Embrace Your Inner Ina Garten And Stock Up On Her Go-To Butter
Everyone wants to cook and bake like Ina Garten, but in order to channel your inner Barefoot Contessa, you must be sure that the basic pantry ingredients you use are high-quality — starting with butter. Garten shared on her website that the butter that most often winds up in her grocery cart is Cabot unsalted butter.
Butter is the fat that brings a richness of flavor to whatever it touches and Cabot butter, which hails from Vermont, is made with pure, sweet cream that gives it a creamy and smooth texture. But Garten isn't the only one who thinks Cabot is a great choice for butter; Cabot unsalted butter won an award in 2019 when it was crowned America's Best at the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest. But what makes Cabot unsalted butter good enough to be Garten's go-to?
She stated, "I often use Cabot unsalted butter, but there are many good brands of butters available. What's most important is to make sure you use unsalted butter, so you are able to control the amount of salt in the recipe. Salted butters can vary significantly in the amount of salt they contain."
Butterfat percentage is important
When it comes to any butter, the fewer the ingredients the better, but you also want to take note of how much butterfat your butter contains. Cabot butter surpasses the U.S. minimum standard of at least 80%. This fancy butter brand contains about 83% butterfat, which gives it a soft, velvety texture that can just as easily be spread on toast as it can be used for your baking needs — like when you want to make Garten's famed Beatty's chocolate cake.
Additionally, a butter's color, which is derived from the amount of beta-carotene that is present, is equally important. You want your butter sticks to be a yellow hue. This is an indicator that the cow was fed grass as opposed to when you find yourself with a white stick of butter, which means the cow was fed grains of some sort.
Also, look for slow-churned butter if you can. This butter will have less trapped air which can affect the flavor of this ingredient.