BUTTER
Available in many forms—salted or unsalted, whipped, cultured, and clarified—butter is a versatile ingredient with unparalleled taste and performance. California is the largest butter producer in the United States. Ask your distributor for butter with the Real California Milk seal, which means quality and sustainably sourced from California dairy farm families.
BUTTER AS AN INGREDIENT
Everything is Better with Butter
Butter is a crucial ingredient in the back-of-the-house. Due to a simple ingredient deck – for sweet butter, the only ingredient is cream; salted butter contains cream and salt – it’s undergoing a resurgence due to strong consumer desire for natural foods.
Chefs love butter’s versatility in cooking and baking as it adds robust flavor, moisture to dishes, golden-brown searing, and much more. It enriches dishes like sautés, mashed potatoes, sauces, and baked goods, although because of a low smoke point, butter requires cooking over medium-to-low heat to prevent burning – unless clarified butter is used.
Butter Benefits in Cooking & Baking:
- Flavor & Richness: Imparts a distinct, rich dairy flavor.
- Tenderness & Texture: By coating flour proteins, glutens are restrained, resulting in tender baked goods; also, creates flakiness in laminated doughs like croissants.
- Moisture: Adds moisture to cookies, cakes and breads.
Browning & Caramelization: Helps caramelize and brown surfaces, which is due to the milk solids in butter. - Structure: Contributes to the composition of baked items, augmenting their expansion or rise.
- Emulsification: Creates a thicker, more viscous, and glossy sauce (like hollandaise) that clings better to food.
BUTTER FOR CHEFS
Versatile Applications Provide More Flavor, Creaminess & Consistency
- High Quality Assurance: USDA Grade AA Butter with the highest score of 93. Made from sweet cream with excellent flavor, texture and color, it meets or exceeds the highest quality standards.
- Clean Label: Minimal processing, gluten-free, zero trans fats to national specifications.
- Trustworthy: California is the No. 1 producer of butter in the U.S. and leads the nation in producing private label butter for foodservice.
- Leaders in Sustainability: California’s 1,000+ dairy farm families have set the standard in sustainable production and have a legacy of producing food that’s good for people and the planet.
Key Uses in Cooking
- Sautéing & Browning: Use over medium heat for vegetables, meats, or fish to develop rich, nutty flavors.
- Baking: Creates flakiness in pastries (like croissants) by keeping dough layers separate and traps steam in cakes for tenderness.
- Sauces & Soups: Adds creaminess, richness, and mouthfeel; swirl in at the end for gloss or use as a base for pan sauces.
- Finishing: Melt over steamed vegetables, steaks or hot bread, or add to mashed potatoes for richness and flavor.
- Spreading: Universally loved as a simple condiment.
BUTTER FOR DISTRIBUTORS
Reinforce Your Product Line with California Butter
Drive Sales with Solids: Start with high-demand staples to grow butter category sales. About 80% of all street customers use some form of butter.
Maximize Versatility: From bakeries to restaurants, butter remains a key ingredient.
Market Awareness: Stay ahead of trends and highlight California’s competitive edge and sustainability initiatives.
Types of Butter & Key Applications
- Solids: Representing 70% of butter volume in the U.S. Ideal for baking, cooking, and everyday use.
- Whipped Butter: Perfect for spreads; lower density allows cost savings without compromising flavor.
- Clarified Butter: Near-pure butterfat (98-99%), excellent for sautéing and frying due to its higher smoke point.
- Bulk Butter: Available in 55 lb. (25 kg) blocks for industrial-scale applications.
- European-Style Butter: While U.S. standard butter is 80% butter fat, European-style butter is churned to 82% butter fat, resulting in a creamier taste and silkier texture.
Butter attributes
Facts
- Butter is made by churning or shaking pasteurized cream until the milkfat separates from the remaining fluid, which is also known as buttermilk. After churning, the butter is rinsed and salted, if desired, and excess buttermilk is removed.
- Real California butter contains at least 80% milkfat, 18% water and 2% solids (mainly protein and salt).
- Real California butter is full of nutrients including: Conjugated linoleic acid (an anti-inflammatory fatty acid), healthy saturated fats, butyrate (an anti-inflammatory), and Vitamins A, D, E, and K2.
Storage & Handling
- Store butter in the refrigerator tightly wrapped or in a covered dish.
- Keep it away from highly aromatic foods so it doesn’t pick up foreign flavors.
- Keep butter at room temperature for short periods, but refrigerate to maintain peak flavor.
- To freeze butter, overwrap the original package with aluminum foil.
- Frozen salted butter will generally maintain best quality for about 12 months, while unsalted butter will stay at peak quality for about six months; in both cases, the butter will remain safe beyond those times.
- Subsequently, to soften butter quickly, cut it into 1/8 inch slices and place the slices in a bowl. Or grate the frozen butter with a box grater. For best results, do not soften butter in a microwave.
- The “best used by” date stamped on butter packaging tells you how long the product will be at top eating quality.
Real Butter Makes a Real Difference
- As a cooking ingredient, butter is better because of its rich flavor, moisture, and ideal melting properties.
- Butter has a higher smoke point than olive oil and enhances the flavor of everything it’s cooked with, such as meats and vegetables. Butter also adds a silky, creamy texture to sauces that provides a vibrancy and improved mouthfeel. New uses for butter include as an ingredient in tomato sauces and in coffee, in place of cream or milk.
- When cooking with butter, chefs recommend cutting it into pieces before melting. Additionally, butter continues to cook after it is taken off the heat – it’s best to monitor cook time for maximum flavor. Chefs prefer unsalted or “sweet” butter to control the salt amounts in recipes.
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