| | Return to Local Producer Profiles | Contact Us
Kristie Lee owns and operates Cultured Butter in Calgary. As her business name suggests, she creates a variety of French style cultured butters often inspired by fresh, local ingredients.
You can find Culture Butter products at the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Farmers' Market as well as many local grocery stores. To learn more about Kristie and her products and to see a full list of where Cultured Butter items can be found, check out her website and Facebook page.
How Cultured Butter began:
Finding few options for cultured butter in Canada, Kristie began making batches of French style cultured butter in her own kitchen as a hobby. Working in the oil and gas industry at the time, it wasn't long before friends and family members were encouraging her to expand her butter making because they loved the product so much.
In early 2016, she decided to leave her industry job and start producing butter full time.
Without really knowing how her butter would go over with the consumers, she applied to sell at farmers' markets. By week three, it was clear that Cultured Butter was in high demand.
Early on, Cultured Butter was featured in a CBC article by Julie Van Rosendaal. A big fan of Cultured Butter, Julie helped to build hype around Kristie and her products and introduce her to other market channels. Local stores looking to stock her product began to contact Kristie and she hasn't looked back!
How Cultured Butter does it differently:
Unlike regular butter, cultured butter has live bacteria (cultures) introduced into the process.
The culture turns the milk lactose into lactase. This process creates the complex and beautiful flavour profiles often found in many European butters that are not present in uncultured North American butters. While there are definite health benefits in the probiotics found in cultured butter, Kristie is in it for the flavour.
Kristie loves being able to be involved in the whole product development process. She begins with cream from grass-fed cows at Rock Ridge Dairy, which she cultures for 48 hours. To prevent it from going rancid, she then hand kneads it with water until all the butter-milk comes out. She then hand kneads it again to remove the water before it goes back into the mixer to be salted with hand harvested salt from Vancouver Island.
Her relationship with her customers and role in the community:
While Kristie's product line usually consists of at least four different cultured butters, the flavours change from season to season. Whether it's chili peppers from Gull Valley Greenhouses used in the popular red chili and garlic butter or mushrooms from Pennybuns Mushrooms, a staple in the porcini, shallot and rosemary butter, the butter flavours reflect what is in season locally. The connections that Kristie has built at farmers' market influence the direction and style of her products.
While some of her customers are already knowledgable about cultured butter and look for it, many are first drawn in by curiosity and then captured by the flavour of the butter. Kristie loves the one on one interaction with her customers at farmers' markets. Her customers enjoy meeting their butter maker personally. Talking directly to customers allows Kristie to share her love for the process with them.
The future of Cultured Butter:
Kristie's first business goal was to get Cultured Butter into eight stores. She blew that goal out of the water in the first season. She now plans to find new local stores and restaurants to carry and use her butter as well as expand geographically into other areas of the province.
“I just want to make the best butter. Really. Good. Butter.” - Kristie Lee
 |
|