How to choose the right butter

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August 3, 2019

When the farmer has extra milk, he makes butter. And, who doesn’t love some real butter?

Mmmmm. Butter spread on sourdough bread. Butter melted over veggies. Steak with a flavored butter compote. Buttery cookies and pie crust. Butter in your coffee. I mean, it’s all amazingly delicious.

If you’ve shopped on our store, you may have been overwhelmed by the variety of butter options. You may have wondered - what’s the difference between regular, cultured, fresh, and spring butter? Let’s explore this a bit.

What do all of our butters have in common?

Our butter is real butter. It’s cream churned into butter. Voila! Nothing fake added - just maybe some Celtic sea salt.

It’s naturally yellow. Since our cows are 100% grass fed, the butter always has a yellow color. Butter gets its yellow color from the beta carotene in grass. FYI, many commercial store bought butters have added annatos or carotene to artificially fulfill customers’ expectations of yellow butter.

The farmer offers salted or unsalted options. Salt was traditionally added to butter as a natural preservative. With modern refrigeration, some people prefer salted butter for the flavor boost. Unsalted butter is also known as sweet butter. Unsalted butter is preferred in baking.

It’s frozen (with the exception of fresh butter). The farmer always freezes his butter just after it’s made. This is the best way for him to get you the highest quality product and keep it available.

Regular Butter

Our regular butter is made from milk in the summer, fall, or winter. It’s naturally sweet and comes frozen.

Cultured Butter

Cultured butter is made with sour cream instead of fresh cream. The cream is fermented with a starter culture. This technique was traditionally used to help preserve the butter for the longest time.

Cultured butter has a tart and tangy flavor. It can be used in any way you’d use a regular butter.

Fresh Butter

Fresh butter is made-to-order from fresh cream and is never frozen. The farmer offers this option only sometimes to those who either prefer to not eat frozen food or like to enjoy the complex flavors that each season offers.

Spring Butter

Amongst all butters, spring butter is the elite. It is the crème de la crème (pun intended).

Spring grasses are the most nutritionally complex, which makes spring butter have the highest nutritional value. Amongst all butters, spring butter has the highest levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, CLAs, trace minerals, and Vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Because spring grasses contain the highest level of beta carotene, spring butter has a wonderful yellow-orange color.

And, you may have guessed it. It also tastes phenomenal. The flavors are more concentrated.

Ghee

Ghee, or clarified butter, is made by heating butter until all water is evaporated and the proteins separate. The result is a product that has nearly 100% butterfat.

Ghee has a unique flavor and is fantastic for high temperature cooking.

Storing Butter

Butter can be stored for just about forever in the freezer, but we recommend a max of one year for the best quality. It will last 6-9 months in the fridge, and about 2 weeks at room temperature.

You can check out all of our butter options - including some great sales and bundle deals - here.

Enjoy the food!

Butter

Raw Dairy

Health and Nutrition

Cooking

Ugh greenwashed labels. What does it take to get ___ on a label anyway?

Not a fan of the confusing, greenwashed labels in store? Yea, me too! And it's especially real for me, because I'm responsible for getting our labels approved with the "powers that be". Here's a little story with a big inside scoop... I made new labels for our bone broth a little while ago. It didn't go as smoothly as planned. Why? I put the little icons about our farming practices on them. They look like this: Yup, despite being 100% accurate and true, they were denied!! We're not allowed to put those statements on our food labels. So, I asked the USDA guy, "What would it take to get those claims on the labels, anyway?" The answer was kinda shocking. First off, there's some guidance on wording. Silly technicalities in my opinion. For example, you can't use the term "No Spray" but you can say "Produced without the use of synthetic pesticides." Or another example is that you can't say "No Routine Antibiotics or Vaccines" but you can say "Raised without routine use of antibiotics or vaccines." Second, the processor needs to update their documents to provide traceability. In other words, they need to document how they make sure the bones for our bone broth don't get mixed up with bones from other farms. I mean, this is pretty simple, especially with small batch foods like ours. But the documentation needs to be meticulous. Drafting it in government-approved language can be time consuming and/or costly. And lastly, once you get the wording and process right, you need proof. This was the real shocker for me: Want to know what proof would suffice for all the claims above? A 2-3 sentence affidavit (AKA a super short letter) signed by all farmers that supply us. That's it!? This lead me to a bunch of questions: What if a company submits a letter from one farmer but actually has other farmers that supply them, too? What if a company changes farmers? Will they submit new letters?What if a company's farmers change their practices in the future? Will they immediately update their labels?Are the "powers that be" checking on this? Is anyone checking on this?Is this why most farms and food facilities don't allow outside people coming in? It seems to me that, if a business isn't doing what the label says, the only way to find out is via a whistleblower. And the only way to make them stop is to take them to court. You know, like what's happening with Vital Farms and their pasture raised egg claim right now. It seems to me that, all that good natural stuff on labels - grass fed, pasture raised, antibiotic free, etc - doesn't mean it's true. Certifications are a little better, but the same kinda thing can be said about those, too. This is why, at Miller's, we choose to NOT sell in stores. No wholesale for us. In fact, we don't even have an on farm store. We only sell directly to our customers via our website. And, we choose to only get certified for what's required. This way, we can make our own natural standards. And, we can provide you will all the info and proof you need. Descriptions, photos, blog posts, test results, and more. So, what do you think? Should we do the affidavit thing to get claims on our bone broth labels? What proof do you need to feel confident in your food choices? I'd love to hear from you. Comment below (no account required - just start typing) or contact us 😊

How to choose the right butter

What do all of our butters have in common?

Regular Butter

Cultured Butter

Fresh Butter

Spring Butter

Ghee

Storing Butter

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Miller's Bio Farm, 523 Valley Road, Quarryville, PA 17566