In Denmark most of the butter is salted and the Danish are definitely a butter nation. I'm wondering how nobody tried to introduce some of this "japanese butter tools" to Denmark. There might be a business case here.
Indeed. The butter I buy here in Denmark is also 80% fat, and it tastes nothing like the blandness of US butter. Speaking personally, though, I definitely prefer Danish butter to French butter, but French butter is still really good.
I lived in France for years and am very familiar with all the fanciest and best quality butters from there to New Zealand. Butter is universally boring, and the multivariate superiority of margarine is quite clear if one bothers to see beyond the veil of appeal-to-nature snobbery and explore and appreciate one of the pinnacles of humankind's achievement.
I'll have to see if I can find it at a store. I'm always down to improve my butter experience. I will say that I was very let down by Kerrygold. It's noticeably better if you are having just plain buttered toast, but otherwise I can't taste any difference between it and the normal butter one sees at the store.
I've only been living in Denmark for 4 years, but nearly every single julefrokost or påskefrokost I've been to used lard instead of butter as the initial layer for the smørrebrød.
I had this butter once at a restaurant not long after this article was originally published. I was excited to try it and while the color was indeed distinctive, just as the photos show, I did not notice it being noticeably better than other nice butters you get at very good restaurants (this particular one had 2 Michelin stars).
If they say it's the world's best, I'll believe them. I definitely do not have the most refined palate. I love the smell of great coffee but don't really taste the difference.
I wasn't aware it's particularly fancy, as you can get it even in discount supermarkets here (Germany) - it costs a bit more than the house brand butter but not by much (I think KG is something like €2-something for 250g).
Interesting to see this article pop up. I recently became obsessed with finding the best butter after having some on a trip to France last year, and so I rounded up a few contenders and my wife and I did a double-blind taste test. All butter was demi-sel. Results were:
Clover came in dead last by far, even though it's generally considered a respectable northern California butter. More surprisingly, neither my wife nor I liked Bordier much at all (and it was difficult to find — we ended up locating small samples of it at ONE65 in SF). It definitely had the most unique flavor and color of the batch, although I can't say it was one that I found very pleasing. I'm almost wondering if I got a bad batch since everyone raves about it so much. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get ahold of Diane St. Clair's butter to test, although I would love to try it at some point.
Échiré though is amazing. I can't get enough of it. I honestly didn't like butter all that much before trying it, and now I use it in everything I can. There's just something about how creamy and unusually flavorful it is.
Come on, I must have been raised in another Denmark from a parallel universe then?
Fedtemadder (lard on bread) is an essential part of the danish smørebrødsbord (open sandwich table). It is common to use lard instead of butter on speciel occasions, like Christmas for example. And it tastes great :-P
I agree with your post, I just want to add something to this.
Aside from just choosing between butter and margarine, there are also "spreadable butter" products, which mix butter with vegetable fats, for a spreadable consistency and a better saturated:unsaturated fats ratio. The one I have in my fridge right now tastes exactly like butter, but has ~500kcal per 100g instead of the ~700kcal in pure butter. The only downside is that it melts faster on warm toast.
The ingredients are butter, rapeseed oil, water and salt, so it's not some weird industrial concoction. Do avoid the types with palm oil and such, though. They're less sustainable and I find them to have a slightly garlicky off taste.
> They list stuff like a "pinch" of salt or a "stick" of butter.
I don't understand the complaint here. A stick of butter is half a cup, 8 tablespoons. The standardization is more ironclad than pretty much any other product you can get in a grocery store.
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