Your Butter Nature

We talk to two artisan butter producers to discover the lowdown on the best Australian-made butter.

- Raquel Neofit

We bake with it, slather it on scones, melt it over steak and drizzle it over pancakes. Butter is a solid staple in our culinary adventures. So what makes one butter better than another? Well, first of all, it’s not just about what goes into the churn; what’s left out is just as important.

PURE BUTTER PRACTICES

Butter is extremely good for you if it’s pure and without additives. It’s when we start adding ingredients like preservatives that really don’t need to be included that it becomes unhealthy.

Ulli Spranz, owner of biodynamic organic dairy farm B.-d Farm Paris Creek, believes butter should be made from only fresh cream with nothing else added or removed, and no additional processing should occur.

To understand the reason behind this we need to travel back in time to before we had the modern convenience of refrigeration. “If butter is not refrigerated it may become rancid, but if it’s in the refrigerator then it keeps much, much longer,” Spranz says.

This is where added salt played a part long ago — as a preservative. One of the main reasons we still find salt in butter today is because our palates have become accustomed to the taste, not because it’s a necessity.

A SIMPLE PROCESS — ALL IN THE CHURNING

“The butter-making process is really quite simple,” Spranz says. “Once the farmer has milked the cow, the milk is pasteurised and the cream is separated from the fresh milk, then churned to separate the liquid content, or buttermilk. What’s left is a natural, pure butter, beneficial in a balanced diet,” Spranz says.

ORGANIC MATTERS