A broadcast of Keuringsdienst van Waarde (KRO-NCRV) raised a question you can ask yourself at the dairy shelf: why is semi-skimmed milk cheaper than full-fat milk, while semi-skimmed butter is not cheaper at all?
Semi-skimmed milk: less fat, lower price
With milk the sums add up. Whole milk has at least 3.5% fat, semi-skimmed milk sits between 1.5 and 1.8%. For semi-skimmed milk the fat is removed in a centrifuge, and according to the broadcast the milk is about twenty cents a litre cheaper in the shop.
Semi-skimmed butter: mostly water
Butter is different. Ordinary butter is about 82% fat and at most 16% water. According to the broadcast, semi-skimmed butter contains around 59% water. To hold water and fat together, extra ingredients are needed, such as emulsifiers, thickeners and preservatives. You can read more about this in our article on emulsions.
The striking part: on the shelf, a 250 gram pack of semi-skimmed butter cost 2.29 euros in the broadcast, while full-fat butter cost 2.19 euros. So you pay more for a product with more water in it. A food technologist put it briefly like this: you pay for the healthy image and forget that you are buying a glass of water along with it. A dairy farmer even spoke of deception.
Why do manufacturers do this?
Fat is expensive, water is cheap. According to the calculation in the broadcast, even 0.1 percentage point less fat in milk yields about 5 million euros at a billion litres of production. With semi-skimmed butter the difference in ingredient costs is even greater.
What does this mean for your kitchen?
For anyone who cooks and bakes this is more than a question of price, because water and fat behave differently:
- Frying and roasting: the extra water spits in the pan and evaporates, so you get less browning. Check the pack to see whether the butter is suitable for frying.
- Biscuits, tart bases and puff pastry: the amount of water changes the dough. Use ordinary butter here, unless the recipe says otherwise.
- Sauces: a butter sauce such as beurre blanc relies on fat and a stable emulsion. Semi-skimmed butter is not meant for that.
- Roux: for a roux too you use ordinary butter, so the ratio of fat to flour is right.
How to shop smart
- Look at the price per kilo and not at the pack price.
- Read the ingredients list: a long list of emulsifiers and thickeners is a sign that there is a lot of water in it.
- Choose by use: semi-skimmed spreads on bread, but is no replacement for ordinary butter in recipes.
The prices and percentages above come from the broadcast and may have changed since. This post is a summary of our own. See the original item on the KRO-NCRV site: Keuringsdienst van Waarde: semi-skimmed or full-fat milk and butter.