07/23/08 What is Plugra?

What is Plugra? I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A long time ago there was a product marketing line that said; if you think it's butter but it's not&that same tag line could be added to a relatively unknown European butter called Plugra. According to Keri Solnosky, Senior Associate Brand Manager for American Dairy Brands, it might surprise you. SOLNOSKY: Plugra is actually a European style butter. And it's made with 82% butter fat versus normal table butter which is about 80% butter fat and what that means is it actually has less moisture in the butter which you get a richer flavor in everything you use. Plugra is a word that means "more fat." Solnosky says it was northeastern chef's that brought it to everyone's attention. SOLNOSKY: In 1988 there were many French pastry chef's that were setting up business in the northeast and they were used to this European butter that had the higher butter fat and they couldn't find it anywhere and so they actually asked Keller's Creamery to import this European style butter but Keller's Creamery decided to go ahead and create it themselves. So bottom line, what will using Plugra do for your cooking? SOLNOSKY: We just came back from the Culinary Institute in Monterey where we did a baking contest or a baking demonstration using blueberry muffin mix and we did the exact same mix down to the same number of blueberries and we used table butter in one and Plugra in the other and it was amazing. The Plugra muffin was almost double the size and evenly dispersed blueberries and in the other muffin, all the blueberries sank to the middle and it was really flat. Solnosky says they are having a contest right now for all you cooks. SOLNOSKY: We are sponsoring a compound butter contest and you may ask what a compound butter is because a lot of people aren't familiar with that. You take a good quality butter and you mix in any kind of ingredients you can think of and you can use it instead of sauces on vegetables or fish or meat or even on breads. So we held this contest last year and had a tremendous response and we are holding our second annual and you can submit your favorite compound butter recipe, you can mix in whatever you would like. First place is a $5000 cash prize. For details on the contest and for more information on Plugra, visit www.plugra.com. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.