Our first proper New Zealand butter! We sampled the salted and unsalted at the same time and there's a reason why New Zealand has the reputation it does!
We absolutely love how this stuff is sold in bricks. Even though this blog write up is months late, it still tickles us pink that we could conceivably build a wall or an igloo from this stuff. Again, it was #Kibsons that provided both our unsalted and our salted versions, which happens to be the only Anchor supplier in Dubai. We will keep our eyes peeled for other options though!
Variety is the spice of life, after all!
Anchor NZ Salted Butter Appreciation
Butter Break Down
Appreciation Date: 05/11/2020
Country of Origin: New Zealand
Point of Procurement: Kibsons
Purchase State: Frozen
Milk: Cow, pasteurised
Salt Content: Salted; Not indicated
Milk Fat Content: 81.4%
Ingredients: Not indicated
Company Website: https://www.anchordairy.com/nz/en.html
Butter Evaluation
In which we discuss Anchor NZ's Salted butter.
Anchor is a huge global dairy conglomerate with products on nearly every continent on the planet. We've sampled other New Zealand offerings, which are smaller outfits and produce a more artisanal product. This butter, however, is produced and shipped in blocks and they mean business.
We were hoping that it would give us some of that famous New Zealand grass-based butter but our hopes were misplaced with such a large, diversified company. That being said, though, it was still a treat to get such a solid offering!
Solid, it would appear, is also the correct adjective to describe the physical structure of this butter. It holds up well to handling and will survive in your butter dish! That also means, however, that it will tear apart your bread if you dare to buy the sandwich stuff from the supermarket!
This butter is extremely discrete- to the point that you're not sure if you're sampling butter at all. The colour is very nice and a pleasant butter yellow. Lamentably, the packaging certainly interfered with the aroma and, due to the lack of butter aroma, it thus took on a chemical or processed first impression that was difficult to shift.
Luckily, the salt in this butter soon dispelled any of the packaging smell... immediately replaced it with an intense saltiness that presented almost as metallic. This is not a butter for the faint hearted or those with delicate palates! The butterfat difference between the unsalted (82.9%) vs. the salted (81.4%) version implies a 1.5% salt content... but without much more of a flavour profile to balance it out, the consumer is left with a mouth full of salty, solid, stubborn butter that eventually mellows on the palate.
This is not, frankly, a butter for enjoying as-is, fresh on a baguette with other delicate flavours. It does, however, hold up well in more serious dishes, like Butter Chicken, that need that richness and have spices to add complexity.
Final Rundown
We really were hoping for the best with this one. Sadly, I think there are a lot of butter producers in New Zealand who put more soul into their product (and less salt). Looking back on our score for both the salted and unsalted versions, we feel like perhaps we were a bit generous but Anchor NZ gets Covid Supply Chain Points for being able to get butter from New Zealand to Dubai in the heat. For that, they certainly deserve credit!
Colour: A pleasant butter yellow. Some surface oxidation (darkening of the butter)
Aroma: Packaging.
Taste: Salt forward. Admirable integrity. Then more salt.
7/10
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