Vegan Butter - How To Make Plant-Based Butter | Nutrition Refined (2024)

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This vegan butter is not only a great store-bought alternative, but it’s also free of palm oil, artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. It’s smooth, creamy, rich, and spreads and melts just like regular butter. While it’s not real butter, it’s pretty close. I love to spread it on a piece of bread, add it to mashed potatoes, or use it in baked goods, such as muffins, cookies, or muffin tops.

Since becoming a vegan, butter is something I have missed dearly. I love food that doesn’t need an ingredient list and butter is as simple as it comes – cream. That’s it! No emulsifiers, no hydrogenation, no artificial flavors, no preservatives. It’s also delicious and makes everything taste better – from foods as simple as a toast, to scones, pies, puff pastry and croissants.

Unfortunately, vegan butter options are pretty slim.If you’re lucky you have either access to Earth Balance or Melt Buttery Sticks. These butter substitutions utilize a blend of fats (including palm oil, which is currently associated with rain-forest destruction due to its rising popularity), emulsifiers and natural flavors to mimic real butter. If you are unlucky you only have access to other margarines that use a process called partial hydrogenation to solidify vegetable oil.This hydrogenation process alters the fat structure which also happens to create compounds calledtrans fatty acidsthat are highly toxic to the body.

So it seems that the best alternative to traditional butter is homemade vegan butter with real and sustainable ingredients.

Tips for Making Vegan Butter

Ingredients

Dairy butter is about 80% fat, 10 – 16% water, and 4 – 10% curds and minerals. Refined coconut oil is the best alternative to the typically used palm oil. It’s solid at a room temperature and has a neutral flavor (as long as you get the refined version).

The other oils present in store-bought vegan butter are usually a blend of canola oil, olive oil, and sometimes avocado oil. I went with avocado oil because it has a rich buttery flavor, but pure olive oil works too. Be sure to use pure olive oil as extra virgin olive oil can turn bitter when blended. This isbecause extra-virgin olive oil contains a high percentage of molecular compounds called polyphenols, which are normally coated in fatty acids. When these fat molecules are broken into droplets in an emulsion, the polyphenols are distributed into the solution and their bitter taste can ruin an otherwise delicious recipe. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to use either pure olive oil or hand-whisk the extra virgin olive oil rather than using a blender.

The best plant-based milk for this dairy-free butter iscashew milk. It has a neutral flavor, high fat content, and low protein content. Avoid plant-based milks with strong flavor, such as coconut milk, and milks with high protein content, such as soy milk (because milk proteins easily curdle in the presence of an acid).

Talking about acids, coconutvinegar works the best as the acid medium. It’s milder than any other type of vinegar, has a smooth finish, and no – it doesn’t taste like coconuts. If you can’t find coconut vinegar, you can resort to apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. Nutritional yeastandsaltserve as flavor boosters so you can fine-tune their amount to your own taste.

To prevent the cashew milk separating from the oil, I use sunflower lecithin, which is a phospholipid-based dietary supplement. Sunflower lecithin will keep all the ingredients in emulsion while the butter is setting in the fridge. To be honest though, I have made this recipe several times without the sunflower lecithin and it works perfectly fine.

Cultured Vegan Butter

The main benefit of cultured butter is that it’s fermented with lactic acid bacteria (LAB). LAB are among the most important groups of microorganisms in food fermentation. They contribute to the taste and texture of fermented products and inhibit food spoilage bacteria by producing growth-inhibiting substances and large amounts of lactic acid. If possible, choose probiotic capsules that offer several strains of Lactobacillus bacteria as well as beneficial Bifidobacterium strains. This will create a more complex flavor than using Lactobacillus acidophilus alone.

Technique

When blending, put all the ingredients into the blender except for the oils. Salt doesn’t dissolve in oil. So blending all the ingredients without oil ensures that salt is evenly distributed throughout the mixture. The mixture needs to be completely smooth without any grainy bits.

Another reason for adding the coconut oil into the blender at the last moment is that you don’t want the oil to get too warm. The cooler the coconut oil, the faster it will set in the fridge. The faster it will set. the less chance that the butter will split.

For the best looking butter, I recommend using either an old-fashioned butter mold or a silicone mold. This will allow you to make gorgeous butter sticks/cubes that you can easily slide out of the molds. If you don’t have either, any air-tight container will work just fine.

Tools You’ll Need

1. Blender (Vitamix 5200) | 2. Measuring Cup (1 cup, Pyrex, Glass) | 3. Measuring Spoons (Set of 6, 1EasyLife, Stainless Steel)

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