Let's Go To Butter School
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From The New York Times, you're listening to The Wirecutter Show. Hey, everyone. It's The Wirecutter Show. I'm Christine Cyr-Claisset. I'm Kyra Blackwell. And I'm Rosie Guerin. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from The New York Times. Each week, we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better. This episode of The Wirecutter Show is called Let's Go to Butter School. Christine, Kyra, um...

just today learned that you are not in fact the same person that you have at least one big difference between you it's epic never never we're totally aligned on everything the same twins i know for a fact that i'm right about this two strong stances on a type of food

Which is? Christine is a butter fiend. Oh, I love butter. And Kyra, you don't even eat butter. Oh, I don't understand this, Kyra. This is weird. I'm sorry. I am. Powder keg. This is a powder keg. No, I shouldn't say that. It's not weird. I just mean, I... It's a shame. I want to know why. Why don't you eat butter? It's a dietary thing. Unfortunately, it wasn't by choice. Yeah, before you neg her. Yeah, how dare you, Christine. I'm so sorry.

No, I'm kidding. It's lame. I'm not even going to lie. It sucks to not be able to eat butter, especially when you love to eat because it's on everything. Right. My family loves butter. That's why I was so excited to see one of our newest food reviews, a taste test we just did at work. We tasted butter.

butter. We did salted and unsalted butter. Tasting butter. Tasting butter, Kyra. I'm sure you were sad to miss that day. But our kitchen team tried 17 butters that are widely available all over the country, and they figured out which ones are the best for spreading on bread,

which ones are the best for cooking with and baking with. And that's perfect timing because we're just about to Thanksgiving and it's time to bake some pies for a lot of people. And I'm personally really looking forward to my favorite Thanksgiving dish, which is buttermilk biscuits slathered in butter. Okay, but do you really need different butters for eating, baking, cooking? That just seems like a little much. Oh, come on, Kyra. Don't be a butter hater. Okay.

I mean, I attempt to bake, but mainly I cook and I do use alternative butters like vegan butters.

I like Earth Balance. To me, it kind of does seem like old school margarine. I don't really understand the difference, but it's fine. We're going to talk a little bit about that today, but really the star of the show is traditional butter. Yeah, traditional butter. But we did actually at the same time that we published this regular butter guide, we also did a vegan butter guide. So we do have some vegan recommendations. Honestly, even if you're not on team butter, you have to admit butter does make everything taste and look better. So I want to know, what are we doing today? Who are we talking to?

So today we're bringing on Leslie Stockton, who is one of our longtime senior kitchen writers and a friend of the podcast. She's reviewed everything from peanut butter to grills for Wirecutter. She's got 20 plus years working in pro kitchens, developing recipes and testing gear. So we talked with Leslie last week about the essential kitchen gear you need for Thanksgiving. But in that episode, we really didn't get into baking.

Leslie is an ace pie baker. For more than 15 years, she's made at least three pies for every Thanksgiving dinner. And she's developed pie recipes for magazines. That's right. Leslie is a phenomenal baker. I love, love her pies. After the break, we're going to talk with Leslie about how to pick out really good butter the next time you're in the supermarket. We'll be right back.

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New York Times cooking is great for when I have something in my refrigerator and I don't know what to do with it. I love sheet pan bibimbap. It said 35 minutes. It was 35 minutes. A weeknight dinner for us. I love the chicken coconut curry. It's a really easy meal. It's super versatile. I can make it a fully vegetarian dish. This turkey chili has over 17,000 five-star ratings. So easy, so delicious.

Doing everything in one pot, even like a green with the chicken, with the vegetables, helps the flavors, makes the cleanup easier because it's only one pot. The cucumber salad with soy, ginger and garlic. Oh my God, that is just to die for. If I want to go easy, I can find something easy. If I want to go a little more complex, I can go there as well. The instructions are so clear, so simple, and it just works. Recipes from New York Times cooking are more reliable and more delicious, really.

Hey, it's Eric Kim from New York Times Cooking. Come cook with us. Go to NYTCooking.com. The best pizza dough on earth.

Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Our guest today is Leslie Stockton, and she's been reviewing kitchen gear for Wirecutter since 2013. Before joining the Wirecutter kitchen team as a staff writer, she was a restaurant cook, a food editor at Martha Stewart Living, and Everyday Food magazines, a cookbook contributor, a food stylist, and a culinary producer. Her resume is stacked. She also headed up our recent taste test of butter at Wirecutter.

What can't she do? Leslie, I'm so pumped to have you back here. We talked to you last week all about the sort of essential Thanksgiving things that you need to have for making the turkey and all the sides, which was awesome. Thank you for coming then. Thank you for having me. And this week, we are going to dig into a little bit more of a niche topic, but one that also relates to holiday cooking and baking, which is butter. This is a huge topic. You just finished a review of 17 Butters.

But before we get into talking about butter, I want to just take a walk down memory lane because, Leslie, you and I met maybe like 15 years ago when we worked at Martha Stewart. We were working on a cookbook together. I remember that you really developed a lot of things that involved butter. So I remember you worked on recipes that involved making pies, slab pies, and other delicious treats using butter. Right. I

I used a lot of butter. We used a lot of butter in developing that cookbook. We used to joke that the vegetable purees in that book were 50% butter because they kind of were. That's true. There was a French chef in charge of that book and it was all butter all the time. Pierre.

whole baking pies because, you know, my grandma taught me how to make pies. She used Crisco. I learned how to make pie crust with butter at Martha Stewart. And they were delicious pies. Delicious. They were delicious. Now,

Now, butter is a really big topic. It's a complex ingredient that I think is more complex than people realize. And there's a lot that goes into what makes a butter, that gives a butter its flavor and texture, which is what you sort of dug into in this review that you just did. You worked with one of our other kitchen writers, Kira Murray Jordan. And this episode, I want you to essentially take us to butter school.

We are going to drag our dairy-free friend Kyra here along for the ride. Kicking and screaming. So first question. This is our freshman year. Walk us through what makes a good versus a bad butter. Well, it all starts with the cream. We've all heard that you are what you eat, but you are also what you eat eats. And so what that means is butter churned from cream

from a cow that has had a grass-fed diet is far superior to a grain-fed cow's resulting butter. And I will elaborate on that. So cows that graze at pasture, grass has beta-carotene, which is what gives butter that buttery yellow color. I always thought it was dye.

Sometimes it is. I think, yes, sometimes it is. So we'll get to that later. Stick a pin in that. Whereas cows that are fed a grain diet, there's no beta carotene in grain. And

So if you look at two sticks of conventional commercial butter, you know, store brand or whatever, and then like, I don't know, some Kerrygold or some European style butter, you can see the difference. That stick is very pale, but it's also kind of hard because grain fed cows produce butter that's

Kind of crumbly, almost. Whereas grass-fed butter has this smooth, like even right out of the refrigerator. I mean, it just like cuts like, well, you know, butter. Cows eat grass. Cows should eat grass, yeah. Cows make milk. Cows make milk. Milk turns into cream. Cream turns into butter. Cream rises to the top. The cream is skimmed off.

churned into butter. So you're saying that the process for grass-fed cows, you're getting that grassy flavor almost in the final product. Sometimes you get like a straight up pasture funk, which I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. It's awesome. It's delicious. And

And sometimes the grass can impart like a hazelnutty, sometimes walnut. Like, it's crazy. You are what you eat. Is there like a tell for the flavor or texture of a lower quality butter, like one of these sort of grain fed butters? It's crumbly. Like, it's hard. Yeah.

And it kind of tastes like nothing, especially if it's unsalted, because salt is a driver of flavor. So if you get salted butter, you will get more of a flavor because the salt drives the flavor. But with these less expensive butters, you will find that they add, quote unquote, natural flavoring because there isn't much flavor to it.

That's where you kind of veer into like that movie theater popcorn butter type of thing. But we can... Which is like a mood. I feel like that is not always the worst thing, like if you're actually making popcorn, but... Right, right. But that flavor is added because the actual grain-fed cream that becomes butter doesn't have enough flavor. Exactly. Exactly.

So let's continue on this educational journey that we have embarked on. And I want to talk a little bit about the difference between domestic and European butters. I noticed reading our guide that all of the favorite butters in this guide are all European. So we've got... Most of them. Most of them. Okay. So, but like the top tier ones are European, right? You've got Kerrygold. You've got... Let me butcher this for everyone. You've got...

Isigny, Saint-Mère. Isigny, Saint-Mère. Oh, wonderful. Okay. That one's a French one. The first one is Irish, Kerrygold, right? And then Finlandia, which I would assume is Finnish. So you've got these northern European countries. This is where these butters are coming from. Why? Yeah. What are they doing to the cows over there? What are they doing? Happy cows?

Okay, yes, they're grass-fed because Europeans understand that good dairy comes from grass-fed cows. It's actually better for you physically. Grass-fed cows make delicious milk. Period. Case closed. But also, that French one, Isigny-Solmer?

That is a cultured butter. Cultured butter is very popular, and I'm going to explain what it is. Basically, most butter that you're going to buy in France is cultured butter. And what they do is they ferment the cream for 24 to 48 hours. It's a light fermentation before churning it. And what that does is it gives it this little tiny little flick, little zing, little treble note at the end in the finish.

And it really rounds it out, especially if you're dealing with a really nice butter that has those

Hazelnut notes that it gets from the pasture and nice crystals of salt. And then you get this little surprise at the end that just kind of like rounds it all out. So it's like one step towards cheese. One step towards cheese. But what about the other parts of the European butter that makes it better? Because they're not all cultured. No, no, no. It's the grass. Okay. As we said before, the beta carotene gives it that rich yellow color.

I remember my Irish friend, when she moved to the States for a few years, she turns to me and says, why does your butter look like lard? And I'm like, well, because it does. So that's a big difference right there. European butter...

has a slightly lower water content than American butter, so it's richer. I think people assume that the lower water content in European butter is the reason why it's kind of smoother when you cut into it, especially if it's refrigerated and it just has that velvety smear. But that's because of the grass-fed diatomite.

diet. That's the pastured cows. So these European butters are kind of expensive, I've noticed. I think that our picks range from $5 to $7 for two sticks, like a half a pound, which that's a lot of money if you're like my family and they eat four sticks a week. Were there cheaper butters that you liked than these kind of higher tier ones? Yeah. Trader Joe's European style cultured butter, $4.70 for, if price is a concern, go to Trader Joe's.

Get the European-style cultured butter. It is not quote-unquote cheap by any sense because, you know, you can go to the supermarket and get a store brand pound of butter for $4.70. Yes, some of these butters are very expensive. However, if you really love Kerrygold and you have a Costco membership, you can get four blocks, that's the equivalent to eight sticks, at Costco for $4.

about $14. And compared to retail, you're basically buying three, getting one free. But then Costco also has their house brand Kirkland grass-fed butter, salted. It only comes in salted. And that one's even less expensive. I think that one's like $11 for four blocks.

Again, the equivalent to eight sticks. I think that one's like New Zealand dairy, I think. So if you have a Costco membership and, you know, you really want like a really nice quality butter, you can get those without breaking the bank. Consider that. That's salted. And that is salted. That's for eating. For baking, Costco's Kirkland unsalted is a screaming deal.

I think you get four pounds for like under $10. Wow. That's insane. And it's good. And it's good. I mean, it made a flaky pie crust that I would be proud to serve. And it made a great shortbread. If you need butter for like, you know how some people do like these massive holiday cookie bakes and just like treat bakes, like go pick up some Kirkland for that. Love it.

So I'm curious how you've taste tested all of these butters. What were you doing? Were you just chomping on sticks? Were you making butter lollipops? Judgment-free zone. Yeah, no. So we did research. We culled down to 17 butters because it's just so much to eat. And palate fatigue is real. At some point, you're like, I don't know anymore. There were two categories of testing. There was e-culling.

eating and there was baking. For eating butter, we did salted butter. For baking, we did unsalted. So it's very important to make that distinction. Is that partially because there's usually salt called for in baking recipes? Exactly, because baking recipes are written for unsalted butter. But for the purposes of this guide, we designated salted butter as eating butter and unsalted butter as baking butter. Okay. Yeah.

So we thought 17 was on the high end, but we muscled through it. So for the first round of tasting, we tasted each butter cold and at room temp, both on bread. We had sourdough bread and we had sliced potato bread. Now, why we had that soft sliced bread is because, is it going to rip that bread? You know?

What you get is, like, what is the texture of these butters cold versus, you know, room temp? And also...

What flavors are we getting from the butters when they're at those two different temperatures? And there was a real difference. One of the butters, I can't remember which it was, but when it was cold, it was still spreadable and nice, and the fat dissipated very well, and it didn't leave a mouthfeel. However, when it was room temp, it did leave an oily mouthfeel. When things like that happen, it's just like mind-blown. How do you cleanse your palate?

Personally, I do seltzer with a giant squeeze of lemon. So how else did you test? You tested for spreadability on bread. You tested straight up. The butters that just did not pass, we just eliminated. And then we cooked noodles and just tossed them with some butter and ate them. And first of all, so comforting. Yeah.

It was such a cozy day. It's my kids' dream meal. That's what they want to eat every meal. Honestly, it's still my dream meal, and I can't handle pasta anymore. And so you have the heat from the noodles, so we did cold, room temp, and now we're tasting it hot, but not melted and separated because it's still kind of emulsified with the starches from the noodles. And, you know, what kind of flavors come through there? Does it emulsify well, or does it kind of separate and...

Kind of give you like this grease slick. Does it leave behind like an oily mouthfeel that is stubborn and will not go away? And then in an unsalted baking category? Shortbread first because it's a baking recipe that uses very few ingredients. It's butter, flour, sugar, and salt. So you really taste the butter. Our favorite shortbreads were...

Kind of like ripply towards the edge, but had like this flaky, buttery, crumb interior. But it was also like kind of sandy and crumbly at the same, like it was just like this perfect Venn diagram, right? How did I miss this day of testing in the office? I don't know. I love shortbread. It's my favorite cookie. We still have a bunch in the freezer. Well, don't tell me that, but maybe I'll get some next week. And then pie. Right.

And then pie. Did you make pie? I made pie crust. So I blind baked pie crust. And blind baking means when you have to make a pie and the filling is not cooked in that pie, what you have to do is what you call blind baking a pie crust. So you, you know, roll out your pie dough, put it in the plate, flute your edge. That means making it pretty on the edge. And then you put some parchment paper down and you fill it with beans, pie weights, whatever to like kind of weight it down.

And you bake that until it's like kind of dry. It doesn't feel like dough on the surface. And then you lift all those pie weights out. You put them to the side. You put that pie crust back in the oven until it's like thoroughly baked through, nice and dry on the top.

Beautiful on the bottom, which you really can't see unless you use a glass pie plate. But yeah, no soggy bottoms. Yeah, no soggy bottoms. We don't do soggy bottom pies in this house. That's right. Very, very important. Wait, so you just test pie crust on its own? No filling? Basically, yes. I think I put out some like jams or something. But yeah, I mean, we were basically just munching on pie crust.

All right, now that we've completed our Butters 101 course, I think it's time for us to do a pop quiz. Let's do a taste test. Oh, yes. I'll just be sitting here watching. So I brought three of our salted butter picks. And so we have some baguette. And I want you all to try them. I think they have come up to room temp and...

It's a little afternoon snack for us, so let's go. Oh, it's a guilty little pleasure for the afternoon. I'm very excited about this. Let's not look at the labels, though, so that we can determine. Yeah, no, let's do this totally. You don't have to. As one would in a testing. You don't have to look at the labels. At Wirecutter's offices. So we're all going to take a chunk of this amazing baguette that I brought, which is. Did you go to Paris this morning? Yes. Yes.

So I've got this one. Okay, I have, I'm trying to keep track of this. So I've got three butters in front of me. I've got number one on the far left, number two in the middle, and number three on the far right. So what are you getting? I'm getting salty. I taste the salt. This is a little movie theater-y for me. Okay, I'm going for the second one. All right. What are you getting? Oh, this one, I like this second one. It's like

It's kind of rich. It's salty, but not too salty. The first one was a little saltier than I like. But I really like the mouthfeel of this second one. What does that mean? Like it's...

It's soft. It coats my mouth in just the right amount of fat. Silky. I agree with that. It's got a really nice texture. It's nice. It's lighter. It's a little more, it feels cloud-like to me. Cloud-like. I like that. Smooth. It's giving me a less buttery. Pronounced butter. Yeah, butter flavor. In a way that I really like. It's a little bit more subtle.

I think it's a little bit more subtle. I would say that number one is a little hoofier. I didn't like the hoofie. Yeah. Okay, here's the third. This is the palest one, I would say. That's the palest one, yeah. I want to take some bread. I feel like I'm in France. Oh, my gosh. I'm getting beta carotene. This is good. This tastes like I died and went to the pearly gates and Peter was like,

do you want a welcome snack? And I was like, you know what? Give me a piece of sourdough with your best butter. And he was like, I got you, girl. And this is what he gave me. Mm-hmm.

Heavenly. Okay, so. The big reveal. The one that we are cooing over currently is the Yixing Yi Song Mer. I'm fighting you to take this home. You can have it. It's yours. It's yours. Now, where can you get this? Can you get it at Whole Foods? You can get it. I found it at Whole Foods. I have found it at random supermarkets all over New York, but Whole Foods is a pretty safe bet. But we also checked, like, around the country, and people can find it.

this butter all over. This is widely available. Okay, so tell us what's the second one we tasted that we liked a little bit more than the first one but less than the third one? That's Kerrygold. Kerrygold! Nothing

Nothing wrong with that. I like Kerrygold. That was good. Okay, so what I want to ask is the Ising Isil merit is cultured. Ah. And Kerrygold is not cultured, right? I know that's right. So do you see like the complexity of the flavor? Do you get like that? Yeah. Because like Kerrygold is kind of this platonic ideal of this dairy-rich butter, right? You get some of the grass and you get some of that –

that nuttiness that you get from cows that have been at pasture

But with the cultured, you get a little more roundness. You get a little zing at the end. And that really actually does come through when you bake with it, which is just, I mean, blows my mind. Am I going to spend $7 to make a pie crust? Possibly. Depends on how rich I'm feeling and who I want to impress. I would get it to eat it on bread. Yeah. What about the first one? Okay, so the first one, that is the Kirkland grass-fed. And...

It's huffy. When I say huffy, barnyardy. But I love that. A lot of people liked it in the testing, right? I love Pecorino Romano because, like, it is barnyardy. I like a barnyardy cheese. But I think, like, and you know what? If I hadn't tasted this Kirkland next to these other butters, I might have been like...

oh my gosh, this is really great. Yum, yum, yum. Especially for the price. I mean, it's like half the price of the other two. Right. I was not wild about the mouthfeel on the Kirkland. Yeah. Well, look, it's not as good as Kerrygold, but it's still very good. Okay, so just to recap,

What makes a good butter is the quality of the milk. You want, ideally, grass-fed milk. If you can, find some cultured butter because it's going to have a little extra zing, a little pop to the flavor. If you're shopping in a store and you can't find any of our picks, you want to avoid...

that have natural flavoring in the ingredient list. You want to be looking potentially for grass-fed on the label. And usually those are going to be a little bit more expensive. Yeah. So now we're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, we're going to move beyond our basic butter education. And we're going to talk with you, Leslie, about holiday baking with butter. Whether you're making pies for Thanksgiving or cute little holiday cookies, you're going to want to know Leslie's tips for when you want a good butter and when you can get away with a cheaper one.

Be right back.

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Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Leslie, you've made a lot of pies, like a lot of pies. You bake pies for this butter review. You develop pie recipes for magazines. And you also bake at least three every year for Thanksgiving. Do you know how many pies you've made?

Yes. Do you always make your crust with butter? Yes, every single time. Okay. Why? Because it tastes delicious. And even if it's like a graham cracker crust, it's like, it's butter. What's the difference in quality or like the taste and the texture if you make it with really high quality butter like we just tasted versus sort of a lower quality butter? It's going to taste more like that dairy-rich butter flavor that y'all just experienced. Yeah.

In your mouth. And that flavor really, it's such a nice complement to tart fruit, you know, especially apples, butter and apples and cinnamon. Come on, y'all. So you're just not getting as punchy flavor. You're not getting that necessarily that richness coming through if you're using a lower quality butter. Right. It adds more complexity to the finished product.

product. You're not just getting the tartness of the apple and the cinnamon. You're getting this sweet cream butter flavor to like round it all out and make it a cohesive thing. What about other fats? Like you mentioned that your grandmother used to cook with Crisco. Mine did too. Her pies were unmatched. And this is, but this is going back.

You know, a couple decades. But also Crisco changed their formula. It was softer. It cut into flour differently. The flake on the pastry was just different. Everything was just different. Now, it's still good for frying chicken. I will give it that. But...

Yeah, something shifted in Crisco. That's so interesting. So if my memory was still here and she made her same recipe that she made for me in the 90s today, it would not necessarily taste the same.

The same. She'd be cursing under her breath. Yeah. My grandma's always like, the food is so different these days. Every time she cooks anything. That's so fascinating. What about cookies? Do you need to use high quality butter and cookies in the same way that you do in a pie? It depends on the cookie. I think if I'm making a Toll House cookie, I'm not going to be too picky about it. But if I want to make, because like you have, you know, the vanilla, you have the chocolate chips, you have the walnuts. Yeah.

You don't have just regular white sugar, but you also have brown sugar involved. And like all of those things just clobber a butter. Now, if you want to use a really expensive butter in a Toll House cookie, invite me over because I want one of those. But I would go for like a less expensive butter. And butter affects how a cookie like spreads, right? Because like a shortening cookie is just going to hold its shape.

Y'all know I don't bake, but let's just say theoretically, I want to branch out beyond my sad little vegan lemon squares. I'd have to use alternative butters. And I know the kitchen team just published a guide to the best vegan butters written by Mace Dent Johnson. And I would love to know what you found through that testing. I think vegan butter is great because a lot of people don't do dairy or animal products, and it has come a long way. Mace did notice that

Even though the Country Crock plant butter with olive oil was like the closest thing that behaved similar to butter that they tested, it was not a perfect dupe. And the cookies that they made with them still like spread too much. So as much as companies have tried, like there's just no plant-based dupe yet. Waiting for the day.

I hope they hear this. I'm hoping for you too, Kyra. I was intrigued to see the Trader Joe's one. That's the one that we keep at home because I try not to eat butter on the regular, which is why this salted butter is such a treat. But I think, you know, it was interesting to see the Trader Joe's as a cost-effective option for the vegan butter on that list that May's made. This is a question I've long wondered, Leslie. How are you supposed to store butter? Is it okay to keep it on the counter is essentially what I'm wanting to know. Okay.

Yes. The receptacle and the frequency of use are very crucial here. And temperature, because if your house gets really hot, your butter is going to go rancid. Yes, you can store butter on the counter. Get a butter bell. Do we know what a butter bell is? Nope. Okay, so a butter bell is, it's a crock.

And it has a lid. Connected to the lid is like this bell-shaped receptacle where you put the butter, you smear the butter in there, and you put a little bit of water in the bottom of the crock. And then that butter goes upside down, and so the surface of the butter touches the water so it doesn't get contact with air.

Okay, that helps to keep it from going rancid, oxidation, what have you. Now, it still doesn't matter if your house is hot or if your kitchen is very hot. You have to be going through that butter probably like in a week. You should probably fill your butter bell like once a week.

That's like never a problem for me. Right. It would be like three or four times a week. No, totally. And you can get a bigger butter bill. Well, to that end, Christine, you're going through so much butter. Can you freeze butter? Oh, I freeze butter all the time. I buy the Kerrygold from Costco and I put it in the freezer. But what if people just have the ick when it comes to leaving dairy out? What if you really feel like— Keep your butter in the fridge. Any special container for that? I like to—okay, so butter is fat.

fat-absorbed smells. If your fridge frequently holds pungent foods, it's probably your best bet to keep your butter in an airtight container, Tupperware, what have you. So I've bought butter a few times from

various markets in Brooklyn. And I know when they clean their walk-ins with Fabuloso because the butter has absorbed the Fabuloso smell and now I have Fabuloso in my mouth. Ew. That's not it. I hate Fabuloso so much and I get so mad when my butter tastes like Fabuloso. Ew.

I feel like given your immense butter expertise at this point, I'm very curious what butters you would pair with different recipes. You know, you did so much testing. You guys did so many different types of recipes. And you also are just a very experienced cook. So I'm going to run through a lightning round of questions with you rapid fire to see what type of butter you would use for different recipes. I don't want you to overthink this. Just tell us immediately what the butter that you would pair with this is, okay? You ready? Yes. All right. Fruit pie.

The Kerrygold. Butter on bread. Isigny sommaire. Brown butter noodles. Isigny sommaire. Ooh. Bulk Christmas cookies where you have to buy a ton of butter. Kirkland unsalted. Nice. Buttercream frosting. Kirkland unsalted. Baking for your worst enemy. Vegan butter. Ooh. Not even fabuloso. I thought fabuloso would be the pick. Or fabuloso butter. Wow.

Okay, Leslie, before we wrap, we like to ask our guests one final question. What's the last thing you bought that you've really loved? I...

Had a lot of deadlines approaching. And gummy candies are my deadline comfort food. So I walked down to Bon Bon in the Brooklyn. I know. Is that the Swedish place? Yes. Oh, my gosh. Best gummy. It's Rosie's favorite. I know. I know. And I grabbed a bag and a scoop and I made myself. I bought $50 worth of gummies and salted licorice. Before you judge her, did you make that deadline? I did.

Well, when you do it, you got to do, you know? That place is my happy place. So delicious. So good. Yeah. Go get it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Leslie. This is a treat. Thanks, Leslie. Thank you. I loved it. Thank you.

This was my favorite episode that we've ever done. You like that taste test. I can't quite put my finger on why, but... There's a lingering flavor of this episode. Leslie is so much fun. Leslie is so knowledgeable. I feel honestly armed with some really good ideas. I personally feel ruined. Like, I can't go back to cheap butter after tasting that butter. What was the name of the really fancy one? Is that what it was? Now spell it. Oh, no.

What are your takeaways from this episode? For me, unfortunately, I think my personal takeaway was that vegan butters just are not going to live up to the real thing. And I just have to get over that. Yeah, sorry. There are just some things you have to accept in life, you know, and move on. The butters that you guys tasted looked really good. So like, I can look at a butter now and tell you probably like, oh, that one has movie pop

corn flavoring in it because it looks a little too yellow. Yeah. Which is the good stuff. Well, actually, color was one of my takeaways. I always assumed that the yellow color was dye and that meant a cheaper butter. But now I know that some of the nicer butters are actually getting that yellow color from the quality of the milk. When it's a grass fed cow, they produce, you know, milk that's going to give that yellow color.

So that was one of my takeaways. And then my other takeaway was that European butter isn't just fancy. It is actually better. You know, you always think that like European cheese and butter, that's just a fancy thing and you're paying extra for it. But honestly, like it's just a better quality for the most part. My takeaway similarly is this idea that you can taste better.

the ingredients that the cows were eating. So that kind of grassy flavor is going to end up in the butter eventually. The other takeaway for me is that cultured butter is

That's it for me. Yeah. Yeah. I love the funk. I love the fermentation. I love the idea that it sort of is cheese-like. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's so good. So good. And also just do not leave your butter out on the counter if you're cleaning with like chemically smelling things, right? Yeah. Fabuloso tinted butter is not it. Yeah. What do you mean? I love my purple stick of butter. Yeah.

That's it for us this week. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage or if you want to check out the products we recommended or Leslie recommended today, you can go to nytimes.com slash Wirecutter or you can find a link in the show notes. You can check out all of the other butters the folks at Wirecutter taste tested. Till next week. Thank you so much for listening.

The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Editing by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Maziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alisha Ba'itup, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's Deputy Publisher and Interim General Manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's Editor-in-Chief.

I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Cyr-Claisset. And I'm Rosie Garan. Make sure you're following the show on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss it. Thanks for listening. Yum. Yum. Yeah. Yes. We don't like it, actually. Never mind. Yum. Yum. That is actually really not what I was expecting you both to say in tandem. I'm looking at them and they're like, yum. Yum.