"the land of ..... jambon buerre" - the ham sandwich. I'll bet that John Montagu is wondering whether that is an example of French arrogance or American ignorance or both.
Why isn't there a huge obesity epidemic in France given how much saturated fat they are consuming? Did they not hear of the health guidelines that saturated fat is very bad for you?
The reason that France has low obesity rates is because they value fresh pesticide free foods. There butter is not genetically modified, and they refrain from using chemicals in their foods, which allows for them to eat much healthier. Although they do intake saturated fats, they do it in moderation, and that alone does not lead to obesity.
Voila. One way to help the French make it thru their obesity crisis. altho they can substitute cheese or myriad oils or nutella (disgusting to me in my dotage; delish in my adolescence) for the beurre.!!
If only this were the biggest problem in the world!!
?? Did all the cows who laughed when they saw the old Americaine speeding down the one lane roads in August decide not to make milk for awhile. I want a calendar the cows fo France. They were so adorable... however, asI learned in Devon, England, herd of cows do not always take kindly to strangers.. They told me back off, so I backed off!1
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I do not get WHY there is a butter shortage in France. Are you guys running out of cows or something?
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Two cups of organic whipping cream makes 1/2 cup of butter. Once you have whipped it to the butter stage you should purge it of all the buttermilk by rinsing it with cold water. Then work in 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt.
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Do you not think that there would not be a butter shortage if there were adequate quantities of cream LOL.
Interesting comment about north vs South on the butter consumption. My husband’s family is from the South, and they definitely are more devoted to olive oil than butter (which was unfortunate when I went off olive oil when I had morning sickness - I could barely eat anything as olive oil is a standard ingredient in almost everything my mother in law makes).
Let them eat cake!
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I had an interesting conversation at my local “Crèmerie” with a French woman the other day, talking about the “butter shortage.” She said it was ridiculous panic buying being stoked by the media and harrumphed that we might as well be back during “la guerre.” She told me she was brought up in Brittany and had eaten Breton salted butter all her life. As she looked to be in perhaps her late 70’s, I asked her how old she had been during the war. When she proudly informed me she was 92, I was astounded. Maybe it was all that lovely butter!
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Re M. Pitte's explanation: "France had long been divided in half, between a butter-using north and an olive oil-consuming south".
True as far as it goes, but Waverley Root's The Food of France (1958) is more specific: butter (north), olive oil (south) and lard (pork or goose, mostly in the northwest but also in the southwest).
But I quibble. There is nothing like real butter, nothing.
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Butter is back to our local supermarkets! L'honneur de France est sauvé...
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on television we are told that the butter penury is due to changed food habits among the Chinese. They are now giving up traditional rice for breakfast adopting the Western chic of butter on bread buying French butter as passionately as they are mad about its red wine. O rage o désespoir!
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Oh, pas de problem... except for that organic one with the sea salt crystals! Black market ??
I just bought some Beurre D'Isigny from Murray's. Can't wait to try it.
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Weird why the elites always tried to convince us to eat as little as possible butter... They probably know something we still don't...
I love the French version of the Semi-salted butter which is beyond sublime. The lightly salted sweet butter available in the US...well, to the guillotine with whoever come up with that abomination!
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Enjoyed this article but did I miss something? Having supplied us with the 'who', 'what' , and 'where'' Isn't a journalist obligated to inform us of the 'why'?
Anxiously waiting.
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"Regular butter now tastes, well, boring."
We've been using raw milk, unsalted butter from a local farm on bread, toast, etc. for many years. It's certainly not boring. Now, unsalted supermarket butter is definitely boring.
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Serious butter shortages have hit Japan, too, off and on since around 2015, in part due to falling raw milk production (the number of dairy farms nationwide is down by a third since 2005), and to dairy farmers' preference for selling raw milk over butter, which is near the bottom of the subsidy totem pole. The government controls the dairy market nationwide, and with 80% of domestically produced butter coming from Hokkaido, supplies are also affected by weather and economic conditions on Japan's northernmost island. The government has only allowed large-scale imports of "emergency" butter a handful of times, restricted to a single, pre-designated quasi-governmental agency and usually timed to ensure Christmas cake production--a secular standby of the holiday season here--is not affected by shortages.
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Ghee, what a great headline!
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We’ll send them as much as they can use. None of their pallid pale cream stuff from factory farmed cows. Ours will be a beautiful golden yellow because all our dairy cattle live outside where they feast on luscious green grass under our brilliant blue Antipodean skies. They’ll have to pay the Chinese price though, just as we have to in these free market days, NZ $4.60 at the supermarket and rising.
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It's not sacre bleu. But, Sacre beurre.
A delightful follow up. Thanks.
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I still miss butter made from churning yogurt. Haven't seen it at any of the major super markets here in the US.
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Here's another situation where a knowledge of the German Occupation of France comes in handy.
During the Occupation, the Germans took most of the foodstuffs from even the "unoccupied zone" (Vichy, which gave their foodstuffs and Jews up gladly). Butter could be obtained on the black market. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5jd8uCosPs. The television series (1980-81) and film were directed by Edouard Molinaro, who later directed "La Cage aux Folles."
The idea of life sans butter made me dizzy with horror. We grew up with butter from our own dairy cows as we had plenty of fresh cream. Our cows being jersy cattle gave milk with a high butter fat content. Just after the war we were in England where there was hardly any butter and we had rations of margarine. This was made of whale blubber. It was inedible. In America I found that margarine (here it is "vegetarian") is ubiquitous and almost as nasty as the English variety. I now eat pounds and pounds of butter from the supermarket and have no problems with being too fat.
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A friend who married into a dairy farming family said milk production/cow goes down in the summer from the heat. Does this have anything to do with their butter shortage? Was France particularly hot this summer?
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The article is interesting and well-written, and I do like butter (Kerrygold Irish butter for me), but I don't see where it says WHY there is a butter shortage. Please reveal.
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Let me suggest that people running short of butter use Olivio instead, a butter substitute made chiefly of olive oil. It tastes better than butter, and is much easier to spread, no need to struggle with a solid mass when it is just out of the refrigerator.
Also, my cholesterol dropped by 40 points in just a few months after switching.
What was not my surprise, three weeks ago when I wandered in the lanes of my close supermarket in my district, I had to buy a plaque of butter of 250 g. Saperlipopette; to remain polite, almost empty ! I took one but it remained almost nothing just salty butter with a panel "shortage of butter certainly until the beginning of december. Of course, we will need butter for filling our snails for Christmas and the New Year Eve. We need butter for Christmas time for our famous snails. Otherwise I am ready to take the streets and demand butter ! This is how revolutions are born.
I visited Normandy a few years ago with my granddaughter. We stayed in an Airbnb in Honfleur and so we were able to cook some meals and to take advantage of visiting the incredible local markets.
I purchased a demi kilo of local Normandy buerre made with sel de mer. That butter was so good it rode in the car us into Paris and took up residence in an ice bucket in our hotel room. Every morning I'd go out and purchase a fresh croissant and baguette and we eat them slathered with that butter. The last of it rode out to Charles de Gaulle airport where it was finished off on a fresh croissant at Starbucks before boarding the plane back to the US.
Thinking it was a fond travel memory I mentioned it to the local cheese maker at our farmers market in Matthews, NC. He assured me he could probably come pretty close to replicating that buerre and he's done pretty well, but when I get back to France in the future a kilo of Normandy buerre avec sel de mer will be traveling around France with me.
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Do not make an excessive use of any butter all the same, to consume in moderation, Don't slather croissants with butter for instance, there is alreadly plenty of butter in croissant,
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Butter prices, and demand, are rising - from Berlin to Paris to New Berlin. But milk prices -- not so much -- at least in my corner of the world. The USDA reports that milk production is increasing. So, what's happening? Hard to say.
OBTW, India is the largest producer as well as the largest consumer of dairy products.
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I believe that India is consuming more butter than France.
I am a French Canadian and in my family we cook everything in butter.
Except french fries!
Making butter isn’t all that difficult. The French will have to learn this skill. If they can make whipped cream they can make butter.
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Having grown up in a "health conscious" household in the 1970s, I didn't know that margarine wasn't butter. I didn't even know what butter itself was until I was in my 20s. And then I saw a friend's French husband eat a baguette with a very thick spread of the real deal and asked for a taste. OMG.
Now, even my kids know which brands we buy and why, and that we have different types for different purposes (baking vs. spreading on something).
We are extremely fortunate to live in a city with a grocery store with a marvelous selection of local, domestic and imported butter.
I hope that France's shortage is short-lived. If I were there, I be tracking the situation like a hawk.
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I agree, and isn't it wonderful that now the health gurus are dissing margarine and recommending moderate amounts of the real thing!
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I enjoyed reading this article in particular because a few days ago, my 7 year old son decided to make butter at home. I was not sure where he got the idea or recipe from but apparently, he know what he was doing. We do not own a food processor but after beating the heavy cream with a hand-held mixture much to my disbelief, we were rewarded with a delicious homemade butter. This is when I remembered the story about the two frogs who accidentally landed in the jar with milk. One frog gave up but the other kept on moving and eventually, the milk became butter and she was able to escape using the solid surface. Just as this little frog did not give up, neither did my son in his persistence that we make the butter.
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One of my best and most powerful memories of first grade, in 1961, was that we learned how to make bread, butter and jam. Thank you, Mrs. Green!
They were wonderful life lessons. The bread and jam needed a lot of adult supervision, because they involved hot stoves and pans.
But butter was dead simple; any child can do it (as your son clearly did). You do not need any equipment (though a food processor makes it crazy fast) -- you just need a jar or deep bowl, and mixer or even just a spatula.
As someone mentioned: if you can whip cream....you can make butter. Just don't stop -- keep going. Whipped cream is just the earlier stage of what ends up as butter. (I mean real whipped cream here, not the aerosol stuff.)
The author here doesn't really explain WHY France would have such a shortage -- are they low on cows? -- because if you have milk and cream, you have the basics of butter.
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Sacre bleu!
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". . . had to settle for another brand than the one you usually bought".
Whether the shortage occurs with butter, chocolate or any other ingredient used in baked goods, I would be borderline panicking if it came down to me having to "settle for another brand" because I know how my baked products perform with ingredients I am familiar with. Butters differ from each other based on what the cows are fed, the amount of salt (if used), and other variables. The same notion applies to chocolate. Not all butter or chocolate taste the same or performs the same. I'm a picky baker when it comes to ingredients. The only thing I hate worse than wasting my time when a cake, pie or dessert fails due to inferior ingredients, is wasting my money from ALL the ingredients I purchased.
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There is a such a thing as being TOO picky.
There are lots of good butters and good chocolates. There is not "one ideal" that is perfect and better than all the others.
Be more flexible. Rigidity is not a quality in good cookery.
Thank you for your input. I am flexible, but I also have standards. There are a number of butters and chocolates I will use when my preferred brand is unavailable. Apologies for appearing to be rigid. I'm a lot of things, but rigid is not one of them. Thanks again for your comments and suggestions.
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All the French have to do is knock at Switzerland's door.
The Swiss have had "Butter Mountains" for decades. I'm sure they would just love to share/sell their butter to their neighbors.
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The European Union used to have Butter Mountains, also Wine Lakes, Sugar supluses, and wheat piles. All stored in specially constructed storage facilities across the EU.
The UK corporate media had a field day.
Ho! forgive me, I forgot the Great Cabbage Surplus, when farmers decreed it wasn't worth the financial effort to harvest them the market price was so low, so they were ploughed into the soil as fertiliser for the next unwanted, yet subsidised, crop.
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The Swiss do produce a lot of butter, but can get a much better price from exports to China. There is a surplus beyond domestic needs, but not enough to suit demand from Asia.
Those Swiss mountains have crumbled.
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Part of the problem is that the French also prefer to sell to china now too for better prices.
Yet while falling supply is a global phenomenon, the shortage is only affecting France. Unlike many other countries, prices are negotiated once a year in France. As a result, the price of butter has barely changed, meaning that French producers are choosing to sell their product overseas, where they can get a better price.
http://fortune.com/2017/10/30/france-butter-shortage/
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Clarifying the butter problem. .... a very subtle pun.
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Yes, though it made me think the article was going to be about ghee.
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And "... that France was on the brink of a butter meltdown." And "#BeurreGate"
Great writing, Aurélien Breeden.
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I'm not a typical pun fan, but greatly appreciated the one in the title. Also, the choice if the word "meltdown" in the body of the article.
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"Clarify" - nice one.
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does it need to be refrigerated????
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Yes, unless you store it in something a butter bell that keeps the air away from the butter to retain the flavor, keep it from absorbing odors, and going rancid. Butter bells have been around for decades and are cheap and available a cooking stores, on Amazon, etc. Just change the water every other day. Easy.
Not if it's clarified !
As an addendum the above comment it's looks like I'm a couple of years out of date. The EU ended dairy quotas in 2015. They were originally introduced in the 80's because of over production. That said there is huge dairy capacity in the EU so the notion of butter shortages other than in isolated cases seems rather far fetched.
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John, the ‘crisis’ is due to the way butter is priced in France. EU producers, including those in France, can get higher prices in the rest of the EU and third countries like China. That is why there is a shortage in France.
The shortage will end when French supermarket prices are allowed to increase to market levels. That won’t make consumers happy, but they I’ll have plenty of butter.
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Er...doesn't the EU pay farmers not to produce butter. No one ever heard of the famed butter mountain?
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Old news, that practice ended some years ago.
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Here is a clip pertaining to Butter Mountain - great place to go skiing
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/world/europe/22iht-union.4.19606951.html
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