Butter’s come a long way since Marlon Brando first used it as a lubricant – just as cheese has come a long way since it was imported into Australia in tins.
We now have our first legally made unpasteurized cheese – known as C2 – available from Bruny Island Cheese. And for the first time the Australian Cheese Awards have recognised a really decent local cheese – Jindi Old Telegraph Road.
The long slow march of the cheesemakers is now paying off for us cheese nuts. And now the same is happening for butter in a few isolated spots across the country.
Up in Myrtleford Naomi Ingleton and her mum Bronwyn have brought the disused Butter Factory back to life and are now churning their own cultured butter with a churn found on a rubbish dump in Gippsland.
Cultured butter is common in Europe but not here, where cream is simply churned and made into butter either with or without added salt. Cultured butter is fermented and has much more interesting flavours.
Being an artisan product, it is much more expensive than the bricks you can by at Coles or Wollies. But there again it is infinately superior to those mass market products and available in smaller quantities.
I like this butter (called The Butter Factory butter) a lot and (against doctor’s orders) prefer the salted to the un.
If you want to see an artisan-made butter industry flourish then I’d suggest just trying this butter out and if you like it to tell your friends about it – like this post on Facebook perhaps (below).
It’s worth it and really important to support small producers like this. We have become used to paying too little for our food thanks to the marketing of Coles and Woolies (and don’t get me started on the $1 milk thing). We need to pay more and very soon will be paying a lot more.
Find this butter:
Melbourne
Key ingredients 171 Queens Pde – Clifton Hill
Pete-N-Rosies Deli – Prahran Market
Leaf – 111 – 113 Ormond rd, Elwood
Leo’s – Kew, Heidelberg, Hartwell
Maxi foods – Blackburn North
Passionfoods – South Melbourne
Bills Farm – Queen Victoria Market
Regional Vic
Forever Fresh – 178 Annesley St, Echuca
Goldfields Greengrocer – Beechworth
Larder Fromagerie – Beechworth
King Valley Fine Foods – 4/103 Murphy St, Wangaratta
Vegetation – Mt Beauty
Dare’s Fruit & Vegetables – Wodonga
Svarmisk – Mt Beauty
Torquay Larder – Torquay
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