The Important Melting Tip To Remember Before Using Goat Butter

Goat butter can offer an earthy, tangy flavor to some of your favorite recipes, but with a lower melting point, bakers need to think carefully about how the ingredient is used. Since goat butter isn't always the most affordable option on market shelves, it's best to understand what you're dealing with before you begin stirring this unique butter into mixes or slathering it onto sliced vegetables destined for the grill.

Think of the softness of shortening: Goat butter presents a similar texture that brings an added flair to toasted baguettes yet offers a milder taste when compared to butter made from cow's milk. But if you're looking to whip up a fresh batch of cookies or assemble a pie crust to serve for tonight's dessert, you'll want to keep the lower melting point of the ingredient in mind.

Working in a warm kitchen, for example, can result in goat butter that is too soft to fold into pie dough. Goat butter will also cream faster than the usual yellow sticks of butter you may be more familiar with. For the experienced chef, however, goat butter's lower melting point can be advantageous, particularly when making flaky pie crusts, spongy banana bread, and chewy caramels.

Keep the end goal of your culinary projects in mind as you set out to incorporate goat butter into your recipes. When making candies like caramels, goat butter can burn quickly; in order to end up with a soft and chewy treat — and not a charred morsel — you'll want to stir carefully and cook at temperatures well-suited for both the recipe and the ingredients at hand. Your attention and patience will be rewarded when you take sumptuous dishes out of your oven and watch with satisfaction as guests devour your uniquely made creations.

"When you make something like an all-butter pie crust [with goat butter], you get this incredible lamination and flakiness, almost like a croissant," Seair Lorentz, a communications manager for goat butter producer Meyenberg, told Real Simple. "Similarly, with a quick bread like zucchini or banana, the low melting point adds a velvety mouth feel."