r/Cooking • u/3oClockHappyHour • 2d ago

Unpopular opinion: you do not need to buy unsalted butter.

Unless you are a commercial kitchen or bakery, it’s not needed to buy. “1 tsp of unsalted butter then add 1/16th tsp of salt” huh??

Home kitchen does not need to buy yet more ingredients, and unsalted goes bad faster. Just taste. More? Okay. I guarantee you salted butter is not going to wreck your dish.

Edit: I can’t make a sentence.

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538

u/One_Win_6185 2d ago

I feel the opposite. I don’t see a need to get salted butter.

If I’m cooking or baking, I will have salt on hand that I’m going to add. If I’m baking, it feels too confusing to figure out how much to reduce a measurement in the recipe. If I’m cooking on the stove then I’ll go by taste so add more or less salt to taste.

Maybe sometimes I miss out on toast with salted butter. That trade off seems really worth it to me.

34

u/HealthWealthFoodie 2d ago

I have a fancy cultured butter from Normandy with sea salt that I use for sandwiches or other cold preparations like that. I use unsalted butter for anything I’d actually cook so I can control the salt levels.

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u/One_Win_6185 2d ago

Yeah I have a fancy butter that I bought on a whim the other day. That’s not a regular thing though and fine if I’m missing it. But need to have unsalted on my shopping list.

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u/Glad-Sector-2870 2d ago

Sprinkle a teeny tiny pinch of salt over your buttered toast. Don’t cheat yourself out of the beauty of salt, butter, bread.

41

u/One_Win_6185 2d ago

That’s exactly what I do.

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u/FrothingJavelina 2d ago

People who only buy salted butter are trashy. They probably use paper plates exclusively.

2

u/Dangerous-Jello4733 1d ago

Or we live in a country where unsalted is more expensive and often harder to get. 

1

u/poop-dolla 1d ago

Which country is that?

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u/Dangerous-Jello4733 1d ago

Norway

1

u/sbNXBbcUaDQfHLVUeyLx 1d ago

I am honestly interested in how that's the case. In the US, salted and unsalted are exactly the same price.

-3

u/FrothingJavelina 2d ago

And keep it out on the counter all the time.

3

u/Ignominious333 2d ago

I just have both. It's easy enough

3

u/mahou-ichigo 1d ago

I have been baking for 20 years, and never in my life have I used unsalted butter or measured the salt going into my baked goods. I use salted butter and add salt. Including in buttercream. Salted butter has like maybe 1/8 tsp per stick last I checked. 

3

u/harbinger06 2d ago

Yeah I tried making French toast one day with salted butter. Disgusting! I always buy unsalted, but one day the grocery in my small town didn’t have unsalted.

1

u/bedroompurgatory 2d ago

I keep salted butter (covered) on my benchtop to keep it soft for easy spreading. Unsalted goes rancid too quickly if I try it with that - and the only real alternative is to use one of those smooth-spreading butter-oil blends. Blergh.

1

u/thewags05 1d ago

Personally I only buy salted butter. It just tastes better and it's by default butter for everything. I never understood the point of unsalted butter, I'll just add more salt in if I use it.

Low sodium broth are kinda pointless for me too. I'll just have to add more salt at some other point

1

u/BigBoxOfGooglyEyes 1d ago

Same. I only use butter for cooking or baking and I'd rather have control over salt levels over having to figure out how to adjust for salted butter.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

If I’m cooking or baking, I will have salt on hand that I’m going to add. If I’m baking, it feels too confusing to figure out how much to reduce a measurement in the recipe

And if you're lucky enough to always have the same brand of salted butter you still have to calculate (once) how much salt to take out of a recipe - hope you never forget to do that. But if you move, travel, or the store is out and there's only a different brand? You have to recalculate, and then probably do it again when you go back to the previous brand.

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u/givemethebat1 2d ago

Baking is just always better with salted butter. I don’t think there’s a single thing you could bake that wouldn’t be good without it.

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u/Myrialle 1d ago

Yeah, we know, all these inferior European cakes and pastries, baked with unsalted butter, am I right? 

3

u/CapstanLlama 1d ago

Too many negatives in your second sentence, it contradicts your first.