Looking For A Cheaper Alternative To Butter?

kbarty

yup I tried butter making with the kids as per the HFW book - worked like a charm, really easy.

silverfoxdude

Just to clarify then, should we steer clear of the Utterly Buttery's and I Cant Believe's?? Give the kids butter too?

Sorry for being a bit dense lol

Magentasue

silverfoxdude wrote:

Just to clarify then, should we steer clear of the Utterly Buttery's and I Cant Believe's?? Give the kids butter too?

Sorry for being a bit dense lol

Depends on how you think about it! For me, the answer to both your questions is Yes. Others are happy to eat margarine and don't want to pay more to eat butter so they would say No.

Penny-Pincher!!

Evening All

I think I will continue using the buttery tasting spreads ATM but am going to buy a block of butter to see whether I can cut down at all-so if I switch to butter it will be similar in price to what im spending now IYKWIM..lol Hopefully, I wont need to use so much!

Due to health reasons I need a high fat/calorie diet so butter being pure fat is not a problem.

I asked earlier how people store their butter. I used to buy the M&S spreadable butter which was great as it was kept in the fridge, but when ive used normal packet butter in the past, it is either too hard in fridge or too soft in kitchen Also, if kept out after a day or so it tastes slightly off as if its turning...hope you understand what i mean.

In lakeland they have an insulated butter dish but is quite expensive. Has anyone used this or can point me in the right direction for good butter dish? I dont like the idea of taking enough butter out for the day.

Sorry again for my earlier post

PP
xx

Magentasue

Well I have two cheap butter dishes so that one is in use when the other goes in the dishwasher. There are six of us, four with adult appetites so a block of butter doesn't have time to go off. This weather is no problem, the kitchen is warm enough that the butter doesn't go rock hard. In summer I put it in the fridge overnight, bring it out when I get up and only keep half a block at a time out.

If it gets left on the table in the sun, it goes runny, when this happens I give whoever is responsible the evils and use the butter for cheese sauce, bread and butter pudding or similar. An insulated dish sounds good but haven't tried one.

AussieLass

I buy my butter in the 500g block. I cut it in half and pop in (old marg container;)) I keep the other bit wrapped up. You just have to train yourself the first thing to do before preparing br/lu/dinner is get the butter out. By the time you are ready it will be soft. But always put it back in the fridge. I wouldn't leave it out on the cupboard. But you have a more freezing temp than us. Ha Ha. I've never had my butter go 'off' & it can get to 40 in my kitchen. (yearns for freezing) When making my DH lunches I always spread butter on frozen bread. Makes it so much easier.

student100

I don't use much butter, margarine or whatever as a general rule. I often do without butter on sandwiches etc, or sometimes use low-fat cream cheese as an alternative. However when I do require a butter-like product I use the supermarket own brand Sunflower Spread (equivalent to Flora but half the price), which, as far as I can tell, doesn't actually contain any hydrogenated veg oils (Flora boasts that it doesn't, and looking at the ingredients list on the supermarket Sunflower Spread they list sunflower oil but it's not hydrogenated).


Here is the ingredients from Sainsburys Sunflower Spread (86p for 1kg). Although it is a "processed food" and "full of chemicals"...every food you buy is processed to some extent, and everything in life is made of chemicals. I don't think there's an awful lot there to do you too much harm:

Sunflower Oil (38%), Water, Vegetable Oils, Whey, Salt (1.5%), Lactic Acid, Flavouring, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Colour: Carotenes, Vitamin D.

Sunflower Oil is a natural product.
Water is hopefully not harmful...
Vegetable Oils means rapeseed or other natural vegetable oils.
Whey is a product of milk.
Salt is just salt...excess salt is bad for you but some is required in the diet.
Lactic acid is a naturally occuring acid, used in the production of cheese and many dairy products.
Flavouring is a "chemical additive" which makes the spread taste more buttery, but it's not inherintly unhealthy (it will be only be present in tiny tiny proportions).
The vitamins are added to make the spread have some of the vitamin content of butter. They're all essential in the diet.
Carotenes are naturally occuring yellow colourings - they're what make carrots orange.


I don't think there's anything in the list that's actually scary, or that unhealthy, when eaten in small quantities. The spread is only 59% fat (the rest is mostly water) so from that point of view it's "healthier" than butter, which is over 80% fat, or olive oil, which is 100% fat. But of course the best option is just to use as little butter or equivalent as possible.



Edit: Further information. Sainsbury's have a press release about trans fats, that confirms amongst other things that Sainsbury's Sunflower Spread (Flora-equivalent) is "low in trans fats".
It's also worth noting that trans fats occur naturally in meat and dairy products; according to the Ban Trans Fats website, butter is 60% saturated fat and 5% trans fat. Sunflower oil (not hydrogenated) is only 10% saturated fat and 0% trans fat. Food for thought.

Edit 2: The list of ingredients from Sainsbury's Sunflower Spread above was taken from the sainsburystoyou.co.uk website. I looked on the tub of spread that I have in the fridge, and it seems they missed one ingredient from the list on the website. Emuslifiers: Mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, appears below Salt in the list. A bit of googling reveals that these are also known as E471. They are naturally occuring within some vegetable oils, and are added to margarine because they help emulsify the oil/water mixure (i.e. ensure that the oil and water stay mixed together), and they are widely used in a variety of foods. There is some more info here.

Finally, note that I have only singled out Sainsbury's spread here because Sainsburys happens to be my local supermarket and therefore that is what I have in the fridge. I also have a tub of Asda's Sunflower Spread which appears to be identical in ingredients and nutritional info to the Sainsbury's one, I suspect they are made by the same manufacturer.

bootman

I made teh HFW butter recipe - It took about 10 minutes. Put the double cream in a jam jar shook and shook. It is really nice!!!

I think that book River Cottage Family Cookbok is great. I have made the Pasta,bread,fruit bread and butter.

Anne_Marie_2

It's just got to be butter for me, wins hands down anytime. I love the Lurpak kind of butter, not the yellow type, so most kinds in silver paper are quite acceptable for my palate. Don't know what it is about the other butters, just don't like the taste - probably because Mum always bought Lurpak when we were young. Margarine was for baking. I always keep it in the fridge. Usually cut block in half, place in butter dish (stainless steel), and if I remember, take it out 1/2 hour before using for spreading. For anything else like jacket potatoes, I like a bit of butter with a bit of potato - not already melted in the middle - love the combination of cold and hot, so have a chunk of cold butter on the side - and if I have a hot plate, put my butter into an individual wee dish, just so it doesn't melt!
Love it with jacket and new potatoes, also on cold toast, perhaps on the odd scone, pancake, crumpet.
Before you lot get on at me, don't really use a lot of butter, one block easily lasts a month - just with some things it has to be butter!
Sandwiches - tend not to use butter, usually have so much salady stuff, tomatoes etc they are moist enough, or because I've forgotten to take butter out of fridge, spread with a bit of mayonnaise, or some Clover.
Mashed potatoes, usually use butter, but do also use olive oil which gives a totally different flavour, but really scrummy too. Sometimes add chopped spring onions or chives, grated cheese, either separately or together. Olive oil also good when mashing potatoes with other root veg such as carrots or turnips (swedes) - spring onions also good with mash combination.
As for marg or substitutions for butter - have tried lots and never been happy until I found Clover. It's about the nearest to butter taste that I have found, and stops the rest of them moaning when I've forgotten to take butter out of the fridge. It's not cheap, I only buy it when its bogof, but usually buy about 4, and that lasts us ages - at least until the offer comes on again.
Clover ingredients - taken from the tub
Vegetable oils, Buttermilk 29%, water, skimmed milk, cream, salt (1.7%), Emusifiers E471, Soya lecithin, flavourings, Vitamins E, A & D, Colour E160a
No Hydrogenated oils - half the saturated fat of butter - suitable for vegetarians.

Forgot to add, when recipes say saute in butter, normally use olive oil, but for curries where they say ghee, usually use some olive oil and butter, but sometimes use bit of clover in place of butter.

Magentasue

student100 wrote:

I don't think there's an awful lot there to do you too much harm:

I don't think there's anything in the list that's actually scary, or that unhealthy, when eaten in small quantities. The spread is only 59% fat (the rest is mostly water) so from that point of view it's "healthier" than butter, which is over 80% fat, or olive oil, which is 100% fat.

Well maybe, but I'm pretty sure many of the oils in margarine are obtained by chemical extraction. Then they have to be bleached, deoderised and refined (again by chemicals) before the manufacturing process even begins. Something drastic must happen to the oils and water to make a stable spread.

Pumping something with water doesn't make it healthy, does it?