Why does butter, store-bought and homemade, crumble?

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Butter is not just a flavoring additive to porridge or boiled potatoes, it is also a valuable source of vitamins and minerals necessary for active brain function, boosting immunity, improving skin condition, strengthening blood vessels, etc. That's just the speech It is about high-quality and natural butter. And if you believe the estimates of a number of independent experts, there are few of these on the shelves of stores. In our article, we will consider why the butter that falls on our table crumbles. We will definitely dwell on how to choose a quality product among the numerous assortment of different manufacturers.

Should butter crumble?

In its natural form, this product is exclusively of animal origin, as it is made only from cow's milk and cream. Depending on the cooking technology, there is butter "Traditional", "Amateur", "Peasant". Accordingly, the fat content of such a product varies from 82.5% to 72.5%. If the technology for preparing butter is sustained, then the amount of milk fat in it will strictly comply with the requirements of GOST.

To check the quality of the purchased product, you must place it in the freezer for a while. Even when frozen, sufficiently hard butter should cut well, of course, if the amount of fat in it corresponds to the value indicated on the package. Ideally, when cut, the piece retains its integrity and does not crumble. And why butter, after defrosting, falls apart into small particles, this is already a question for unscrupulous manufacturers. And there are not so few of them in our market.

Why does butter crumble when cut?

It was stated above that a natural product, which contains only milk cream, must retain its integral structure and not fall apart into small particles. But quite often you can notice that the butter crumbles when cutting. Why is this happening? This can be explained as follows:

1. Temperature storage conditions violated. Most likely, such oil was frozen several times and thawed again. As a result, its structure was broken.
2. Poor quality butter. The ratio of fat and moisture in such a product is notcomplies with the norm and standard. After defrosting, such oil will crumble, since, most likely, it was not initially heat-resistant enough, loose.

How to choose quality oil in the store?

When buying butter in a supermarket, you should pay attention to a number of important criteria:

1. GOST natural butter - R 52969-2008 or R 52253-2004 (Vologda product, produced by only three factories). Since July 2015, another standard GOST 32261-2013 has been put into effect. All these values are recommended to be memorized or memorized in order to always buy only high-quality butter.
2. The fat content of a natural traditional, amateur or peasant product is 72.5-82.5%. If lower, then it is a spread or margarine.
3. Packaging should not be paper, but foil. Only she can protect the product from exposure to ultraviolet radiation and other negative factors.
4. Butter composition - 100% pasteurized cream. Milk fat substitutes, emulsifiers and other additives are not allowed.
5. The shelf life of a natural product does not exceed 1 month, unless preservatives and stabilizers are added to it.

Why does homemade butter crumble from a knife?

When choosing a store-bought product, we 100% trust the information on the packaging. Therefore, it is only possible to explain why butter crumblesviolation of production or storage technology by the manufacturer. With a product prepared at home, the situation is somewhat different. To understand why homemade butter crumbles when cut, you need to understand the technology of its preparation.

As in production, such a product is prepared by whipping heavy milk cream. After a few minutes of operation of the mixer or combine, they are stratified into butter and buttermilk (whey). It is this liquid that must be separated from the fat in the future, since when frozen, the whey will give the same crumb. Properly cooked homemade butter never crumbles and always spreads easily on bread.

How to choose high quality homemade butter?

The undoubted advantage of buying a product on the market is that you can taste it. In this case, you need to pay attention to the fact that natural butter:

• no smell;
• melts quickly in your mouth;
• leaves a pleasant sweet and creamy aftertaste;
• does not stick to teeth;
• is light yellow, but not white or bright yellow.

If the oil tastes bad, it means that low-quality raw materials were used in its preparation or vegetable fats were added.

Other ways to determine product quality

To make sure that the butter is of high quality, you need to conduct the following experiment. Place a small piece of the product weighing 20 g in a hotwater. If the butter is natural, it will dissolve evenly, while margarine or spread will break up into individual particles.

If the product has a high whey content, then within a few minutes after it was taken out of the freezer, drops of water will appear on the surface. This means that when cutting it will definitely crumble. Why this happens with butter has been described above. First of all, this is a violation of the technology of its production at a factory or at home.