A butter blend is a spread made by combining real butter with vegetable oil, typically in a ratio of about two-thirds butter to one-third oil. The result is a product with roughly 80% total fat that spreads easily straight from the refrigerator, tastes closer to butter than margarine, and contains less saturated fat per serving than pure butter. You’ll find butter blends sold in tubs or sticks under brand names like Land O’Lakes Butter with Olive Oil, Country Crock Butter Sticks, and others.
What’s Actually in a Butter Blend
The core formula is simple: butter plus a liquid vegetable oil, most commonly canola, sunflower, or olive oil. Salt is standard, and many brands add vitamins A and D. Some include small amounts of cream or buttermilk for flavor. The vegetable oil stays liquid at cold temperatures, which is the whole reason the product exists. It keeps the spread soft enough to use on toast without tearing the bread, even right out of the fridge.
Butter blends are not margarine. Margarine is made entirely from vegetable oils and contains no dairy fat. Butter blends always contain real butterfat as the primary ingredient. That distinction matters for both flavor and labeling. In the U.S., FDA regulations require that product names accurately describe their characterizing ingredients, which is why you’ll see labels like “butter with canola oil” or “dairy spread” rather than simply “butter.” A product labeled as butter must be at least 80% milkfat by federal standard, so anything blended with vegetable oil can’t legally use that name alone.
Why It Spreads When Butter Won’t
Pure butter is hard at refrigerator temperatures because milkfat contains a high proportion of saturated fatty acids that solidify when cold. The ratio between higher-melting and lower-melting fats in the milk determines how firm butter gets. Winter butter tends to be even harder than summer butter because cows eating stored feed produce milk with more saturated fat.
Adding about 30% liquid vegetable oil disrupts that solid fat structure enough to keep the blend spreadable at fridge temperatures between 40°F and 50°F. Research on modified butter found that blending sunflower oil into summer milkfat produced a spread that worked well on bread straight from the refrigerator. Winter milkfat needed the same amount of oil but still showed some resistance to spreading at colder temperatures. Most commercial blends use canola or similar oils to achieve a consistently soft texture year-round.
Nutritional Differences From Pure Butter
A tablespoon of regular stick butter has about 100 calories, 11 grams of total fat, and 7 grams of saturated fat. Butter blends typically land somewhere between butter and light spreads, depending on the ratio of butter to oil. By replacing a portion of the milkfat with unsaturated vegetable oil, butter blends reduce the saturated fat per serving while keeping the overall fat content similar.
One concern that kept many people away from margarine and spreads for decades was trans fat from partially hydrogenated oils. That’s largely a non-issue today. A 2020 analysis of leading U.S. margarine, butter blend, and butter products found that all contained negligible amounts of trans fat, less than 0.5 grams per tablespoon. This reflects the FDA’s ban on partially hydrogenated oils, which took full effect in 2020. Modern butter blends use liquid oils that don’t require hydrogenation.
Butter blends do still contain cholesterol from the dairy fat component, though less than pure butter. For comparison, light buttery spreads made entirely from vegetable oils are cholesterol-free and can run as low as 45 to 50 calories per tablespoon with only 1 to 1.5 grams of saturated fat.
Cooking and Baking Considerations
Butter blends work well as a table spread and in simple cooking like sautéing vegetables or finishing a pan sauce. For stovetop use, keep in mind that combining oil with butter does not raise the smoke point. The milk solids in butter begin breaking down and smoking around 375°F regardless of what oil is mixed in. A butter blend will start smoking at roughly the same temperature as straight butter, so it’s not a better choice for high-heat searing.
Baking is where butter blends get tricky. If a recipe calls for softened butter or margarine for something like a quick bread or muffin batter, a tub-style butter blend will generally work fine. But for recipes that depend on cold, firm butter (pie crusts, puff pastry, laminated doughs), the softer texture of a blend can cause problems. The butter needs to stay in distinct layers or pockets to create flaky results, and a blend that’s already soft won’t behave the same way.
Cookies are another common trouble spot. Butter blends and soft spreads tend to produce cookies that spread out thinner and flatter rather than holding their shape and rising. The lower proportion of solid fat means less structure in the dough at room temperature. If a recipe specifically calls for stick butter, substituting a butter blend may give you noticeably different results.
Storage and Shelf Life
Butter blends stored in the refrigerator generally follow similar timelines to regular butter. Pure butter lasts one to three months in the fridge when opened, and salted butter can stretch to five months if tightly wrapped and kept away from strong odors. Unsalted butter stays fresh for up to three months under the same conditions. Butter blends in tubs tend to have printed use-by dates that fall in a similar range, though the exact shelf life varies by brand and formulation.
Because butter blends are already soft at fridge temperature, there’s less reason to leave them out on the counter, which helps avoid the faster spoilage that comes with room-temperature storage. If you do freeze a butter blend, expect it to keep for several months, though the texture after thawing may be slightly different from fresh.
Who Benefits Most From Butter Blends
Butter blends fill a specific gap. If you love the taste of real butter but find yourself fighting with a cold, hard stick every morning, a blend solves that problem without switching to margarine. If you’re looking to reduce your saturated fat intake modestly but don’t want to give up butter entirely, the swap makes a measurable difference over time. And if you simply want one product that works as both a cooking fat and a table spread, a butter blend is a reasonable all-purpose option.
Where butter blends fall short is in baking that demands the structural properties of pure butter and in any situation where you need a completely dairy-free or vegan product. For those uses, you’re better off with full butter or a plant-based spread, respectively.