15-05-2025
The best and worst supermarket salted butter
Remember the fuss a couple of years ago when the average cost of a block of butter hit an all time high of £2.36? The nation was in shock as 750g of Lurpak spreadable soared to £7 and security stickers started to appear on the silver and blue boxes.
Well, that same Lurpak tub now costs £8.25, and after a brief price drop last year, the average 250g block of butter costs £2.41.
Lurpak butter – the real stuff, not spreadable, which is butter blended with rapeseed oil – was £2.15 for 200g just 18 months ago. Now it is £2.80, up 30 per cent. Even supermarket own brands have been hit, up from around £1.69 to £1.99, a rise of 18 per cent.
All this is bad news for fans of the 'butter diet', the latest loony fad to emerge from the reductivism of social media which involves snacking on slabs of butter straight from the pack.
But for those of us who love butter for spreading and cooking, high prices mean it's worth being extra careful which pack you pick up. There's certainly plenty of choice. Sticking to salted butter, I found 42 kinds in the supermarkets.
How different could they be? Quite a bit it turned out. Producers tweak the texture and melting point of butter by adjusting the diet of the cows. Entirely grass-fed cows produce milk and cream that is generally higher in unsaturated fat.
Other cattle may be given feed supplements containing extra fat – sometimes palm oil – that boosts the fat content in the milk, and often increases the proportion of saturated fat. This makes for a harder butter – useful for pastry but less good for those watching their saturated fat intake.
Flavours varied from milky – an indication of 'sweet cream' butter, made without fermentation – to distinctly cheesy, meaning they are made with a bacterial culture similar to the kinds added to cheese or yogurt. The salt, usually about 1.5 per cent but sometimes as much as 4 per cent, might be evenly incorporated or, in the posher butters, left as crunchy crystals. But posh or not, there's plenty of good stuff to eat with your toast – or even without.
How we tested
A slice was cut from each of the 42 blocks of butter and labelled from A-Z and 1-16 to anonymise the samples. They were then given 30 minutes to come to an internal temperature of approximately 18C. The butters were tasted on a spoon, judging for texture and flavour.
At a glance
