Using salted versus unsalted butter can dramatically impact a recipe. Unsalted butter gives cooks more control over the final flavor of sweet baked goods like buttery chocolate chip cookies or vanilla buttercream frosting, while salted butter can enhance the flavor of pasta dishes or vegetables. While the difference isn’t extreme, there’s a reason most recipes specify one or the other: There’s no industry standard for the sodium content in salted butter.
Most grocery store butter brands contain between 600 and 800 milligrams of sodium per stick (½ cup) which is roughly equivalent to about ¼ to ½ teaspoon of salt. The majority hover around the ¼ mark, but the amount varies from brand to brand. Land O’Lakes salted butter contains 720 milligrams of sodium per stick, as do Lucerne Dairy Farms and Challenge butters. Organic Valley salted butter contains 600 milligrams per stick, while Vital Farms has 624 milligrams. If you like a saltier butter, go for Kerrygold Irish Butter, which has 800 milligrams per ½ cup.
So, if one baker uses Organic Valley salted butter for a cake and another tries to recreate the recipe with Kerrygold, the salt levels could differ significantly. It also might be worth checking the salt content of your butter if you’re watching your sodium intake.
Swapping butters
Another difference between salted and unsalted butter is that the unsalted butter at your grocery store could be fresher. This is because salt acts as a natural preservative, giving butter a longer shelf life. As long as the salted butter is still in date, this shouldn’t matter too much, but some bakers like to be particular.
Salted butter also has slightly more water content, which can affect how gluten behaves in baking, potentially altering the texture of the final product. So, if you’re adding it to a bread recipe, unsalted may be safest. Again, there’s no need to worry about this if your butter is for everyday use. If you’re unsure which one to pick, go for the unsalted version. It’s easier to add salt than fix oversalted dishes.
If you only have one type of butter on hand and it’s not the one a certain recipe calls for, you can easily substitute them. If the recipe needs ½ cup of unsalted butter and ½ teaspoon salt, use the same amount of salted butter and reduce the added salt, perhaps to ¼ teaspoon. Conversely, just add some salt if you need to substitute unsalted butter for salted. However, at these amounts it’s unlikely that flavors will be completely changed either way, so don’t stress about it too much — butter will always add a delicious flavor to your dish.
