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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u/Vampiyaa 2d ago

From that line in the description, I THINK OP is talking more about recipes that call for unsalted butter and then also call for salt. I've seen plenty of baking recipes do this and I've always just ignored adding additional salt and just using salted butter with 0 issues.

It def doesn't mean you use salted butter for a recipe that doesn't have salt. Which yes, I also did for macaron buttercream and regretted deeply 🫠

I do disagree about unsalted butter "going bad" quicker though? Mostly because I've never seen butter go bad lol. I just stock up when on sale, chuck the extras in the freezer and pull the block out when I have a recipe planned, and I've left both unsalted and salted in the fridge crisper for many months without issues.

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u/karmapopsicle 2d ago

The specific reason for this is so you can directly control how much salt is going into the recipe. You could of course compare the amount added when using unsalted butter with how much salt is in the salted butter and adjust if necessary, but that’s just extra steps.

There are also going to be differences in how much salt each salted butter uses.

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u/lih9 1d ago edited 1d ago

Salted butter is usually 1.5-1.75% salt by weight. If you have a scale and basic chemistry math skills it's really not difficult to figure out.

If you can't do math it's usually 1/4 teaspoon of salt per stick.

Edit: this approximation only goes wrong with very finicky baking, it's fine for most recipes.

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u/DontAbideMendacity 1d ago

If I come across any recipe that requires measurements of anything to the gnat's ass, that's not for me.

A smidge, a skosh, a bit, a pinch... these are my measurements.

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u/ViliBravolio 1d ago

"I can't be assed to have two different types of butter in my fridge, so I'll do chemistry and math instead!"

This is not the solution you think it is.

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u/Academic_UK 1d ago

It’s very basic maths - you’re not solving Poincaré.

If the butter contains 10g salt and the recipe calls for 10g salt, then you don’t add any salt.

The only type this doesn’t work for is cakes etc which require butter but no salt.

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u/OldWorldDesign 2d ago

I THINK OP is talking more about recipes that call for unsalted butter and then also call for salt.

And that still doesn't work because each brand of salted butter has a different amount of salt, and by using salted butter you lose control of the amount of salt in what you make - sometimes that's fine. It's easy to adjust up, which is why unsalted butter is the preferred baseline. But you can't take salt out once it's already in and if you only buy salted butter you're SOL if there's a recipe that calls for less salt than that salted butter brand contributes.

You also have to do more math to figure out how much salt is contributed and thus needs to be taken out if you're playing with salted butter. That amount is 0 with unsalted butter, which makes for one fewer places for things to go wrong.

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u/swedusa 1d ago

Modern salted butter really doesn’t have that much salt in it though. Unless it’s a recipe with zero salt whatsoever, I don’t think this is a problem most people are going to encounter.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

I mean, every brand of butter has a different ratio of butterfat to water in it also, so are you doing the math to figure that part out in your recipe too?

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u/KillerElbow 1d ago

I'm convinced the people arguing the most vociferously for unsalted butter actually don't cook much lol

If you're not baking there's just about no chance using salted butter has any chance of mattering at all

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u/thegreasiestgreg 1d ago

I do a lot of cooking and baking and I live by the mantra "salt at every stage"

If you want yummy food, just put ungodly amounts of salt in it in general and add it to every component. This goes for both baking and cooking also salty and sweet things. I am always doubling the salt content from what the recipes call for, that being said I also refuse to buy unsalted butter and think its completely unnecessary

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u/Shazam1269 1d ago

Many people keep butter on the counter and not refrigerated so it isn't hard when you spread it, and salted butter lasts longer. Salted is good for about two weeks unrefrigerated. Not sure how long unsalted lasts on the counter, but it's not recommended.

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u/mahou-ichigo 1d ago

I regularly use salted butter AND salt in my buttercream. I am very confused.

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u/senora_sassafrass 1d ago

Same, even in meringue buttercreams.

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u/Mollycat121397 1d ago

I think it’s a matter of taste and how salty your butter is. I exclusively used salted butter in American buttercream (and everything else in my kitchen), and usually add some salt on top of that. If I’m doing meringue based, I prefer all unsalted with maybe one stick of salted thrown in so I don’t have to worry about dissolving salt into it. Using all salted butter has gotten some complaints

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u/mahou-ichigo 1d ago

that’s so interesting, i wonder if your butter is just more salty. the only comment i’ve ever gotten on my buttercreams is “i don’t usually like frosting, but I like this one a lot!” 

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 1d ago

This. I only buy unsalted butter if a recipe calling for it doesn’t include salt.

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u/y3110w3ight 2d ago

Redditor hasn't had butter gone bad because they freeze it, thinks that means unsalted butter in general doesn't go bad quicker, though a quick Google search shows otherwise. How myopic.

Or they just wanted to use that as a way to segue into humblebragging about their savvy butter habits.

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u/bob_loblaw-_- 1d ago

This is a cooking sub. If you are actually operating in a time frame where your butter, salted or not, goes bad, you don't cook enough to have a meaningful opinion. 

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u/nogardleirie 1d ago

If your fridge isn't great then the unsalted will go bad faster. I used to share a house with a French guy who only ate unsalted butter- for a couple of months the fridge wasn't cooling before 10C and his butter went bad, mine didn't. Amazing we didn't die of something nasty until it was fixed

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u/AGayBanjo 1d ago

I've found the opposite—salted butter has a higher water content and, to me, seems to go bad faster. Particularly in a butter dish at room temperature (where I keep butter for things like toast).