The best butter you can buy in the UK (top 5)

Butter is one of those food products which is simple but amazing - we'd eat it on its own if society wouldn't frown on us.

There are lots of butter brands out there all claiming to be the best, so we thought it would be useful to round up the best butter you can buy based on our experiences and third-party reviews. We'll be looking at butter which is great all-round, which means it can be used for spreading on bread, in cooking, and other purposes. Let's get into it:

The Butter Works

It is often said that the cows in the West Country area of the UK produce the best milk, and having tried this butter from The Butter Works, we're inclined to agree with that statement. This butter is churned in the West Country and is very creamy. This butter is also seasoned with Cornish sea salt crystals, which give the butter a really delicious salty tang. This butter won a Great Taste award back in 2022. Learn more and buy it here - waitrose.com

Guernsey Dairy

The Guernsey Dairy butter is a popular ingredient which is often used by artisan chocolatiers and Michelin chefs, and we're not at all surprised by this. The butter has a wonderfully creamy and rich taste and texture, which makes it ideal for a number of purposes. The milk used to make this butter comes from Guernsey pedigree cows which eat lush grass, wild flowers and herbs all year round. This butter also won a Great Taste award in 2021. Learn more and buy it here - marksandspencerguernsey.com

Isigny Sainte-Mere Unpasteurised

You don't often see butter listed as 'Unpasteurised', but the team at Isigny Sainte-Mere has listed their butter as this for a very specific reason - it's made using raw milk from cows in the Isigny region of France, a region which is famed for its lush grass. The raw milk is turned into cream and churned, and it then goes through a natural maturation process which is where all of the flavours are developed. At 80% fat content, it's a bit lower in fat than other popular butter that you'll find on the shelves - for example, the standard variety of Lurpak butter is 82% fat content. This butter also won a Great Taste award in 2020. Learn more and buy it here - sainsburys.co.uk

Lescure

The first thing you'll notice about the Lescure butter is that it's shaped slightly different from the other butter blocks that we've included in this list, but this shape is part of what makes Lescure so distinctive. And once you've removed the butter from the packet, you'll also notice that it has a very light colour which is almost white. The lighter colour is because it's a French butter, and the diet of French cows differs from that of British cows, as French cows are often fed a diet which consists of more grains. According to Lescure, you should pick up hazelnut aromas from this butter, and you should also use this butter for everything from cooking to eating it as it is. Learn more and buy it here - waitrose.com

Waitrose Duchy Organic English Butter

We felt that only one own-brand supermarket butter was worthy of a place in this list, and regular readers won't be surprised to see that it's from Waitrose as we often recommend own-brand products from this supermarket. The Duchy Organic English Butter from Waitrose is made using milk from West Country cows that enjoy a healthy, organic diet and plenty of time outdoors, and that's really reflected in the quality of the butter. It's rich in taste and has a real feeling of quality to it. We're also impressed to see that this butter has a near perfect rating of 4.7 out of 5 from more than 150 reviews on the Waitrose website. Learn more and buy it here - waitrose.com

We hope this guide helps you to find an excellent butter to buy and enjoy. Let us know if you've tried any of these or if you have any other suggestions for us to try! If you want to read something similar, we have a guide about the best spreadable butter you can buy.