East Coast vs. West Coast Butter – What Is the Difference? (2019)
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It's more of a pain than cups (which have numerous standards but they're basically close enough not to matter - especially if you assume it's one of the US sizes) when '1 stick butter' pops up in a recipe.
https://www.dreamstime.com/stick-butter-measurement-markings...
Also the wrapper has measurements on it.
What it still is, though, is visually hilarious. When I think of "stick", I think of something you hold in your hand, wave around, or throw far away for a dog to fetch.
Now imagine that, but with butter!
For that matter, do you find "breadsticks" hilarious too?
If I'm converting from sticks to grams, I use the above information as a guide or simply weigh it. The information to covert it is easily found online, I've done it many times - mostly, I've not lived in the US for many years yet I still want to make familiar foods.
...is it a standardized measure?
(Out of curiosity, is it a regulated measure? Would I be prosecuted for selling a stick of butter that doesn't weigh 1/4 of a pound?)
In my country we wouldn't describe a solid in cups, just grams.
Because you ran into it in the first place. You think cookbooks are giving out subjective instructions?
"You said stick, but I don't know what that means" is a pretty reasonable conclusion to draw when you encounter the usage. "You said stick; you must not believe that words have meanings" is something else again.
An obvious analogy for the lack of precision of "stick of butter" outside of US culture is my culture's "block of butter" - typically, a block of butter in my country is 500g. But not always.
So how do you know how much butter I intended you to use if I say "add half a block of butter" in my biscuit recipe?
How big is a block of butter where you live? Do they even sell it by the block? Or is it just sticks? Rough mental calculation, there's about 4 and nearly a half sticks to the block.
I guess there's a reason humans developed and use units of measurement.
Anecdote time! When I was young I tried to follow a recipe off the Internet that specified a stick of butter. So I diligently cut a long skinny bit of butter from my block of butter, a little confused as to what difference the shape made. The biscuits were rather awful.
There are some exceptions like Amish butter that come in a 2 pound roll (round block). Kerrygold and Finlandia butter from Europe adapt to the 8oz and 16oz standards just like a US company would adapt to UK or likely EU standards.
This is probably one of my country's fanciest butter makers: https://lewisroadcreamery.co.nz/collections/butter
I'm American. I lived in the US until around 8.5 years ago and I moved to Norway. I've had to look up conversions many times so that I could cook comfort food.
Other folks have answered the regulated measure stuff, but FWIW: Every butter maker sold sticks where I was from (Indiana) and all the sticks were the same size. Margarine brands did the same so long as they weren't sold in tubs.
Cue the funny anecdote. We've been using au pairs to help with the kids. It took about 6 months for one of us to notice that when a recipe called for "1 cup" of something, one au pair would go into the cabinet and grab a random glass and use that to measure. Our glasses range from 4 oz. to 18oz, so there were tons of size disparities. We didn't notice for so long because she was usually making rice, and the ratio was the most important part, and the ratios was cups to cups.
To be clear, that disparity had just never occurred to us, and in no way did we blame her. All of us (including her) had a good laugh over it and we showed her where the measuring cups were kept.
Greetings from Berlin.
Joking aside I suspect if you are good enough where the limiting factor in your baking is the precision of butter specified as opposed to sloppy techniques you are better off using a recipe written by a professional pastry chef for other proficient bakers. In my experience they usually write quantities in terms of weight and recommend measuring it that way.
For example Claire Saffitz calls in her Confetti Cake recipe for "3 sticks unsalted butter (12 oz / 340g), at room temperature". That would indicate that the 100g approximation is 13% low.
Realistically, I wind up with 3 sets of measures: I have a scale, American cups, and a large 'norwegian' measuring cup.
1 stick of butter is 4oz by weight which is defined to be 0.5 cups (i.e when you write down 1 cup butter it means 8 oz).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#:~:text=United%20States....
No I'm not, it's just completely unknown here (and I believe in most of the world). Don't make me look up '1 stick butter size' when I'm trying to follow your recipe..
The reason I say it's more annoying than cups (which are arguably worse because I said there's multiple, but in practice they're so close it's not likely to matter) is I suppose just that it's enough less common that I don't have 250ml in the back of my mind when I read it.
When I first came across it it was even worse, I assumed it was like 'a knob' (knife off a little 'stick' of butter from the block), which is obviously much less than it is, and didn't think to look it up as something standard but unfamiilar to me.
They look like the West Coast shape, and is usually available as either 250g or 500g (17.6oz) sticks. Though when checking just now I see Lurpack are the odd ones out offering 400g sticks in a different shape.
We do have tubs, but it's usually a blended variety of some kind.
Europeans: "how much is a cup?? Why can't I just use grams like I do with everything else?"
Americans: "? It's a cup, just use a measuring cup?"
E: "I tried that and my recipe came out wrong!"
Me: "I regret to inform you that US cups, UK Imperial Cups, and metric cups are different sizes..."
(If you're a non-American making US recipes, the easiest improvement you can make is buying a set of US measuring cups, which also cover things like tablespoon. These days they may be available from Alibaba or your local Amazon so you don't actually have to source them from the US)
A traditional US cup ('US customary') is also half a pint - but that's of course a US pint, which makes it about 237ml.
A 'US legal' cup (e.g. for FDA and nutritional labelling purposes) is 240ml. I don't know why that's shifted somewhat to metric when the US is otherwise so resistant!
Most people cooking in Europe routinely get accuracy better than 10ml, because they're using scales rather than volumetric measures in many cases that Americans do. I agree it's unlikely to matter though, unless compounded out to many cups of something. If the water content is high, it's going to matter more (and be harder to control/write in a recipe) how much boils off for example.
And I regret to inform you that that should read 'each of the US cups'! ('US legal' & 'US customary' iirc.)
In practice though, sod it, it's 250ml (or maybe Imperial if that's the measuring glass I'm using anyway.. but it also has ml on) near enough, how long I let it boil's going to affect it more anyway.
More particularly: American dairies have to feed their cows subsidized corn (maize) or be uncompetitive, which makes the butter markedly lower quality. Some American dairies actually dye their butter yellow. (Note that "Amish Roll" butter is the same, just sold in a different shape.) Certain boutique dairies do pasture their cows, and charge a premium price, but supermarkets mostly don't stock that.
In Ireland, cows eat grass. The US also gets butter imported from Poland, which is probably OK too. Neither government massively subsidizes maize.
To get a tolerable price in the US for Irish butter, you have to buy it from Trader Joe's, which is sort of like Aldi's in Europe. (Complicated story there.) [Edit: Or Costco, looks like.] Likewise, Parmesan cheese from Parma, Italy.
For many decades, the US government was telling Americans that saturated fat, as in butter and lard, was bad for their health, causing circulatory system disease. This, it turns out, was never true, and has long been known within the US Food and Drug Administration to be untrue. The diseases were, it turns out, caused by trans fats and sugar, both of which have been massively promoted. Trans fats were mostly banned in 2017, although certain companies get waivers to continue poisoning people.
Tl;dr: eliminate unnecessary sugar, add butter and lard from Ireland or other non-US sources.
Edit: a quick search shows that it is arsenic contamination in question. On average California rice has about 35 percent less.
It is true that many foods in the US have badly distorted value perceptions. Probably worst, today, from a public health standpoint, is that sugar is crammed into everything. It is a public-health disaster that absolutely dwarfs COVID-19, but gets no attention.
Probably listing "Fructose: 23g" on labels is the first step to fixing that.
When I do bake with sugar, I use dextrose, which in the US is sold as "corn sugar", online or from homebrew supply stores. In a pinch, light corn syrup serves. (Corn sugar has no fructose.) Sometimes you need keep 10% as brown sugar to get the druggy feeling you can only get from fructose.
Likewise, American "organic" corn is very often not, as farmers and distributors get to choose who certifies them, so certifiers learn not to be too picky. Or at all picky. Or, indeed, ever to decertify anybody.
And trans fats aren’t any less healthy than saturated fats. That’s another lie.
https://junkscience.com/2018/06/flashback-fear-of-margarine-...
You still see on nutrition labels on food packaging, "Trans fat: 0%". Because it is banned. Because it is poison.
(Nobody went to prison for poisoning and killing millions of Americans. Just like nobody went to prison for putting lead in gasoline, to even greater effect. But shoot up five people at a bus station, and you get nationwide attention.)
GPs link:
https://junkscience.com/2018/06/flashback-fear-of-margarine-...
My reply was not an anecdote: it cites actual, long delayed regulatory-agency response to actual research they were charged, by statute, to act upon in the public interest.
The other citation is from 1999. Since 1999, both EU and US have banned trans fats in foods, for reasons. Anyone may look up those reasons. (Hint: poison.)
The author of the tendentious article is personally responsible for any excess deaths caused by people believing it. The author of the spurious citation is spared immediate responsibility because trans fats are out of the food supply. No doubt they will step up to defend packing sugar into everything.
In short: I was duped.
I don't know if you care, but although your arguments pushed me to investigate further, they weren't convincing on their own. They were histrionic and based on the actions of government bodies, not the underlying science.
When even the US government is moved to act on something affecting public health, it has progressed far beyond the point where we need to wonder whether it is real. Of course the EU acted earlier.
Postings on HN should not convince anyone on their own. They are a hint, ideally with a pointer to more information. In this case, searching on "Fred Kummerow" reveals all.
What I wonder now is whether Crisco, identified on the label as "fully hydrogenated palm oil", but also "trans fats: 0g", is on the up and up. Hydrogenation was the name of the process that was creating the toxic trans fats. But it is also descriptive of changing carbon double-bonds in a lipid backbone into single bonds, and terminating the spares with hydrogen atoms (hence the name). So it makes me wonder what process they are using, and whether it would work on any old oil, or only on palm oil; and if the latter, why?
It would not be surprising if there is much less difference between butter of various non-US dairies than between non-US and most US dairies.
No, it's about how the shapes of butter sticks in the US vary by location. As joekrill said,
>OK, this is all well and good, and may be accurate... But this article is talking exclusively about the shape the butter is formed into. It doesn't have anything at all to do how it's made, or what ingredients it uses, or where it comes from.
Butter quality is important. Typically poor quality of American butter is important. To some of us. Quite a few, it seems.
You are not obliged to read about butter quality if you find it uninteresting. That same applies to many topics.
Kerrygold is the most popular Irish grass fed butter in the US but it is not 100% grass fed. It is around 90% grass fed currently. The amount of grass feed has reduced over the years as demand for the butter has increased. The cows are fed soy and corn to supplement the grass.
As noted in your edit Costco sells grass fed butter. They have two options. One is Kerrygold and the other is their own Kirkland Signature brand. The Kirkland Signature is 95% grass fed and imported from New Zealand.
I did not know Aldi's had so many US stores. There have never been any near where I lived. Or Lidl.
Cows get fed corn in the following situations:
- in the last few months, cows are "finished" on corn to fatten them up faster
- at large-scale farms, hay is supplemented with corn during the winter in areas where grazing is not possible due to weather (i.e., snow) to maintain a year-round supply of cows ready for slaughter
Beef cattle are often there just until they are big enough for the feedlot. Then they never walk again until just before slaughter.
There is a US law that animals must walk into the slaughterhouse themselves. Sometimes they get amphetamines so they can make it.
Dairy calves are likewise pastured. So the box always says "pasture-raised", which means nothing.
Most adult dairy cows in the US are fed mostly corn. Somebody who feeds them grass and hay gets a big price premium for "grass-fed" dairy. It says so in big type on the label.
That is why most US butter is almost white: it gets color from carotenes in grass, and the dairy cows mostly don't get any.
https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/do-dairy-cows-eat-food...
But that does not explain why most American butter is almost white, and of poor quality, or why "grass-fed" and foreign dairy products command such a price premium. Or why dairies that do not feed their cows heavily-subsidized corn cannot compete with those that do.
2) Butter is less yellow in the U.S. because of lower levels of beta carotene. Grass has higher levels of beta carotene than hay (which is cut grass, the lower levels are due to the decay of the beta carotene). https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-europ...
3) American butter is not "lower quality." It is lower fat. American butter can be used in more cooking situations than Irish butter, which is too fat for many dishes (including, for example, pizza).
4) Not all foreign dairy products command a price premium. Kerigold is less than the organic American butter in most grocery stores in Southern California. So much for that silly theory.
5) You are asserting EU propaganda without any support. Because...you won't be able to find any. More to the point, Kerigold only feeds its cows grass 312 days of the year. Let your imagination fill in the blanks as to what they feed their cows for the remaining 43 days (hint: sometimes it comes on a cob, and sometimes it rights with "boy"). https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/food-drink/kerrygold-la...