WEBSTERVILLE, Vt. — With more Americans cooking and entertaining for the holidays, at-home chefs are significantly upping the game for friends and family and insisting on only using the best ingredients for revered traditions and new recipes. In a recent Harris Poll study, commissioned by Vermont Creamery and conducted online among over 2,000 U.S. adults, nearly half of Americans (49%) are likely to use cultured butter – which has a richer flavor – over traditional butter when making holiday dishes this year, jumping to 65% among Americans ages 35-44. Nine in 10 Americans (86%) say it is important to use high quality ingredients when cooking or baking holiday dishes this year, with 1 in 4 (25%) saying it is absolutely essential.
“Throughout the past two years, consumers not only learned to cook new dishes for the first time, but also learned to love time in their kitchens, turning it into passion,” said Adeline Druart, president of Vermont Creamery. “Right now, we are seeing a continuation of the home chef trend with a different focus. People are making ingredient-forward dishes, having learned how to distinguish the difference that higher quality, premium ingredients make, growing demand for products such as cultured butter, and upscale food. They are increasingly unwilling to sacrifice taste for the dishes they work so hard to prepare.”
Culturing food is a practice that dates back to the dawn of human existence yet is gaining newfound recognition in recent years. This form of fermentation creates a desirable complexity of flavor that is increasingly appreciated as part of our country’s evolving palate.
Vermont Creamery’s cultured butter is the result of the company’s mantra of “taste above all,” an uncompromising standard that underlies their entire line of decadent dairy products. The cultured butter is made in the European style with pasteurized, fresh cream in a churn just like regular sweet cream butter, but with one additional step. After pasteurization, its butter makers carefully add live bacterial cultures to fresh Vermont cream. The cream rests in a vat for twenty hours, optimizing flavor and thickening to develop rich notes of buttermilk and hazelnut, resulting in the primary difference between cultured butter and sweet cream, or American style. After fermentation, the cream is churned into butter.
Churned to 82% butterfat – higher than the American legal standard of 80%, Vermont Creamery’s cultured butter is opening the door to the benefits of higher fat for extra creaminess, flakier pastries, and a higher smoke point when searing meat or vegetables. In May of this year, Vermont Creamery’s Sea Salt Cultured Butter sticks won the Specialty Food Association’s coveted Gold Sofi Award. This prestigious award, decided by a blind taste testing among a panel of esteemed judges, is an additional testament to its superior taste and texture.
“Vermont Creamery’s best in class butter makers, who we call Bettermakers, are committed to only using fresh cream as the basis for our butter,” Druart continued. “Great dishes start with quality ingredients, giving consumers the assurance that a recipe will deliver a premier dish, alleviating one concern of the busy season where many feel pressure to cook and bake more extravagantly. With many families gathering for the holidays for the first time in two years, we believe that premium products are vital for an enhanced dining experience at the table.”
A pioneer of artisan cheeses and Certified B Corporation since 2014, Vermont Creamery’s broad dairy portfolio starts with its established network of family farm partnerships. Committed to investing in its surrounding communities and supporting local economies, the brand also advocates for progressive family-friendly benefits.
Survey Method
This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Vermont Creamery from December 2-6, 2021, among 2,058 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact Brooke Salamida, brooke@cgprpublicrelations.com.
About Vermont Creamery
Founded in 1984 and B Corp certified since 2014, Vermont Creamery has won countless national and international awards for their suite of dairy products, while supporting a network of family farms and promoting sustainable agriculture in the region. Ranked in June 2021 in the top 10% of most purposeful brands, according to the 2021 Purpose Power Index, Vermont Creamery is an independently operated subsidiary of Minnesota-based Land ‘O Lakes, Inc., one of the nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperatives. For more information, visit www.vermontcreamery.com.
