Key Takeaways
- Costco's Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter is a more affordable alternative to Kerrygold.
- For some shoppers, the butter even has a richer, creamier flavor, despite the lower price.
There’s no doubt that Kerrygold butter is a top-notch butter product. If you aren’t familiar, the Irish butter is made with milk from grass-fed cows giving it a deeper golden hue than traditional American butter and an arguably creamier mouthfeel. But this premium product also comes with a premium up-charge.
I’ve personally found that everything I bake (especially cookies!) turns out so much better when I use Kerrygold rather than generic grocery store butter. So to save a buck, I’ve been stocking up on it at Costco where I can get four gold bars (the equivalent of eight sticks of American butter) for just $16.95—saving a few dollars compared to my local grocery store in the process.
But that all changed when I found an alternate on the shelf next to the Kerrygold at Costco: Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter. It even comes in a shiny box similar to that of the Kerrygold packaging, signaling to me that this is Costco’s house brand version of the popular butter.
How Does Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter Compare to Kerrygold Butter?
Devon O'Brien/Allrecipes
Like Kerrygold, the butter is made with milk from cows that (mostly) graze on grass year-round (the package does say the cows get about 5 percent of their diet from grains for nutritional balance). The nutrition labels even list the same amount of fat content, although it’s also worth noting my generic grocery store butter also listed the same fat content despite Kerrygold’s claim that its butter has a higher percentage of butterfat. The only butter I have found that lists a higher fat content on the nutrition label is the cultured butter I buy. The sodium content in the Kirkland brand is also slightly lower than Kerrygold. (Side note: the Kirkland version is currently only available in salted, whereas Kerrygold is available in salted and unsalted, so to keep the test fair I only compared the salted versions.) The other main difference: Kirkland’s grass-fed butter hails from New Zealand, not Ireland, like Kerrygold.
The biggest difference between these premium butter offerings? The price. At my Costco the Kerrygold pack costs nearly $17, while the Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter costs only $11.69 for the same amount. That will save you over $1 per butter bar which, in this time of rising food costs, is a pretty big deal.
The bigger question, however, is whether it tastes as good as Kerrygold. And actually, I think it’s better. The first thing you notice upon peeling back the foil is that the Kirkland grass-fed butter is an even deeper golden color than the Kerrygold butter (something I didn’t think was even possible!). First, we tasted each butter on its own, without the packaging so we didn’t know which butter was which, and all the tasters agreed that Kirkland’s version had more butter flavor than Kerrygold.
Next, I tried both butters out in a sugar cookie recipe. The butters both performed the same in terms of how they creamed, how the dough handled, and how the cookies baked up. So again, we tried each cookie anonymously (without knowing which one was made with which butter) and again, all tasters agreed that the cookie made with the Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed butter tasted more “buttery” than the Kerrygold butter.
The Bottom Line
While I still love Kerrygold, in the name of saving money, I’ll be picking up Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Butter on my monthly butter run from now on.
Dotdash Meredith / Janet Maples
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