In Defense of Salted (and Even Whipped) Butter

A chowhound poster found some lovely-looking Welsh butter at Trader Joe's, but demurred because it is (gasp) salted.

Here's Bbmorecupcake's photo:

I posted, in reply, the following defense of salted - and even (double gasp) whipped - butter:

I think the "never use salted" credo is an overblown relic of the 1980s, when salted product was often older or crappier quality (i.e. the salt hid sins). People said it made it hard to adjust salt in recipes, but unless you're using gobs and gobs of butter, the salt content of your TB of butter couldn't make that big a difference....and/or could be compensated for, albeit not to 100% precision.

Thing is, pro chefs often DO need that level of precision, so they're compelled to eschew salted butter. And back in the late 1980s, home cooks were starting to fancy themselves mini-pro chefs...but that's a whole other story (of frustration and of unhealthful home cooking habits).

For cooking, salted butter is a micro-variable easily compensated for.

For buttering, like, toast, salted is way better than applying unsalted, then raining down a minuscule shower of salt (good luck getting it even!).

And salted lasts WAY longer in the fridge.

If you trust the quality of the producer (i.e. they haven't subsumed that extra storage time before you bought it), IMO salted is a no-brainer.

In fact, I double sin. I use Kriemhild butter, which is salted AND whipped. The whipping means I can't use it for recipes (I keep solid butter as well), but I know the producer isn't using the whipping process to mask crap, and the whipping means I can use less, total, while spreading more evenly on toast, etc.. And it tastes way, way better than circa 1980 whipped butters, which really were crap.

Crap salted butter and crap whipped butter from bad producers are, obviously, no-gos. But this is another era, when we have Kriemhild and other wonderful products (like this Welsh stuff appears to be) to enjoy. Holding onto an anti-salted, anti-whipped bias in this very different era of product availability would be a shame.

The following reply was posted:

With unsalted butter, you can control the amount of salt in a dish. With salted butter, not so much. I use it when the recipe specifically calls for it, unsalted otherwise.

You can also control the amount of salt by reducing some added salt to compensate for the salted butter.

If you believe you must work to extreme precision as a home chef, that would perplex me. Why would you want to replicate the exact flavor/seasoning profile each time you home cook a dish? Such tight regimentation is the burden of restaurant professionals, accommodating customers who demand extreme consistency. Home chefs are free to vary approach, avoiding boredom both in prep and in ingestion. There's no conceivable mandate to work within extremely tight tolerances as a home chef.