I missed chat today, but as I am reading the transcript the discussion of real butter came up and I so wanted to chime in.
You have not tasted real butter until you have used Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter. We learned about this from a Scottish chief at the local Scottish festival. Oh My! This stuff is sooooo smooooth. It makes anything you put it on, or in, delicious. Steamed Vegetables are that much better. Your baking becomes top notch. Plain toast, Yep! Better!
It is a salted sweet cream butter imported from Ireland and you can find it in the Cost co freezer section. I don't use it all the time. but when you want the speacial taste, it makes things just right.
Didn't mean to sound like a commercial but I just would have loved to have added this in during chat time.
So odd to hear something that is a supermarket staple lauded as a delicacy. I am now wondering how US butter is different. Is it like Danish butter ( marketed here as Lurpak) which uses soured milk. Yuk!
Imported goods are almost always more expensive than goods produced closer to home.
My mom sometimes buys Kerrygold, and it is indeed amazingly delicious, but my budget does not allow, alas.
(I think the difference is the way dairy cattle are raised in Ireland compared to US industrial dairy farms. It may also be that the grass in Ireland is different for reasons of climate. Kerrygold is smoother and richer; the flavor is similar to US butter but--amplified? More intensely flavored? I guess?)
If you're in Texas, you can get it at HEB. Pretty good stuff, but we use Falfurrius which is a Texas product.
I think Kerry Gold may have more butter fat. I know I read somewhere that it's composition is different from US butter.
Our cattle, both in Britain and Ireland are generally grazed outside, at least in Spring and Summer - this can be unnerving for those who don't like cows when public footpaths go through fields with cows in. My DH was once chased by a rhinocerhos when working in Kenya as a young man so cattle hold no terrors for him.
And on the whole we get more rain - last year was an anomally which is not being repeated this year. Parts of the UK have had two months rainfall in as many days.
I use it to make shortbread. Fantastic, don't use anything else.
Melissa
Frightened of cows! Revanne is referring to me. So it was a triumph last week for us to have found a walk with no cows and no stiles. The fact that it rained nonstop is a mere detail.
I have more fear of walking in rain than I do of walking with cows. LOL. But then when it rains here it pours so hard as to wash you way.