August 7, 2008 - 4:57pm
Stuck with salted Butter
The only butter I can find is salted. Now what? I've got a scales and now to figure. I've seen some recipes that one "stick" of butter is 1/2 cup and that sometimes 1/4 teaspoon salt can be eliminated if salted butter is used. I'm getting nervous...I would really appreciate some help.
Q: What is 1/2 cup of Butter in grams? (Directly off the package, please)
Q: And how many grams of salt are mentioned on the package for the test amount? (usually 100g)
I thought I had a kilo of rye with me also but alas, I'm headed for withdrawal. My baking world is stalling....help...
Mini off Oven
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HI MO.
1. Just looked on the label of one stick of butter it says it is 4oz which is 113g.
2. On the outer package the amount of salt isn't actually given but the amount of Sodium is. And the amount of sodium per 1TBsp which is 14g is 75mg.
Hope this helps.
Rudy
That helps a lot! Thanks for being so quick too! Sometimes it can be so confusing. I thought I bought cleanser yesterday, something nice and gritty sold in a cleanser looking can, between kitchen chemicals and poisonous colors, could be just pummice. Should have seen the look on my husband's face when I popped up the sprinke top and tasted some. Turned out to be baking soda.
I'm still looking over the flour selection... my starter has been rehydrated and fed.
75mg sodium in 14g So that would be 0.75g for 140g butter, right?
Mini O
Almost. Actually it is .75g per 14g of butter. :) That works out to about 5% if my math skills haven't completely deteriorated.
Rudy
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_grams_of_salt_are_in_one_table_spoon
Mini...I am rushing as quickly as possible. I found this link. Hope you can pull it up. In reading it I find that there are 15g in one Tablespoon of butter.
I'm sweating bullets. I'm math ignorant and having a panic attack all in your favor.
I don't have the salted butter unless I trip and fall over the cheese and prepackaged items. I'll grab anything to keep from going down, even if its slippery, just like my answer.
:O
You of the scientific nature could tell me..I cook/bake a fairly mean menu..but no one has ever called me on using salted vs unsalted butter in general. I not speaking of sauces or such. Is your concern for health reasons?
Ohhh.. I do wish I was there to see your husband's expression of you sampling the "cleanser"!! He has his hands full with you!!
He told me today how quiet and lonely the place has been. I quess I'm full of suprises. He likes that. We've been looking for an oven, the prices here are high. Found one even with steam injection but over 600 US dollars, can't read the directions. Three cute little nozzels on the left side middle. A water compartment that pulls out under the door and removable for easy filling. Inside compartment about 10 inches high. Also contains induction "spots" on ring marks on the oven floor for warming bottles or cups of cocoa. Instructions show a picture of a pizza baked directly on bottom of oven....
I will see if they have a web site. Here it is ... I googles rinnaimall.com rsd 100 and found THIS that is after I hit the translate button...which takes time. Looks like it might not get up to high temperatures.
The super market has a variety of prepared mixes for bread machines but so far I can only find white wheat flour, unroasted/roasted buckwheat flour, very coarse barley & wheat crushed grain, sesame flour, sticky or glutinous rice flour. I do see whole yellow/dark millet, barley, rice varieties, beans varieties. There is a "flour bar" and they mill all kinds of stuff into powder, dried fruits & vegies included. This can then be mixed with water and added to porrage or with hot water as a drink. I also tasted a brew they had going and (although I think my starter tastes better) could invision using some in bread.
As far as salted and unsalted butter goes, I never really paid attention until I was just married and living with a community of Austrians in an English speaking country. My first job was to get the manager of the local supermarket to order salt free butter. The manager agreed and the first carton was sold out in 24 hours. He was soon ordering more and wanted to know what the big deal was. After eating and cooking with salt free butter, even just a year, I discovered the taste advantages. I just prefer it. Some foods I like salty and others not. I like the choice of enjoying butter with sweet foods or salty foods, the butter remaining creamy neutral. So far, no health reasons. If the butter is salty, then naturally my use of it is limited. How limited? That's what we're figuring out.
Mini O
I've got more than one elderly cookbook that calls for "washing the butter," and had absolutely no idea what it meant until I asked someone who was older than the cookbooks. Now, I've never washed butter in my life, and have done oodles of baking with both the salted and unsalted and no one has yet complained of too much salt. Washing the butter would be one of those childhood things (ever long to have your grubby little hands in a pound of squishy butter?); put it in a bowl of cold water and squish away to your heart's, or hands', content. Seems to be a lot of work to go through for not much but it was done way back when. Bit like standing over a platter of egg whites and beating them with a flat whisk for thirty minutes!
I'm having some fun with this package (found no butter labeled salt-free or no salt) and a dictionary. Rudy, is there really so much salt in there? (gasp) ...ok Now my figures don't add up and I can't imagine ...but maybe just like your package listed a portion, mine does too. I can make out "...5g ...90 ...(450g)" Which could be 5g portions, package contains 90 portions totaling 450g, which is the weight on the box. then "...38 kcal" ...then lots of other tiny g's and %'s ..the word for sodium in Korean followed by "20mg(1%)"
I do know how to wash butter, it is an idea. I might rice it first and let it soak in ice water but ... I'm not keen on wringing it out afterward and there is still some salt in it. And I wouldn't know how much salt was left and I'd have to find a ricer and some wooden paddles. ...And while I'm at it, I could shape little clumps into cute little balls on wet ridged paddles to serve up with the bread basket.
Now if plain bread tastes salty to me at 2%(standard), and there is 5% salt in American Butter, is it possible it is only 1% in Korean Butter? There seems to be a very strong American influence around in food products. I wonder what Koreans do with butter? If they tend to use it for cakes, like butter cream, then it just might be 1%. Maybe I should taste it first before I go any further. Hold my c board, I'm scared...
Mini O
99% of my baking is with salted butter, cakes, pastry, bread whatever, and I only add salt to my bread recipes.
After 50 years baking had no problems or complaints.......
PS, I don't use margerine or shortening either. qahtan
As far as I know one stick of butter contains 1.5 g salt.
Mike
I think I'll run with that. At least for now. I was getting all mixed up between salt and sodium until I realized that sodium contains only about half of the chemical make-up in salt.
I'm off to explore Seoul today.
Mini O
I went to Wiki Answers too and reworded the question. Here's what I was told.
"I'm not good with math, but 1 tbs. of butter contains 90mg of salt, and there are 8 tbs in one stick of butter, so I believe there are 720mg of salt in one stick of butter."
For the weight of one teaspoon of salt, it said, "Since table salt is the stuff you can see and measure, it is useful to know that one teaspoon of table salt weighs about 6 g, or 6,000 mg. There are about 2.4 g sodium in one teaspoon salt."
This translates to 1/8 teaspoon of salt in one stick (1/4 pound, 4 oz, 113 g, 1/2 cup) butter.
Rosalie
especially since it contains math. My daily quotient of learning has done been learnt. The real goal is for me to retain before retarding.
:O
Oh my!
;)
I usually use unsalted butter as well. But if I were using salted butter in a recipe normally calling for unsalted butter, I would just wing it and add less salt (depending on how much butter) than the recipe calls for. Then taste the dough. If it doesn't taste salty enough, knead in a bit more salt.
If the recipe only calls for a couple of tablespoons of butter, I wouldn't make any adjustments to the salt.
2 c butter = 1 lb = 454 grams
These are very handy:
I think that is sound advice. I sort of panicked. After tasting the butter, it's not too salty. Thank you.
Mini O
it keeps coming around as to how much salt is really in it. I get 5g heavy table salt into my teaspoon measuring spoon.
My mind gets boggled with the math too at times. Right now it ain't working, Lol! Still sipping my coffee though. It depends on your recipe. If it contains a lot of butter then cut back on salt in the recipe and taste the dough sometime after butter has been added and add more salt as needed. Very sound advice. If you use a whole 8 TBs stick (113g) that is a little under half a teaspoon of salt or 2g on the scale.
Sodium (or Na) is less than half of the salt formula (sodium chloride NaCl) So the sodium content (less than half the molecule) is not all the salt (whole molecule) that we buy and measure.
The packaging people have some fun with us consumers when we compare salt to sodium on a package and we think they are the same. "Sodium" will always come out less when compared to "salt." Now before we get boggled with the math and anything else. Tell me from the package, is that 100 mg sodium per container or the 14g serving?
(100 mg = 0.1g) (1mg = 1/1000 of a gram or .001g) If you have a quick converter on your computer that only gives kilograms and grams, use it, same principal as 1 to 1000 and pretend it reads grams and milligrams. enough of that, I get confused with anything over 100. I have to think this thru too. s l o w l y
According to the link below... If 1g of salt (or 1000mg salt) contains 400mg of sodium then all we need to do is to take the sodium amount and multiply by 2.5 we get our salt content. 400mg x 2.5 = 1000mg So that works...
http://foodwatch.com.au/blog/measures-and-conversions/item/how-to-convert-sodium-to-salt-and-salt-to-sodium.html?category_id=384
If there is 100mg sodium in the 14g of butter (one tbs serving) then there is 100mg x 2.5 = 250mg of salt in it or one forth of a gram. Right? 250mg is 1/4 of 1000mg (or 1g) also 0.25g
That would mean 4 Tbs butter would have one whole gram ...and it goes to follow that when we double the butter to 8 Tbs butter (half a cup, 1/4 lb?) would double to 2g of salt. (remember one teaspoon has 5g of heavy table salt) So just under half a teaspoon. That's a lot of salt, enough to make a difference. I think my brain is working....
I gotta write this on a 3x5 card for later. I don't always get salt free butter especially in the tropics. Spoils too fast.
I want to know what % is salt. 2/113 x100 = n 1.77=n 1.77%
454g or a pound of butter has 446g butter and 8g salt.
I use the % function on my calculator: 454 - 1.77 % (gives 8.03) = 445.9 and rounded to the nearest gram.