When to Use Salted vs. Unsalted Butter, According to Our Highly Opinionated Team

As a highly opinionated group, our team doesn’t always agree on some key culinary questions. We’ve had many arguments about whether a hot dog is a sandwich, if ketchup belongs on a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, and which regional style of cornbread is best—among many, many others. But when it comes to butter, we all have the same opinion: unsalted is the only kind that should be used in cooking. 

But our opinion is just that—an opinion. Using salted butter in baking and cooking really depends mostly on your personal preference, though there are some key considerations to keep in mind. I turned to our, uh, passionate team—Editorial Director Daniel, Senior Culinary Editor Leah, Culinary Editor Genevieve, and Associate Editorial Director Megan—to learn more about the differences between salted and unsalted butter (aside from the obvious one).

The Key Differences Between Salted vs. Unsalted Butter

The key difference between these types of butter is, obviously, salt. Unsalted butter is made with just heavy cream, while salted butter includes salt. However, the amount of salt in salted butter isn’t standardized, so it varies across brands and can even vary from batch to batch within the same brand. 

Another key difference is shelf life. Because salt is a preservative, salted butter tends to last longer than unsalted butter—about five months for the former and three months for the latter.

Does it Matter When You Use Salted vs. Unsalted Butter?

For Spreading and Topping

If you’re just looking for a butter to spread on toast or top mashed potatoes, by all means, reach for an excellent salted butter. “Salted butter is only reserved for toast and spreading onto other bready things,” says Genevieve, and Daniel (mostly) agrees. “A quality salted butter spread on bread is a pretty great thing, but then again, a quality unsalted butter spread on bread and sprinkled with flaky sea salt is also a great thing,” he says. Megan likes salted butter for toast and sandwiches (like her family-favorite turkey sandwich with mayonnaise and butter), as well as for topping popcorn and mashed potatoes (though unsalted with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt works just as well there). 

For Baking

When butter is being baked into a dish our preference for a quality unsalted butter is not without reason. “There’s no standard salt level for salted butter,” says Daniel, “so if you’re making a recipe where everything is dialed in by weights and volumes, like a batter, and you don’t know how salty your butter is, you may have a hard time knowing just how much extra salt the batter needs. I can’t imagine this would lead to disastrous results in most cases, but it is a variable that’s hard to account for.” Plus, since you can’t taste as you go if you’re making, say, a cake or cookies, it’s better to have complete control over salt amounts. For this reason, we don’t recommend using salted butter in baking unless a recipe specifically calls for it.

For Cooking

While it’s not as critical as in baking, we think it’s worth choosing unsalted butter even for dishes that you can taste as you go. “As a default, we call for unsalted in most of our recipes just because it’s more neutral and helps level the seasoning playing field,” says Daniel. “But I really don’t think there’s a firm right or wrong answer here.”

While there’s no rule against cooking with salted butter, if you do, just be mindful of any other salt called for in the recipe and consider dialing back there. “In my 10 plus years of recipe developing experience, the number one recipe critique I hear is ‘it’s too salty,’” says Leah. “Everyone’s palate is so different, and what’s salty to me might not be salty to you.” She suggests eliminating room for error in written recipes by always using unsalted butter when all that’s written is simply “butter,” and then seasoning to taste. “That said, if you have a salted butter brand you consistently use and love, go for it.mYou just want to be conservative about adding any additional salt before tasting the dish.” 

The Takeaway

Whether you choose to use unsalted or salted butter for spreading, baking, and cooking is ultimately up to you, but our team recommends saving salted butter for slathering and using unsalted for baking and cooking. Opting for unsalted butter makes it easier to control the level of seasoning in your dish. If you do go for salted butter when cooking, just make sure not to add any additional salt until after you taste the dish. As for our team, we personally all like to keep both salted and unsalted butter on hand—after all, butter is, at the end of the day, butter, and we love them both equally.