In my search for cultured butter I found butter that lists
culture distillate or lactic acid
as ingredients. Should these butters be considered cultured, even though the package nowhere actually says “cultured”?
What’s the definition of “cultured butter”
buttercultured-food
Related Solutions
Butter and cooking oil are not interchangeable in every recipe.
Butter actually has water in it, while oil is a pure lipid. This can cause problems with water-sensitive preparations, for example a choux paste (where the proper ratio of water to flour is extremely important) or anything using melted chocolate (where the water in butter can cause it to seize).
Butter can also be whipped; oil definitely cannot (except coconut oil). You normally wouldn't use olive or sunflower oil in, for example, an icing.
Butter is a solid at room temperature, while oil is a liquid. When making something that needs to be relatively solid - for example, bread or pie dough or anything requiring a beurre manié - you do not want to substitute butter for oil. Shortening is a better substitute.
Butter has a much lower smoke point and will scorch at temperatures that oils are often subjected to. You have to be very careful when frying anything in butter, and you'll need to watch carefully if baking with butter at very high temperatures.
You have to understand the recipe you are making if you want to know how to do the conversion (or if a conversion is even possible). If the recipe is fat-dependent, you need to use more butter than oil. If it is water-dependent, you generally should use less butter. If it is both, you likely can't do a direct substitution and will have to add or remove something else. And if the recipe relies on the solid/liquid state of the fat, then you simply cannot substitute.
Muffins just happen to be one of those things where it really doesn't matter much. Like all quickbreads, you can vary the amount of fat substantially and all it will do is change the texture of the final dish; quickbreads with more fat tend to be richer, more moist, and less dense. The Joy of Cooking recipe for waffle batter recommends anywhere from 1/4 cup to 1 cup of butter, which is a pretty wide margin of error; in recipes like that, you can usually play fast and loose with the substitutions.
It's not hard: First milk cow :-), then let the milk settle in the fridge for a day or two. Skim the cream off the top
Use a food processor, or hand shake in a cocktail mixer or similar sized jar (only about a 100 ml at a time)
First you get whipped cream (2 to 5 minutes), then another minute of shaking and suddenly butter appears
It should separate very cleanly, with watery whey (save for soft cheese making), and lots of rough yellowish fat globules. If it still looks smooth it needs more shaking
If you want to keep the butter for any length of time you will need to wash it a few times with clean water, and squeeze the water out of it after each wash
The colour you get depends on what your cows have been eating. It can be quite white
There is no need for heating, or any other additives
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- Buttermilk – How to Culture Fresh Buttermilk with Yogurt
- My cultured butter homogenised again after separating
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Best Answer
We're not all going to agree on a definition of cultured butter, so these answers are going to be subjective.
Culture distillate (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=184.1848) and lactic acid are both used for flavoring. Is cultured butter butter that tastes a certain way, or butter that's been prepared a certain way?
How about a more common food: would you call it smoked salmon if it hadn't really been smoked, but only flavored with liquid smoke? There are reasonable arguments on both sides. Perhaps you consider smoked salmon to be a dish made with salmon that tastes smokey, regardless of how it's prepared. Perhaps you consider smoked salmon to be salmon that has been smoked, and you aren't really concerned with how it tastes.
Personally, I like to know what I'm eating (not just the flavor of what I'm eating). Calling something cultured butter suggests something about how it was made (fermented with live bacteria cultures), so calling cultured-flavored-butter "cultured" seems a bit dishonest for my taste.