Can you taste when butter has been sitting in the fridge for a while and develops an off flavor?
It hasn’t gone bad, there’s just a pervasive underlying taste note.
Wondering what causes it and if there’s a way to get rid of it. I’ve tried charcoal odor absorbers and baking soda in the fridge - even though there’s no actual odor.
I also know not everyone can taste it - I’ve pointed it out when I’m with friends or family, and I get a puzzled look.
Curious if anyone here experiences what I’m talking about.
(Last time this happened, I had stockpiled 6lbs of butter on major sale, and ended up clarifying all of it in the hope that heat would kill the taste… but I could still taste it in the end product.)
I’ve had this when I decided to rat pack a bunch that was on sale. Even if frozen, you’ll get this. I’ll have to use some on frozen unbaked bake later baguettes for full effect, though.
I just try to keep the fridge clean, and not marinate things unlidded. Still my son used to slice some onion, then leave the onion, raw, in the fridge. Now even the ice tastes oniony. He’s since curtailed the habit, since he tried onion ice.
Wish I knew the cause; but I’m thinking age. Once butter is melted, it can never go back to the texture/flavor it had in solid state. Maybe that’s got something to do with it.
But we are talking about two different events - one is that fat (butter) is an excellent “carrier” of flavor components from other ingredients (as many flavor compounds are often better fat soluble than water soluble - so butter takes on easily many different “off” flavors from other stuff in the fridge). The second one is that butter creates off flavors by either becoming rancid (development of short free fatty acids) or by oxidation (hydro peroxide formation as the first step)
