TS: Butter vs. Margarine

At least you don't have to add your own coloring to margarine anymore.

I wasn't raised with butter. All my parents would use for spreading over toast, topping potatoes, sauteeing green beans, baking cookies, etc., was margarine when I was growing up. I didn't even taste butter until a couple of Christmases ago when Mom was showing me how to make this sugar cookie/shortbread hybrid that also included some candied fruit. It tasted, uh, interesting.

I'm used to margarine. When I say I'm going to "butter" my bagel (I *big heart* toasted bagels with "butter" and jam) or when I say I love eating pancakes that have been "buttered" liberally but don't have any syrup on top, I'm talking about using margarine. Especially the Country Crock brand.

Like you guys didn't know already how weird I am. Huh.

The US also went through this sixty years ago, BTW. (In short: When margarine first became popular, the butter people were worried that people would mistake margarine for butter if margarine was allowed to be dyed butter yellow. So, for a while margarine was sold undyed, and a small piece of coloring was included along with each package, to be mixed in before use.)

My favourite margarine is that Olivina or whatever, the kind made with un-hydrogenated olive oil.

We usually use margarine because someone (not me) is on a diet and we aren't allowed anything fun in the refrigerator.

For a contrarian account of butter, see Mary G. Enig's Know Your Fats.

Butter would be even better if it spread straight from the fridge.

emma, the science IIRC corectly is that the fat crystals in margerine are smaller so make more smaller air pockets which makes for a lighter fluffier cake (if you like that sort of thing)

Another interesting fact is that butter contains a lot of the same fats as olive oil, which are quite good for you and polyunsaturated fats, as found in marge, break down in hot frying to form carcinogenic compounds. The whole marge is better for you is a myth. At a science of food lecture once, I saw tim Hunkin make margerine from dirty engine oil. I submit it to you that marge is evil as proven by science and that butter is far superior in every way.

There are two key kinds of butter; sweetcream and lactic. Sweetcream butters are made from cream only a couple of days out of the cow, most UK butters are sweet cream. Lactic butter is made from cream that has been allowed to sour a little, to a creme fraiche, sour cream type state before churning. Lurpac is the main lactic butter in the UK.

I'm currently rocking sainsbury's salted beurre d'isigny, which has been on special offer recently. Tesco's cornish and brittany are good too.

i vote butter sirs!

Today is national butter day (USA only).

I love butter.

I don't understand how this is even a question.

i've been using earth balance, which is a vegan "buttery spread" that has no trans fat. the website says it's specifically not "margarine." obv i prefer real butter, but this stuff is surprisingly butter-like.

this thread really should have been "defend the indefensible: margarine"

margarine is gross but earth balance is really good

earth balance rules.

Who eats margarine any more these days anyway? It's not the War or anything...

Or are people getting mixed up between oil spreads and margarine? - One is a substance made from natural oils and generally a healthy replacement for butter when used as spread, but not necessarily in cooking. The other is a yellow-dyed goo that they scrape off the bottom of ships and gives you rickets.

i thought stuff like earth balance is a type of margarine

I like Earth Balance as well, and given my lactose problem I'd rather avoid nearly all dairy as I can to be on the safe side. (Exception being cheese, of course. I'm not crazy.)

We use olive spread. Grew up on butter though. Still use butter occasionally for cooking. Margarine is gross.

margarine is garbage, eat some real food

Got a half pound of goat-milk butter recently -- it didn't have any of that goaty tartness when I first unwrapped it, but since letting it come up to room temp and then rechilling it a few times, it's gotten more and more tangy. It won't replace cow's milk butter for me, but it was interesting to try.

I vote butter any day. I do have a nostalgic soft spot in my heart for Blue Bonnet margarine, though, because when I was very little I thought the woman in the logo was a picture of my mom.

http://files.myopera.com/edwardpiercy/blog/Blue-Bonnet-1.jpg

I even had a doll of it that I pretended was my mom when she was at work.

In Britain we can buy butter advertised by Johnny Rotten...
http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/john-lydon-butter-ad-20081001-154850.jpg

xp: Abbott, that's so adorable I could cry.

I am some kinda heathen and go for this shit:

http://www.new-nutrition.com/newspage/NewsPage%20GFX/SmartBalance.gif

invariably need butter to cook with so no point getting other stuff

xp the packaging on that makes it look like something you'd use to grease the axles of a car...

TS: Butter vs. Margarine

Both of these things are revolting imo.