingredients to reach the same level of flavor. If i ever need to have salted butter (ie, bread) I just sprinkle some on top.

accidental_tourist · 4時間前

I've never used salted butter. How is the taste different from simply adding salt to unsalted butter?

chicklette · 3時間前

I feel most American palette are geared toward saltiness, so i rarely use unsalted butter. Pie crust maybe, swiss buttercream for sure, maybe a few other applications. Salt really brings out the flavor in foods, and most recipes that call for unsalted butter are not salted enough, imo. That said, i usually use kirkland butter, which is lightly salted. For comparison, I have some kerrygold salted butter and whoa, is it salty. I could never use that for cooking.

McGuirk808 · 2時間前

Keep things simple.

Salted butter is table butter. It's delicious. Let people it to prepared food.

Unsalted butter is cooking butter. You add butter for an oil or for buttery flavor.

Use butter for butter, add salt for saltiness. Don't mix the two, it makes it harder to season properly.

Quiggibub · 5時間前

I have never, ever used unsalted butter after finding out how dull it tastes.

tgraefj · 3時間前

I think some of it may have to do with the chemistry of what you're cooking. Not really an issue unless you're baking though.

BlueSky1877 · 2時間前

Unsalted is your default go-to cooking butter. It simply lacks salt. Salt enhances, brings out, or may make more potent some flavors. That's why salted butter is usually your table butter or people add huge amounts of salt to food to bring out flavor.

Salted butter is better for non-cooking like on bread or pasta. You can use it for cooking! But it'll add a lot of salt to the recipe which might make sauces taste extra salty.

I say go for what you like. I love salty foods so I use salted butter. When cooking for others, unsalted butter and put salted butter on the table.

Sleisl · 2時間前

Unsalted for cooking, salted for eating.

nf5 · 10分前

It matters in baking not so much cooking eggs

Relax

breaddict · 4時間前

These days we see the logic of having control over seasoning using unsalted butter, but salted butter has been more common in typical American households for a long time. Most families didn't buy more than one kind of butter, and salted was what we had. It's what we used on toast, dinner rolls, popcorn, corn on the cob, cooked vegetables, etc. When I started baking in the 1970s, mainstream recipes called for salted butter, and the cookbook I learned to cook with, my mom's 1952 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, called for salted butter. If a recipe said "butter" it meant salted, and unsalted was specified as unsalted. This can be confusing now as unsalted butter is becoming more widely used but we're still using and sharing old recipes.

roadshoe · 5時間前

I'll add that the salt acts as a preservative, so given the shorter shelf life unsalted butter tends to be fresher than salted butter.

quaintspider015 · 5時間前

P.S. Since you probably have salted butter on hand, you should make some French chocolate chip cookies :).

gradient_x · 1時間前

This is one of those topics that I find maddeningly pretentious in the community ... you must use unsalted butter or you're a rube who's incapable of seasoning correctly. There's about 1/4 - 1/3 tsp of salt in a stick of butter. Big fucking deal. With the exception of some baked goods, EVERYTHING you're going to cook is going to require more salt than what comes from butter, and if you're seasoning to tastes it simply won't matter. At all. If you can find good butter that's salted, use it because the salt protects the flavor of the butter, and extra salt added to almost everything your'e cooking is unimportant if you're tasting as you cook ...

Now ask me how I feel about fucking cast iron ...

Shiranaru · 3時間前

I've also been told that since salt is a flavor enhancer, unsalted butter requires a higher degree of quality.

ThatSample · 2時間前

salted butter has a higher water content than unsalted butter.

marylou5 · 2時間前

I can't tell the difference between salted & unsalted butter. I switch back and forth randomly and it never makes any difference that I can tell. Am I the only one?

lucius_pixel · 2時間前

Sugar and Butter

cYzzie · 1時間前

its always better if you have control ... you can add as many salt you want to unsalted butter ... and the kind of salt you want - you have control.

esp. in baking which is more chemistry then cooking, have your ingredients as untainted as possible, if you really want to "learn" how your recipes behave etc. and how to get the maximum "wow" effect from them

jeexbit · 58分前

I always use unsalted butter for cooking - if I want more salt, I add it.

jewpanda · 35分前

What /u/Lucretian said.

Allows more control over the flavor of the dish. I'm no expert, but with all of the chemical reactions happening while cooking, using unsalted butter can just help that variable more.

If you were after a certain shade of blue for painting for instance, would you prefer to buy it pre mixed, or mix it together yourself to get exactly what you want?

Happy cooking! Cheers!

Edit: spelling

raymond4 · 26分前

Butter in baking is to reduce extra salt in the recipe. So if recipe calls for butter sugar and salt. Salt is added to bring out flavour of sugar and butter. If salt is in butter some of or all the second salt may be used. However in some instances it is there to assist with structure as salt acts upon dough structure, as in bread baking. In stove top or non baking applications slated butter has a lower smoke point and reduces shelf life especially if making ghee or clarified butter. It causes oils to oxidise that is why insulted butter is preferred. If you want salted butter us it as a condiment at the table.then use unsalted for everything else.

Skeeow · 18分前

I've read that the amount of salt in butter varies slightly, so if you're baking then it helps in having more precise measurements of salt.

sean_incali · 8分前

Too much salt will ruin a dish. Salted butter was a way to preserve the butter back in the old days. Now we don't need to so we use unsalted butter for the butter flavor.

And if you think unsalted butter is flavorless, you really need to buy a different brand of unsalted butter of learn what butter taste like.

Flavor isn't saltiness.

libbykino · 3時間前

Which type of butter is the "default" butter? When a recipe just says like "4 tbsp butter" without specifying which type, what kind am I supposed to use?

ryananderson · 1時間前

What a weird thread.

Unsalted butter = butter Salted butter = butter + some salt

You can control the salt level with unsalted much better than you can with salted. Recipes call for it because that's what they've tested with, and there's no universal salt reduction formula for using salted butter.

kevmo77 · 4時間前

Salted butter generally has less fat content. Fat being a key ingredient in baking, baking recipes will call for the butter with higher content: unsalted.

Dont_Order_A_Slayer · 1時間前

I don't like salted butter on anything. I can salt things myself and control the levels. But even then, nothing beats the cream flavor of unsalted, and rarely do things suffer with its inclusion.

But, for cooking, you really don't want to use salted butter for a few reasons.

1) and it might've been mentioned before, the water content is different. You're not getting the full, intended effect of the milkfat for the recipe you're using it in, if using salted butter.

2) There -is- a decidedly different taste between the two. You get butter flavor from unsalted, you get half (sometimes less) of that, with salted butter.

For whatever it's worth, I'm classically trained as a chef and have a fair deal of work/life experience to base my opinions from.

Eat what you like, but don't contribute to the death of who you cook for my adding more salt than you need to.

giveitago · 4時間前

Also, unsalted butter will mostly be fresher because salt acts as a preservative. Unsalted butter isn't flavorless, it's a your palate issue.

specofdust · 4時間前

Why do recipes so often call for unsalted butter?

Because even mass murdering paedophile nickelback fans need to eat...

CCV21 · 1時間前

The amount of salt in the butter may vary and that can throw off the taste in a recipe. The biggest benefit to using unsalted butter is health related. Using unsalted butter can significantly reduce the amount of salt in a person's diet. Especially if a person is consuming a pound of butter per month.

HerrAdventure · 3時間前

my roommate consistently asks for me to pick up "salted" butter. as a chef this kills me knowing she literally does not care about her ingredients. the salt the company adds is the lowest tier of salt crystals with no passion.

Cooking is not as black and white as some may feel. a key component is the spirit put into the food, that x-factor. Without it, the food comes out to be the premade/packed grocery store-chain, grab-n-go containers. It is just that...an easier way to avoid looking for the salt shaker.

shaking head towards roommate

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