We Tried It: Land O'Lakes' New Premium Butter

It's a guidepost we've long espoused: If you're going to use a little bit of a high-impact ingredient (hello, bacon, butter, oil, and all of your tasty friends), make sure it's high quality.

That's where European style butter comes in. It typically has a slightly higher fat content and is churned longer to decrease its moisture content. It's what you want to pull out when you're looking for something to spread on warm bread or baking a special treat. You've long been able to find a few boutique brands on store shelves, but the trend is rising in popularity, and options are increasing.

Land O'Lakes recently sent us their new Euro style butter to sample, in both salted and unsalted varieties. We tasted both by themselves, and tasters loved how creamy and milky the butters were, remarking that they tasted like freshly churned butter. The salted variety had just the slightest hint of salt that didn't overwhelm the quality of the base butter.

Then, of course, we HAD to try the butter baked into a cookie. For that, we turned to our resident Dessert Goddess, Deb Wise. Verdict: Great browning, superior meltability, delicious butter flavor. We're sold.

Land O'Lakes' European Style Butter is now rolling out at select grocery stores (Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Roundy's, and Super Target). It retails for around $3.79 for a half-pound package--that's very reasonable for these types of superior butters, which is another thing we loved about the product.

Try it and let us know if you, too, think this butter is better.

Read more:

Butter and Nutrition

Salted vs Unsalted Butter

How to Make Clarified Butter

How to Brown Butter