Here’s Why Costco’s Butter Tastes So Good
It’s not often that you hear butter and health benefits in the same sentence, but quite often, the better the taste, the better that buttah is for you, apparently. This helps me rationalize my obsession with Costco’s Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter. I swear, it tastes just as good as the pricey name brands (I see you, Kerrygold!) … but for almost half the cost.
Seriously, you wouldn’t expect warehouse club butter to be so luxe, but Costco has unlocked a level of peak dairy while keeping prices low.
So what’s Costco’s secret sauce for its private-label butter? Buckle up, because we have to travel to New Zealand to get to the bottom of it.
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Who’s behind Costco’s butter, exactly?
Sometimes you have to do some serious sleuthing to figure out which major manufacturer is behind Costco’s Kirkland products. That’s not the case with Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter, which comes from Westland Milk Products, located in Hokitika, New Zealand. Costco is very forthcoming about the details and even wrote a Costco Connection blog post about it.
This particular butter has been in Costco stores since 2021, and I sincerely hope it never joins the list of discontinued Kirkland products.
Why is Costco’s butter so good?
There are a few things that make one butter higher quality than the next. These typically include a higher percentage of butter fat than milk solids, what the cows are fed, and the churning mechanisms used. Here’s how Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter stacks up against those qualities:
Its milk comes from grass-fed cows
Right there in the name, Kirkland butter tells you it comes from grass-fed cows. Why is that a good thing? Because when a cow’s diet consists primarily of grass, the carotenoids (naturally occurring pigments) make the resulting butter a rich yellow. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are also transferred over, which not only help give the butter a smoother texture but also provide nutrients our bodies can’t make on their own. So you’ve got that creamy, more spreadable texture coupled with rich color.
For the record, Costco says these cows have a 95% grass-fed diet, with the remaining 5% consisting of grains. It’s important to note that grass-fed animals generally enjoy more ethical treatment, free to roam meadows and pastures. And while that may make your soul feel good, those polyunsaturated fats from the grass-fed cows are also good for your heart.
It contains 82% butterfat
The amount of butterfat vs. milk solids in a butter makes all of the difference. High-quality butters contain 82% or more butterfat, so Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed is right up there with the best of them. In comparison, Kerrygold has between 82% to 83% butterfat, and Vital Farms contains about 85%.
Butterfat is really what gives the butter its flavor, so the higher percentage of the stuff, the more flavor the product will have. It also provides a creamier texture, ideal for smothering a piece of toast.
It’s made with the Fritz churn method
There’s more than one way to churn butter, but the Fritz method is used in European-style butter making because the gentle, controlled process allows for better fat separation. This lends itself to cleaner, purer butter. On top of that, this method keeps more of the natural flavor compounds in the butter, preventing excessive oxidation, which can lead to off-flavors.
What fancy brands is Costco’s butter on par with?
Kerrygold, Plugra, Vital Farms and Lewis Road Creamery (which also hails from New Zealand) are all considered top notch when it comes to high-quality butter. But they also cost big bucks compared to what you’ll pay for Costco’s version. (We’ll get to that in a second.)
Consider this: A single 8-ounce brick of Kerrygold Grass-Fed Pure Irish Salted Butter costs $4.99 at Target. Plugra, in exactly the same size, costs about $4.29 at Albertson’s. Meanwhile, Vital Farms costs $5.99 at Safeway. And that Lewis Road Creamery butter? It costs $8.49 for 8 ounces at my local specialty food store.
What does Costco’s butter cost?
Costco’s Grass-Fed Butter rings in at $12.01 for four—count ’em four—8-ounce bricks, which breaks down to roughly $3 each. That’s 30% less than Plugra (the cheapest “fancy” butter I could find) and a whopping 64.7% less than Lewis Road Creamery butter, which, as a reminder, also hails from New Zealand.
Those are some serious savings … as long as you actually use the butter. The good news is that butter freezes well and can be stored for up to a year, so it won’t go bad before you have a chance to use it as long as you stick it in deep freeze before its expiration date.
So, as you can see, you can feel good about Costco’s butter for a whole range of reasons. I certainly do!
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Sources:
- Costco Connection: “Beneficial butter”
- News Medical Life Sciences: “The Health Benefits of Grass-Fed Butter”
- American Heart Association: “Polyunsaturated Fats”
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