As promised, this is the second installment of my butter researches, inspired by Elaine Khosrova's fun microhistory Butter: a Rich History.
Some varieties I found at the store
For starters, while no one needs to be told that butter tastes wonderful, we were told it was a nutritional no-no for so long that it's worth reviewing where butter is a nutritional yes-yes. Especially pastured butter, where cows' milk has benefited from all the goodies grass contains.
- Butter is chock-full of fat-soluble vitamins like A (vision, immune system, skin health), D, E, and K. We hear a lot in the Northwest about being Vitamin-D-deficient, given our sun's tendency to hide behind rain and clouds and our own tendency to cower in fear from the remaining sun exposure. Our resulting deficiency might lead to chronic diseases and even depression. Because we make vitamin D in response to sunshine, it's not much found in foods unless we add it back, like in milk. But vitamin D is naturally present in butter. Ditto for vitamin E.
- Grass-fed butters are rich in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), which prevents cell damage through its antioxidant powers.
And let's not forget vitamin K2 (not like the mountain--it's just that SquareSpace won't let me do subscripts). K2 promotes "healthy skin, forming strong bones, preventing inflammation, supporting brain function, reversing arterial calcification (aka 'hardening of the arteries')," and even helps to prevent cancer. Yowza.
If the fancy butters are cost-prohibitive, consider saving the grass-fed butter for when you're eating it straight on toast or biscuits or vegetables, and using less exciting stuff for baking. I made biscuits this week from her book recipe, in order to showcase butter.
Topped with pastured butter AND homemade apricot jam
I won't bother inserting her recipe here because it was pretty standard for a biscuit, although she added the trick of folding the patted-out rectangle of dough into thirds, patting out into a rectangle again, and folding in thirds once more. This gives you the layers of flaky biscuit you would find in a storebought canned biscuit. Pretty and delightful! She also substituted some cake flour for all-purpose flour, to increase lightness, but I thwarted this by substituting some whole-wheat pastry flour for all-purpose (because, really, otherwise you might as well make cupcakes).
If you don't pick up Khosrova's book, here are some of her recommended butters which I've seen in our local stores. To this list, of course, we can add our farmers' butters, when the Market starts up again next month!
Recommended Butters
Clover Organic Farms Unsalted Butter & Farmstead Organic European-Style Butter with Sea Salt (California)
Organic Valley Salted Butter& Pasture Butter, Salted (Wisconsin)
Cabot Creamery Unsalted Butter & 83 Unsalted Butter (Vermont)
Challenge Butter (California)
Kerrygold Pure Irish Salted Butter (Ireland)
Land O'Lakes Unsalted Sweet Cream Butter & European Style Super Premium Unsalted Butter (Minnesota)
Lurpak Salted Butter (Denmark)
Plugra European Style Unsalted Butter (Missouri)
Straus Family Creamery European-Style Organic Salted Butter (California
Tillamook Unsalted Sweet Cream Butter (Oregon)
We like salted butter, ourselves, even if the recipe calls for unsalted. And do note that not all the butters listed above are pastured, if that matters to you. Read the labels and have at it!
