Buying Butter? Avoid This Popular Grocery Chain's Store Brand

What's that in your cart, butter? Wait, before you head to the checkout lane, you'll want to make sure it will be rich and creamy when you spread it on toast. After all, what's the point of bad butter? Buying butter that doesn't live up to expectations is especially egregious because the bar is set so high these days. We recently tried 12 store-bought butters to see which ones lived up to the lofty heights the food can reach and which ones fell short, and Aldi's store-brand butter was simply the worst.

Our reviewer found Simply Nature Organic Salted Butter had a greasy texture and a harsh, metallic saltiness. The only positive was the deep yellow color which gives the appearance of a good-quality, high-butterfat butter, but if anything this only proves you can't judge butter on color alone. If Aldi's Simply Nature butter is in your cart, put it back and consider purchasing the top butter our reviewer recommends instead. Red Barn Creamery Salted Butter was the exact opposite in that it had a pale yellow color which our taster found unappealing, only to be pleasantly surprised by its rich creaminess.

Aldi's Simply Nature brand aims to highlight organic and natural foods, and at first glance it seems to succeed with its Organic Salted Butter since it only has two ingredients: pasteurized organic cream and salt. And yet, whoever supplies Aldi with the butter for its Simply Nature brand managed to mess up a recipe this simple. Luckily, Aldi has a better butter option.

Aldi's dupe of our second-best-ranked butter, Kerrygold, comes in the form of Countryside Creamery Pure Irish Butter. This butter has the same two ingredients as the Simply Nature butter (though not organic), and Aldi highlights the fact that the minimum butterfat for Countryside Creamery is 80%. One Redditor said of this butter, "Easily my favorite! Better than Kerrygold." Others wondered if Kerrygold might even be the supplier since it's imported from Ireland. One commenter clarified, saying, "It just tastes better to them cuz it's cheaper, and cheaper always tastes better." We agree that Aldi's Irish butter is an excellent option if you don't want to pay for Kerrygold.