Can you substitute salted butter for unsalted

For the most accurate assessment, I set up a blind tasting for the food department and other editors from the institute. Most tasters preferred the recipe as written using unsalted butter. But here's the good news: If you're baking a recipe that calls for unsalted butter or doesn't specify a butter and you only have salted on hand, you can eliminate the added salt and still have a fabulous treat on your hands!

Remember, the amount of salt flavor the salted butter will add depends on the product you buy. Look at the sodium variation between these popular brands:. What we really discovered, however, is that the salted vs. For recipes that don't specify which to use, go with the one that will most suit your palet. Don't know which way you and your family lean? Product Reviews. Home Ideas. Use too little and they will come out looking like muffins via Insider. The same logic applies when it comes to substituting unsalted butter with salted butter.

There is no saying exactly how much salt goes into a stick of salted butter, which means you don't get any control over how much salt you are putting into sweet desserts. When you use unsalted butter, on the other hand, you get to decide how much salt to add — usually about a pinch.

Thus, it's safe to say that, if you would rather not have your cakes, cookies, and sweet desserts tasting oddly salty and savory, it's better to make a last-minute trip to the grocery store for unsalted butter. Adding salt in desserts can seem like a weird thing to do. However, salt can make or break your desserts. The level of salt added to salted butter varies regionally and by brand, making it an unknown quantity in finely tuned dishes.

If salted butter is all you normally keep on hand, that doesn't mean you should abandon the recipe if it calls for it.

At worst, you'll need to make some minor adjustments. The salt in butter is partly a preservative, as it is in other foods, but manufacturers add it in greater or lesser quantities to conform to local tastes. If you need to substitute salted butter for unsalted, simply reduce the recipe's remaining salt by the corresponding amount.