When I did my post on my favorite butter sources, I mentioned Kerrygold butter. It is a butter that we have been using for years. I knew it was superior to most butters in the stores. I found that it made everything taste better that I used it with-It makes a wonderful pastry dough, by the way- and was superior for your health. But I was told that it was only partly grass fed. Happily, I was misinformed. I didn’t know all of the details, and now I am even more excited about it!
Molly O’Loughlin left a message on my post, giving a more detailed description of Kerrygold butter.
We are so delighted that to hear that you enjoy Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter! We thought we should just add a few bits of additional information for you that you may find useful.
Kerrygold dairy products are made from the freshest milk of grass fed cows. While others are now rediscovering the benefits of grass feeding cows, the Irish have never wavered, recognizing that cows are natural ruminants and grass is their natural diet.
Today, most of the milk from Ireland’s small dairy farms go to local co-ops, where milk is collected, then sent on to be made into butter and cheeses.
Milk is entirely from grass-fed cows (from Ireland’s green lush pastures) and only summer milk is used to produce Kerrygold butter.
Kerrygold produces two different types of butter for the US: a salted sweeet cream butter (gold foil) and unsalted lactic/cultured butter (sliver foil).
In addition, we have developed a webiste specifically for the US consumer. The link is www.kerrygold.com/usa if you would like to use that instead.
(bold, mine)
So not only is it completely grass fed, but it the butter is made from the more superior milk (from the summer milk). That’s exciting! The other great thing about Kerrygold is that it is widely available.
I can get it the cheapest at Trader Joe’s, but you can also find it at health food stores, specialty stores and even regular grocery stores. You often will find it, not with the other butter, but with the imported cheeses. For a very short while, Costco (Sam’s Club) carried it. It was a huge bummer when they stopped. But you can get Kerrygold cheese there for a very good price.
I also didn’t realize that their unsalted butter was cultured. That’s good to know (though I have to admit that I really like their salted one the best).
The only thing I wish? That I was an affiliate for Kerrygold……I would gladly back this product!
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Oh, how exciting! I clicked on their link and it is sold at a chain that I actually have in my town! Woohoo! Love it! Now I’ll have to go check and see if they actually HAVE it. Hoping, hoping!
I went back to the previous butter post to see if there was info on there about specific prices, but there wasn’t. Keeping in mind that prices vary quite a bit across regions, I was wondering if you could give us an idea of the price KerryGold sells for?
Oh man, I LOVE this butter. My FIL and I give it to each other as gifts for Christmas and birthdays because we are huge butter fans. 🙂
Brianna,
It is definitely more expensive, so prepare yourself. 🙂 I think at Trader Joe’s I pay around 2.75 for half a pound. It can be up to 3.50 at other places. But when we were in California, I noticed that food was a bit cheaper, so who knows how much you will have to pay for it.
But, in my opinion, it is SO worth it. But, yes, sometimes we have to watch how much butter we use in recipes, etc, to fit it in our budget.
I hope you are able to find it!
I already love butter. I’ll have to see if I can find some of this to try. Thanks for all the info.
Thanks so much for this information! Kerrygold is now my default when I don’t have access to good local butter. Trader Joe’s seems to carry it for pretty cheap. I made ghee with it a couple weeks ago and it was wonderful.
Sarah Jones,
I am so glad that you enjoy it! 🙂 I also love ghee made from it. It is definitely the best tasting kind I have made.
I just discovered Kerrygold butter at one of my local grocery stores, right in the imported cheese section, like you said. It’s $4.89 for 8 oz., but it’s so fantastic, it is definitely worth it! Sometimes to get by, I use Organic Valley butter for cooking with, but I always at least reserve the Kerrygold for direct application on bread/toast, baked potatoes, or whatever else you’d put butter on. Just a few tablespoons a day is a great supplement for your health.
I forgot to mention that I live in eastern Washington. I wish I could find it here for $3.50, let alone $2.75!
Jess,
I am so glad that you have been able to find it and enjoy it! It’s to bad you can’t find it cheaper though. Do you not have a Trader Joe’s near you?
But it is good, isn’t it. 😉
This is great – My husband travels to London frequently, and started bringing back various butters for us to try. We settled on the Kerrygold as our favorite for flavor and cooking properties. (Also good is Anchor from New Zealand). At some point, his schedule had kept him away from UK long enough that we ran out. So I went to the grocery and bought our former standard, LandOLakes. It was terrible! Had no flavor whatsoever, and burned the instant it hit the pan. I have since found that Texas’ Falfurrias butter is an acceptable substitute, but we have been pretty careful not to run out of Kerrygold since! We also give it as presents to our neighbors, LOL.
DivaKitty,
An fyi on the Texas’ Falfurrias butter. It is no longer made there. The history of the dairy there, in 1909, goes to a settler who built the largest herd of Jersey Cow in the US at that time. The dairy has been sold to some corporate, commercial dairy, so don’t be fooled into thinking you are getting a pure, high quality butter. The current dairy corportation is just using the name. The dairy no longer exists in Falfurria, Tx.
Falfurrias is still made in Texas, in Winnsboro. Winnsboro is a long way from Falfurrias, so I doubt they get much milk from there, but it’s right next to Hopkins County, which was the heart of the state’s dairy industry for decades.
Braum’s butter is from Oklahoma, but it is really good. It is cultured, as is their buttermilk. The cows are not grass-fed; they are fed mostly corn (which is a grass) and alfalfa, and corn-and-alfalfa silage. The prices are excellent, especially compared to European cultured butters. They only sell at their own stores, not in supermarkets, and only within 300 miles of their main farm in Tuttle, Oklahoma, so you can’t buy it much further south than Dallas.
My favorite butter is Kerrygold.
Que puedp preparar con la leche kerrygold
Kerrygold butter and Dubliner cheese is back at Costco! I was told that it’s only during the St. Patrick’s Day season, so hurry. They don’t have unsalted, but at that price I’m buying and freezing them for everyday table use.
I am a huge fan of this butter. When my local Safeway has it on sale I buy at least 3 of them and but them in a ziploc freezer bag. KerryGold butter is the best butter I have ever tasted.
Trader Joe’s brand organic salted butter (at least at my local stores) says the cows they use feed on green pasture on the box. I got some Kerrygold cultured unsalted butter and will compare taste as soon as I finish TJ’s butter.
This is a very interesting thread. I’m a chef who is part of a three year grant studing grass fed dairy products in wisconsin. I have been searching for any information and recipes using grass fed butter. The taste and texture is incredible. There seems to be more and more popping up, pastureland out of Minnesota is another 100% grass fed. I would be interesting in anyones experience in cooking with it. It is a bit of a shame to hide it in things, but we just made some killer cookies. Pastry doughs and brioche is this weeks experiments.
Jack
Hi Kimi,
Is it better, healthwise/nutritionally, to eat sweet cream butter (salted/gold) or lactic/cultured butter (unsalted/silver)? I’m not worried about the salt aspect. Thanks! And please post if you find Kerrygold back at Costco!
~M
Costco has the salted/gold Kerrygold in Chicago for $7.49 for 24 oz. yay! I’m going to store it in my freezer (is there any reason not to?…I did this with regular butter). Thanks for the tip!
I visited Ireland last year. I brought a lot of Kerrygold back with me (I was living in Portugal at the time – so the flight was short). We love it. It’s so cheap there. I forget what I paid. But, I think it was equal to $2.75-$3.00 for one pound. And, some of the other, local brands, were even less expensive, and they make their butter the same way. What lucky residents of Ireland!
I did find it at Costco last week. I paid about $7 for 1.5 pounds. I didn’t see unsalted, however. I did notice that Kansas City’s Wild Oat’s market has it and I think I may have saw unsalted. I’ll have to grab more next time I’m out that way. Thanks for this post on it!
Kerrygold isn’t from Ireland, I hate to tell you. If you look at the EU stamp on the back, its from a dairy in France. I tried to get an answer out of the company handling it here in the US, but no one would return my call. Enjoy your French butter.
Adam,
I hate to tell you that Kerrygold is indeed from Ireland. If yours is from France there is a possibility that it is repacked under franchise. Most Irish people old enough will know it from the seventies when it became very popular, particularly in Germany and Britain as a tasty import since at that time Ireland was very much an unspoiled agricultural based economy.
Emailing from the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland I see that my Kerrygold laying in front of me on the kitchen table is made under franchise in Cork, Ireland by a Cork dairy – which as some of you will know is the neighbouring county to Kerry.
So could it be made under franchise in France . . . or say New Zealand ? All EU dairy farmers received subsidies to produce butter even when there was a pre-existing surplus (US farmers receive similar subsidies from their goverment). Hence this butter mountain (as it is referred to in Europe) results in cheap butter.
I am guessing it may be repackaged elsewhere but it is comes from the udders of cows in Ireland’s rainy and green south west pastures.
In defense of the French there is a unusually good French goat butter, who’s name escapes me and the Icelandic’s do a pretty good butter too.
Kerrygold butter is wholly made in Ireland but packaged in France for european and U.S distribution.
I don’t care where the damn cows live, it is the best butter out there. Caveat: you will find yourself getting out of bed at night snitching a tablespoon of the stuff. Your cardiologist will admonish you, the scales will punish you. But, if you want to make the best hollandaise you’ve ever had, use the Kerrygold. I’m headed for the 3rd circle of hell anyway.
I found Kerrygold butter at our local Publix grocery store! It was about $3.50 lb. I plan to buy it when my ghee runs out, is it just as good when made into ghee? I wish I could try it the regular way, but I have a milk protein allergy.
Kerrygold makes wonderful ghee. 🙂
Does anyone know if KerryGold Butter is made from raw milk? Or any Butter?
Only butter I perfer. So tasty, I enjoy the smell the taste, goody.
Butter made from raw milk cannot be sold legally in most states in this country. If your state allows it, the butter will have to be produced locally — so no, Kerrygold is not made from raw milk. And the EU stamp has nothing to do with where the cows live — that’s just the govt. certifying body, which happens to have headquarters in France.
The seal indicates the facility where the butter is produced. I suspect either the Irish milk is shipped to France and churned there or bulk butter is re-packaged in France. By the way Kerrygold also now (Sep 2016) shows up with a UK facility seal. I wonder if the market is expanding or if the packaging contract has been switched.
I just tried Kerrygold butter for the first time and it is the best! I found a new love and I found it at our local grocery store.
We have used Pastureland salted butter for the past 4-5 yrs. and love it. We haven’t been able to get it lately so tried the Kerrygold butter and we are very pleased with it.
I think it is wonderful. We will go back to the Pastureland because I believed in supporting small American agriculture when possible. I am delighted to know we have a great alternative in Kerrygold.
Kerrygold is 100% Irish Butter,
The golden colour is completely natural and comes from the beta-carotene in the intense green Irish grass consumed by the cows.
Irish grass, Irish Butter, Exported world wide. NOT French.
Kerrygold is 100% Irish Butter,
The golden colour is completely natural and comes from the beta-carotene in the intense green Irish grass consumed by the cows.
Irish Cows, Irish grass, Irish Butter, Exported world wide. NOT French.
Can I bake with Kerrygold butter, especially unsalted? I had made sugar cookies with the salted version and they spread too much, were absolutely delicious, I crumbled them and used as topping on fruit salad and cobblers.
Adam Winslow mentioned the EU stamp on the back of the package. The Kerrygold package I am holding now has the stamp FR 59.462.30 CE. This is the EEC Approval Number for the Kerrygold brand. However, there’s more to this story. The number 59.462.30 is the identifier for the company that packs the product. In this case, Loyez Woessen SA, a French company. Here’s their web site: loyezwoessen.com. Their packing plant is located in an industrial park in Northern France, close to the Channel Tunnel. Interestingly, their Managing Director, James O’Regan, has an Irish name. What does this all mean? It means that the Kerrygold story is at least in part, marketing b-s. Kerrygold butter is packed in France and probably does include enough Irish milk to satisfy the applicable EEC regulation. However, Kerrygold is clearly an industrial butter, not an artisanal butter. How could it be otherwise when it has such wide distribution? So Adam Winslow is right, Kerrygold is a French butter masquerading as an Irish butter and Kerrygold is a brand. The good news is that the French make some very good butter. But made with 100% grass-fed milk from Irish cows? I really doubt it.
It is only packaged in France for Eurpoean and U.S. distribution. It is wholly made in Ireland.
A week ago I went to the local market to buy Coconut milk, but they no longer carry So Delicious (only Silk – YUCK – that C.M. actually made me nauseous), so as I was leaving I walked past the butter section and there it was – Kerrygold on sale for $2.50 (regularly $3.50)! I bought 6 salted butters – the silver unsalted package does NOT say that it is cultured – if it did I would have bought some. I froze 5 of them (2 days before Hurricane Irene, but luckily my area only lost power for a few hours :). I must say that I love butter, but never enough to eat it straight off the knife – but the salted Kerrygold, OH MY – I have to restrain myself! I’m a total convert now – even at $7 a pound normal price! Even my mother (who believes the anti-salt propaganda) has been eating it – it is SO ADDICTIVE!!!
As for EU regulations, I’ll have to do more research on that. Kerrygold may not be protected – “Italian” Olive Oil is NOT a “Protected Designation” so I no longer use that – too many contamination stories (mostly Spanish olives – and sadly some Spanish “Olive Oil” has been found to be dyed and fragranced soy / canola oils), but “Greek” Olive Oil can only be labeled as such if it is truly 100% Greek, so that is what I use now.
Why do I HATE cooking with this butter???? What am I doing wrong? Everyone on this site including a chef, loves cooking with this butter. I have been a celebrated cook among my friends for years and I find this butter burns easily, doesn’t separate properly, has a ‘beefy’ flavor, not such a creamy one, and you get about half the butter you’d pay for if you purchased another brand in a carton! I don’t mind the taste on potatoes or fresh bread, but since we are not eating like that anymore, I can’t see it’s use. I particularly hate that is doesn’t handle heat well. I DO LIKE that is is made from grass-fed cows. Any suggestions??
Why do I HATE cooking with this butter???? What am I doing wrong? Everyone on this site including a chef, loves cooking with this butter. I have been a celebrated cook among my friends for years and I find this butter burns easily, doesn’t separate properly, has a ‘beefy’ flavor, not such a creamy one, and you get about half the butter you’d pay for if you purchased another brand in a carton! I don’t mind the taste on potatoes or fresh bread, but since we are not eating like that anymore, I can’t see it’s use. I particularly hate that is doesn’t handle heat well. I DO LIKE that is is made from grass-fed cows. Any suggestions??
Hey, can anyone tell me where I can buy KerryGold butter in Grand Rapids, Michigan??
I’ve searched every store around and can’t find it. I do not have a Sams’ Club or Cosco membership. Oh boy, I had it when I was in Ireland and fell in love with it, now I think I’m in withdrawl. Help please, thanks.
I live in Howell, Michigan and the only place i have seen it is in a Kroger store. It isn’t there year round, however, and they don’t have any now. Also, there are 3 stores within driving distance to me, and only 1 carries it so you might try a Kroger store near you.
It’d be good if it weren’t pasteurized. I’ll pass right over the KerryGold.
hi
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF KERRYGOLD BUTTER IS HALAAL.
THANKS
AHMED
SOUTH AFRICA
This butter actually is only 90% grass-fed. According to their US website, “Supplementary feed makes up about 10% of a cow’s diet. The supplementary feed is used to give the cows a healthy and balanced blend of nutrients, providing them with protein, energy and fiber. The majority of the cow’s supplementary feed is from locally grown Irish crops, such as wheat and barley. The balance of this feed can be composed of distillers grain (rapeseed, soy and citrus pulp – a blend of dried peel, pulp and seeds of oranges, grapefruit and other citrus fruit).”
You’re all wrong actually. The stamp on the package denotes the plant in which the product was MADE. If you’ve ever been in a dairy plant, you know that any bulk cream or milk coming in is certainly co-mingled with every other tanker unloading there. The plant in france doesn’t have a “KERRY GOLD” division of tanks, churns and pumps. When they tell you that “oh its just packaged there” That would tell me that some massive plant in ireland churned the butter and threw it into 40 lb blocks. Then when they didn’t have time to package it, they shipped it, FROZEN to France where they ran it through a texturizer (a massive tub with rotating blades to soften it for the packaging machines) then they pumped it half way to kingdom come and ran it through a 1960’s ben hill german made stick machine that likely just got done running some more undergrade butter for American consumption. Remember people, butter here is 4 dollars a pound average, how can the EU compete with that? You really think they’re going to send their best butter here and undersell themselves? No, they’re going to send the crap they’ve had in the freezer for two years because 99% of everyone wants to believe whats on the package. And the beefy flavor you got was from the bulk tank conditions on the farm. When they leave the lid off the smell of cow manure is readily absorbed by the phospholipids in the butter fat. That creamy soft texture is from over working. Which would suggest that the latter of the two scenarios is true, they make it bulk, freeze it, ship it, break it and blend it with knives, pump it some more and then package it (OVER WORKING) that makes the texture greasy and soft. Frank Kosikowsky has some good literature and the University of Wisconsin has some lovely classes where you can learn and experiment with these defects in butter. Enjoy your old, washed up, undergrade French frozen delight. Hmmmmm….makes you wonder why the Irish Dairy Board doesn’t return phone calls or emails eh? 🙂
I guess Mrs. O’Leary isn’t out making 250 g batches by hand after all. My bubble has been burst.