What's your butter?

[grcelizabeth]

What brand and type of butter do you use? Weston Price mentions using real butter from raw milk and I've been reading about the benefits of real butter. However, he says to use a LOT (haven't researched why) and I'm curious what everyone uses since it's expensive to use raw butter and often. So.... what brand/type do you get, where, and how much? Thanks for any input you may have as well.

[mbravebird]

I have some raw butter that I use on things I won't be heating much/at all, like toast or smoothies. Otherwise, I use lard that I've rendered myself for sauteing, and regular butter or Kerrygold butter(it's grassfed but pasteurized) for things like popcorn or baking. Buying raw butter in huge amounts is just too expensive for us, unfortunately.

But I do keep the Butter Oil (made by Green Pastures, in the same way that Weston Price suggested) on hand as a nutritional supplement -- that's a concentration of all the nutrients in grass-fed butter. It takes about 8 pounds of cream, I believe, to make one jar of Butter Oil? It's effective and expensive, but I figure it's worth it to have on hand. I supplement with it occasionally, and I give it to my kids occasionally.

What Weston Price was really aiming for when suggesting lots of butter was what he called "Activator X", which has since been found to be vitamin K2. K2 works synergistically with A and D, which works synergistically with minerals, and does all sorts of great things for the body, particularly in the area of bone and tooth health.

But you can get K2 from other things, which is what we do since we don't do a lot of good butter. K2 is abundant in grass-fed liver, in fish eggs, and in some fermented foods. Liver is pretty affordable, so that's our main source of K2 right now. I give my baby lots of fish eggs, and that's his main source of K2 right now, in addition to the liver.

[cristeen]

Raw butter is about $24/lb here, so there's no way I can afford it. I use KerryGold.

[dogmom327]

We go through a ton of butter so we use a local creamery with good practices (primarily grass fed, no antibiotics/hormones). I do sometimes buy Kerrygold and we do take butter oil for the k2.

[Magelet]

It's seasonal, and also depends on price. (raw butter is too expensive, same price as cristeen said. though I may start making raw butter occasionally, it won't be our staple).

we buy organic valley summer pasture butter, straus butter (spring-fall, they are primarily grass-fed though not entirely, and their butter is QUITE yellow some months.), and organic valley cultured butter. It depends on what is yellowest at the time. Occasionally we'll buy kerrygold, or other butters, not super often though. (I love a local butter from the farmer's market it's not raw, but it's the yellowest, most amazing butter I've every tasted. It's 10 dollars a pound, but it seems much yellower than the only raw butter I've seen here. Last summer we bought half a pound once, as a treat.)

[Brown Lioness]

raw butter from my farmer and Kerry Gold butter to cook with.

[sunny*pa*mom]

I get raw butter from a local farm for $6/lb. It has no antibiotics or hormones and is pastured. $24 is insane! I loooove butter!

[tinuviel_k]

This year I am going to stock up on Organic Vally pasture butter while it is in season and freeze it for later use.
I love Kerrygold butter and I think it is amazing in quality, but I am starting to feel that the environmental costs of shipping it across the ocean from another country are not worth the benefits to my family.

[Koalamom]

Originally Posted by mbravebird

But you can get K2 from other things, which is what we do since we don't do a lot of good butter. K2 is abundant in grass-fed liver, in fish eggs, and in some fermented foods. Liver is pretty affordable, so that's our main source of K2 right now. I give my baby lots of fish eggs, and that's his main source of K2 right now, in addition to the liver.

I didn't know there was much k2 in grass fed liver.
I just found a source for some at well over a pound package for $5. We have been devouring it lately. I guess where I read said that liver wasn't that high, as you would need to eat pounds of it to get enough k2, but perhaps that it the non grass fed type they were talking about.

We use kerrygold and make it into ghee since we are allergic to butter. I may switch to Purity Farms Ghee, as I think they are 100% grass fed?

[Llyra]

We use the organic valley cultured pasture butter most of the time. I get it for $6 a pound, which is a lot, but not totally prohibitive for us. Sometimes when I'm strapped for cash I'll buy ordinary storebrand certified-organic butter, which is yellower than the conventional butter and so I deduce must be a bit better. Recently I made a trip to get raw butter (gotta travel to PA for it) and it was terrific, but the price and the drive mean we won't have it often. I want to stock up in midsummer and freeze some of it, so I'm working on saving the $$$.

[mbravebird]

Originally Posted by bluebirdmama1

I didn't know there was much k2 in grass fed liver.
I just found a source for some at well over a pound package for $5. We have been devouring it lately. I guess where I read said that liver wasn't that high, as you would need to eat pounds of it to get enough k2, but perhaps that it the non grass fed type they were talking about.

We use kerrygold and make it into ghee since we are allergic to butter. I may switch to Purity Farms Ghee, as I think they are 100% grass fed?

I read somewhere it was high -- I think it was a TF blog. But now I can't remember where! I hope it's right; I've been depending on that.

ETA: in poking around quickly before heading to bed, I can't find the original thing that I read, just some vague references to "organ meats" being high in K2. But then it seems like, from Chris Masterjohn's article, that Goose liver and chicken liver are really much higher in K2 than beef liver, which is what I've been having. Goose liver is an amazing source of K2, apparently. I wonder where you get foie gras that isn't from commercially force-fed birds? The commercial foie gras is supposed to be awful.

[gardenmommy]

Well, I have to say, I am super spoiled. My parents have the cows, my mom makes the butter, and I get as much raw milk, butter, and cream as we can use. So, all our butter is raw. If we didn't have the arrangement we currently have, we would not be using raw butter like we are now. I would use it more like a condiment, I think.

[mama1803]

We use Kerrygold. The kiddos also get Green Pasture's HVBO everyday as well.

[RGHS150]

We use organic valled cultured butter (summer edition when available) when topping or finishing off dishes. I buy just a regular organic butter for cooking.

I'd love to buy raw butter, but the cost is quite prohibitive.

I try to keep the "Good, better, best" rule of thumb in my head when shopping. Not everything we eat can be the best, but if most things are at least good then we are headed in the right direction. Using an organic butter for cooking or a cultured butter for spreading may not be the holy grail of butter consumption, but it is entirely better than using margarine or vegetable oil.

[alireb]

We use Organic Valley Summer Edition Pasture Butter for cooking. At the table, we use farm butter from a local farm that is in a tub. They're both pretty expensive but worth it because they taste amazing!

[mamadelbosque]

We get raw-milk butter from our herd share... 1.5 pounds a month.