Lately I've noticed that butter has gotten really expensive, especially the well-known brands like Lurisia and Occelli. I'm trying to figure out if it still makes sense to buy Italian butter or if I should switch to cheaper alternatives. What brand do you guys normally get?
I personally grab the supermarket brand butter when it's on sale, because the price of good Italian butter has gotten really absurd lately! Lurisia and Occelli are excellent but they cost a fortune, and honestly for a lot of uses (cooking, baking) generic butter works just fine. If you want to stick with recognized Italian brands without spending too much, try checking what they have on sale at different stores, because prices vary quite a bit from place to place.
Good quality Italian butter is definitely pricey, that's true, but it depends on what you're looking for. Lurisia and Occelli are really expensive, but if you go for brands like Occelli Gold or butters made from cream-skimmed milk, you pay the price because you can actually feel the difference when you use it in cooking or eat it plain. But if you're baking or using it for normal cooking, the gap between good butter and decent butter is less noticeable.
What I do is grab Italian butter when it's on sale, like Carrefour Selection or the various supermarket brands that honestly often come from decent dairies anyway. It's not the same as Lurisia, but it's still well-made Italian butter at a price that doesn't hurt your wallet. Foreign alternatives like Danish or Dutch butter often cost about the same in my supermarket, so it's worth sticking with the national brand if the price is the same.
What I'd advise against is grabbing the super cheap brands without checking where they're from, because that's basically artificial butter. Always check the ingredients and whether it's made in Italy. My supermarket started doing two-for-one deals on butter after July, so maybe wait for those kinds of periods if you want the better brands without spending a fortune.
The thing is, Italian butter is still better than foreign ones, but the prices have gotten crazy. What I do is check the deals carefully at Conad where I usually shop, because Lurisia sometimes goes down to reasonable prices. When there's no discount, I get the supermarket's own brand - it's not terrible, it does the job. You notice the difference mainly if you use it for shortcrust pastry or for dunking bread, less so if you melt it in the kitchen for normal cooking.
An alternative I like is looking at lesser-known but Italian brands like Lurisia Centanni (costs a bit less than the regular version) or seeing if your supermarket has local labels from dairy areas. Sometimes butter from small dairies costs even less than the big names. If you're willing to completely change your approach, French butter like Échiré or Normandie costs a fortune too, so you might as well stick with Italian.
Honestly the best compromise in my opinion is getting decent Italian butter when it's on sale and stocking up, rather than paying full price. That way I don't have to choose a worse one and I'm not complaining about my grocery bill every day.
Log into answer.
