I went to purchase some butter yesterday and said something like "That'll do it's the cheapest". The lady next to me then pointed out that it has water added.

Yep I looked at the label and it has cream, water and salt. Another one she showed me just had cream and salt.

Needless to say I was amazed that certain brands are adding water to their butter to make up the weight, and it also explains why sometimes I have seen drops of water in my butter.

I'm not so sure that water is added to make up the weight - I think it is more that some water is unable to be removed completely after the process of making butter. When the butter is made water is used to wash the traces of buttermilk out or the butter goes rancid - believe me a little leftover water is nicer than rancid butter!!! I guess one manufacturer is being more open than the other about the possibility of any water, as to how much I doubt that there would be that much, or it would be quite obvious.

We have been making our own butter and it is really hard to get out all the water, our homemade butter has more beads of water come out of it when you use it than the bought butter ever has.

Kaye, Well explained.
I grew up making homemade butter after Dad had milked the cow by hand and then we set and skimmed the milk later there was a hand turned separator to get the cream from 3 cows.
I think from some vague memory you can extend the butter by beating in water? or milk? ( warm or hot or cold???) don't know how much of each
I must look at the different butters next time and compare.

Jean

Commercially, I suppose it boils down to what is an acceptable percentage of water. There must be a standard somewhere that decrees the maximum allowable while still being able to call it butter.

What bothers me more than the miniscule amount of water in butter is the amount of solid ice around frozen chickens. Are the bags topped up with water to make up the weight printed on the pack? And what about the two large lumps of fat left just inside the opening and the long, long piece of skin from the neck at the other end? All these things added together make up a fair few grams. Maybe insignificant on one chicken, but when these small amounts accumulate on millions of chickens, the profit must be huge on what is wastage which could easily be removed during the processing.

I would be interested in what the percentage of water was in the butter?

Adding to Lornas comment, for me it is the goo in corned beef!! I have seen some good prices on corned beef, but they seem to be packed in quite a lot of goo. Does anyone know if there is a reason for this, or is it just to up the weight?

We also used to extend the butter by adding water but I can't remember the quantities either. That is why I was asking about the butter.

I wonder if it is to do with standardising the product. Milk is certainly adjusted throughout the year to ensure that the fat and protein content is consistant. Perhaps water is used for this purpose. Im just guessing here.

As far as I know the water is not added to extend the product or increase its volume...it is added as part of the manufacturing process to wash the buttermilk out - otherwise the butter would go sour/ or rather the residual buttermilk would go sour and make the butter smell and taste off. Trust me, we have found this out as we learnt to make our own butter. I don't believe the amount of water left in standard butter is enough to warrant a % on the pack. I am not so sure about some of the butter blend products that are now on the market though, they may have water as an ingredient. Is there anyone out there who works in the industry who could tell us??

As an aside - now we regularly make our own butter using an old hand turned, glass butter churn I think bought butter is even good value $ wise!! If we valued ( in $ terms) how long it takes to stand the milk, skim the cream off, then churn the cream, then wash the buttermilk out and then work the water out and finally to clean up after making butter, the bought butter is cheap at the price. We are making our own butter because we use milk from the farm and skim it before using and it seemed wasteful to throw the cream away and then to go and buy butter for baking. Plus it is another of those old fashioned skills that we just happen to enjoy reviving and contiuing to practise. It is a sort of social time... as we take turns churning away...yeah I know, we're a strange, socially deprived lot in the country, at times....churning butter, making cheese, knitting socks.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2009 11:55PM by Kaye.

tanzya Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have seen some good prices on
> corned beef, but they seem to be packed in quite
> a lot of goo. Does anyone know if there is a
> reason for this, or is it just to up the weight?
>

We get our corned beef from our butcher, who makes it from our own beef. The outside is a wee bit slippery, but there is nowhere near as much goo as there is in supermarket beef, so I suspect it's used to 'beef' it up, or perhaps a different type of goo that needs more to be effective.

There are food regulations around the % of milk fat that has to be in butter and therefore by the inverse, the amount of water that can be added. I have a feeling that it might be 92% milk fat but I could be wrong.

Having worked in food manufacturing I would not be in the least surprised if water was added up to the limit of what was allowed in the regulations. Legally water "as required for processing" doesn't have to be listed on the pack.

I can't stand it when meat is pumped full of brine - does anyone remember "tender basted" chicken, I don't think it's still around? It was just injected full of brine, made the meat taste all plasticy and awful and if you looked hard enough you could see the nasty injection marks on the meat.

A lot of those marinated steaks and roasts are the same - those fishers ones spring to mind. Sure, they're cheap but you're paying for water and at it doesn't taste like meat anymore - talk about a false economy!

Kaye - I admire you and agree that not wasting good food is important. It sounds romantic and takes me back to reading LM Montgomery, but I am sure it is hard work! I bet it is delicious though.

Whipped butter is big in America - we used it all the time over there on sandwiches I think only half the calories, but not sure whether it had air or water whipped into it. It was very very pale in colour, in fact looked artificial.

Not being a fan the margarines available out there, I'd certainly buy whipped butter as a table butter if it was available here - I think I remember in the past it was manufacturered by one of the dairy companies, but I don't think it took off - fairly highly priced if I remember.

Good on you Kaye! Nothing nicer than churning your own butter especially when you grow the raw product.
Regards,
Dawn.

Dawn, have you tried any of the butter/canola blends available in NZ? Some of them are quite good, for the few things you 'have' to have butter on!! There are lower fat ones also, and I think they taste ok. Most of the time I only use butter for baking, that's what the homemade butter is being used for, but there are a few things I cannot eat without butter - eg. vogels toast with marmite....so for that I do like the butter/canola blends, butter taste without all the GUILT!!!
Kaye.

Hello Kaye,
I think I have tried a butter mix once and will re-look at them again. I don't particularly remember what it tasted like and I think I have a mind-set about butter - it's the best for flavour. I prefer to use butter rather than artificial spreads although our kids only eat the plastic stuff so I always have it on hand and I will use it if the butter is too hard to spread. Between you and me - we like to support our fellow farmers too!!
Regards,
Dawn.

I agree with you Dawn, but the butter/canola blaen I am thinking of is made by our very own NZ farmers. We don't actually use very much of it, as mostly sandwiches and so on are made without butter etc. I have been pleased with the homemade butter though for baking. I do keep it in the freezer though, as I think it, or rather any buttermilk you leave in, tends to go off much more quickly than commercially made butter. Mind you we are improving our technigue and I think we are making better butter than when we first began. We have figured now that using cold tap water to wash out the buttermilk works better than water from the fridge. The really cold water makes the butter too hard and it is difficult to work the buttermilk out. I'd like to know what sort of process they use commercially...interesting all the products and processes we take for granted until we have a go ourselves. I had always thought that butter pats were purely for achieving a decorative finish, ow I know they are used to work the butter, as you try to squeeze all the water out after washing it to remove the buttermilk. Anyway, enough from me about our experiments.