In the past year or so, my local grocery store upped its number of high-end butter offerings. In addition to the Lurpak and Plugra brands I'd known, there were entrants from Italy, Ireland, and France. Is there a huge difference among them all? The blogger Miss Ginsu attempts to find out by tasting nine different high-end butters, domestic and imported....
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"Brown butter is one of the great ingredients quietly hiding in your refrigerator." Michael Ruhlman reminds us that brown butter, or butter that has been cooked until the solids turn brown, can be used in just about anything that uses butter to impart nutty and caramel flavors....
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A child answers the question: Who loves butter? From Lazy Man and Health. Related, 'Paula Deen is Trying Kill Us': Part 1, Part 2, Part 3...
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Everyone has heard of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, the margarine spread with the memorably comical name. While there are many butter substitutes gracing our grocery store shelves (oh yes, how they make my stomach juices flow), I assumed that this was the only product that used the word "butter" to market its superiority over other butter substitutes through its fascinating ability to be mistaken for real butter. But my world of fake butter (population: 1) was turned upside-down when I read Elyse Sewell's livejournal entry documenting curious products from her local supermarket, including two more I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!-like products: Butter It's Not! and Could It Be Butter? I found these names just as amusing...
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I know Paula Deen seems like a nice little old lady, with her big silver hair and friendly Southern drawl, but today I've finally come to believe that she's pure evil. How else to explain why she would unleash a recipe for deep fried butter balls on an unsuspecting public? No, I am not making that up, and yes, the recipe really is what it sounds like: Deep-fried. Balls. Of. Butter. You mix butter with cream cheese, shape it into balls, freeze them, and then drop them in the deep-fryer. People, she must be stopped. Related Paula Deen Is Trying to Kill Us, Part 2: Bacon-Wrapped Fried Mac Paula Deen Is Trying to Kill Us, Part 3: Velveeta Fudge...
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Slate's Daniel Engber wonders why we praise El Bulli's Ferran Adrià for using xanthan gum but recoil at the use of FD&C Red No. 40 in red velvet cake, and says our aversion to artificial coloring makes no sense: If the artificial colors are as safe as natural ingredients and they don't taste bad, then why should we avoid them? The gastronome might argue that the chemical dyes impart a color that's unappetizing on its own terms. The garish brilliance of red velvet cake has no referent in nature; it's disgusting because it's fake. Natural dyes, on the other hand, can make food look wholesome and real, by restoring our ingredients to their natural state. If a stalk of rhubarb...
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Fran McCollough, who wrote the book on the subject (The Good Fat Cookbook), has a persuasive letter in today's Times urging a return to sanity on the whole butter-transfat uproar. Her coup de grace: "These ignorant food police mandates will soon lead us to ban mother's milk, loaded as it is with "bad" things: cholesterol, saturated fat, sugar and trans fat." Previously: Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim...
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Harold McGee knows everything, including the reason why milk, butter, olive oil and beer taste funny if exposed to light for too long....
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