Bill Gates-Backed Startup Makes Butter Out of Thin Air and Water

Savor, a California-based startup backed by legendary businessman Bill Gates, has come up with a method of producing butter-like fat out of just carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Starting from the idea that all fats are composed of chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, Savor patented a thermochemical process to build fat molecules and then produce dairy-free alternatives to products like milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream that not only have the same texture as the real thing but also taste the same. This process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does, so this synthesized fat has a much lower carbon footprint than real animal fat. So far, taste tests have shown that Savor’s alternative to butter has an almost indistinguishable flavor from the real thing, but the company still has a lot of challenges to overcome before bringing it to market.

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This “Ridiculous Butter” Is Flavored with Lobster and Crab, Costs a Whopping $130

‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ is a decadent handmade butter made by a family company in the UK. It has been voted one of the world’s finest foods by a panel of 355 judges.

If you love food as much as I do, you probably know that there is nothing better than butter. But not all butter is created equal. For example, the ‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ made by UK-based family company Sublime Butter tastes nothing like the classic dairy product most of us pick up at the supermarket. Not only is it whisked to perfection out of the finest milk fats, but it is mixed in with bits of shellfish (lobster and Devon Crab), as well as caviar, fennel, and lemon to create a truly decadent spread.

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The Ancient Art of Tibetan Butter Sculpting Is Melting Away

For the last 400 years, Tibetan monks have been using butter from yak milk to create large and intricate sculptures inspired by stories of Buddha, animals or plants and putting them on display during the annual Butter Lantern Festival. Unfortunately, the long and difficult process of making these exquisite works of art has led to a shortage of gifted lama artists.

The art of butter sculpting was born from the Tibetan tradition of giving Buddha everything they got from their domestic animals. Nomadic tribes with large herds of sheep and yaks regarded the first butter from each dri (female yak) as the most precious one and offered it to Buddhist monasteries, where monks shaped it into beautiful colored sculptures and offered it to the enlightened ones. The tradition was passed on from generation to generation, and even today, dozens of Tibetan monks work for months on a single giant butter sculpture that must be ready before the 15th of January, the climax of celebrations of the Tibetan New Year, as it mark the triumph of Lord Buddha over his six non-Buddhist teachers who challenged him in performing miracles. During the day, people pray in temples and monasteries, and as the night comes they head to Lhasa’s Barkhor Street to admire the hundreds of artistic butter sculptures, ranging from just a few centimeters in size to several stories high. This colorful display attracts millions of tourists both from Tibet and abroad.

Tibetan-butter-sculpture

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Scottish Bar Serves Heart-Stopping Deep-Fried Butter

We’ve heard of deep-fried Mars bars, ice-cream and butter that originated in the US. A Scottish Bar has now invented a new twist to deep-fried butter, something they say is quite popular with a few customers. Dubbed by some critics as a coronary on a plate and even a heart attack in the plate, this dish is being served at the Fiddler’s Elbow, perhaps for the first time ever in Scotland. The Scottish twist, being an Irn Bru batter.

The entire dish put together consists of the deep-fried butter balls, with an accompaniment of Irn Bru ice cream and coulis. The dish has been named quite aptly, as the “Braveheart Butter Bombs”. The folks at the Fiddler’s Elbow also plan to introduce a variation, using deep-fried whisky instead of Irn Bru. The head chef of the Scottish bar,  Simon Robertson, has been credited with the invention of this dish, along with the help of Paul Fitchie, a former chef at Harvey Nichols. The dessert is created by freezing balls of butter and then dipping them in an Irn Bru batter. These balls are then fried in hot oil, till the golden brown delicacies emerge.

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