86% Butterfat Sea Salt Cultured Butter

All butter used to be cultured. You milked the cows, you let the cream sit out overnight, and by the morning when you would churn it, it was cultured. That's basically what the folks at Vermont Creamery are doing at a grand scale: they're making cultured butter for the masses and professional bakers/cooks like us. 

Most of us have grown up with sweet cream butter in our fridge and at our table. This butter isn't cultured or fermented or anything like that; it's just cream that was churned until smooth. Sometimes they add a bit of salt, but basically that's it. To make cultured butter, bacterial cultures are added to the pasteurized milk and the mixture is allowed to sit and ferment overnight. But most butter makers agree: the longer you let it ferment, the better it tastes. At Vermont Creamery they start with cream from a local cooperative of farms, and they culture it for twenty hours which gives the butter a hint of hazelnut and buttermilk flavor.

Now let's talk butterfat.  The sticks you see in the grocery store are 80% butterfat (the rest is water and solids). This cultured butter from Vermont Creamery is 86%... so basically this amp goes to "11." More seriously and scientifically, going from 82% to 86% butterfat drastically changes the flavor and texture of the butter. There's considerably less water in 86% compared to 82% and that makes this butter more elastic and even has a higher smoke point.

Most importantly: it just tastes better. And we're all about chasing the better flavors.

The last step is to add sea salt. In this case, they use crunchy crystals for a little extra burst of texture and flavor.

This 86% butterfat cultured butter has been kept as a secret stash for professional use only—until now. See how much great butter can change your eating today. It's a revelation.