Cooking with Salted Butter

Replacing unsalted butter with salted butter will require some recipe adjustment.

We find that salt often masks the sweet creaminess associated with butter. In the test kitchen, we always develop recipes with unsalted butter. We think it tastes better.

If you want to use salted butter in savory recipes that call for unsalted, you will need to reduce the total amount of salt in the recipe. A stick of salted butter contains the equivalent of 1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon of table salt, so adjust recipes accordingly.

In baking, we strongly recommend using unsalted butter. Given its sodium content, salted butter will make many recipes inedible. For instance, our favorite butter frosting calls for just a pinch of salt and our sugar cookies need only 1/4 teaspoon salt. Each recipe calls for two stick of butter, so if you were to use salted butter (rather than unsalted), each would contain about 3/4 teaspoon of salt—an amount easily detected.