Abernethy Butter FOOD AWARD BY RUSSELL ALFORD AND PATRICK HANLON
shaped with wooden pats is made using Draynes Farm grass-fed, single-herd cream, which Allison and Will found to be the creamiest cream, resulting in the driest, best butter. Indeed, the milk from Draynes Farm is coveted by baristas, café owners and restaurateurs across Northern Ireland for its sheer superiority in milk-based coffees like flat whites and lattes. This is dairy that steals the spotlight rather than settling for being the supporting act. Surrounded by a patchwork of rolling green fields in the shadow of Slieve Croob in Co. Down, Allison, Will and their small team can often produce upwards of 1,000 hand-pressed rolls of butter daily. Offering a variety of flavours (Dulse Butter, Black Garlic Butter, Smoked Butter, Chipotle Chilli & Smoked Paprika Butter),
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verybody made butter on their farms – that’s what you did, you made it for your own use and it was the done thing.’ Allison Abernethy remembers growing up on a family farm with that little metal churn in the corner, a staple in almost all rural Irish households. Allison and her husband, Will, are continuing custodians of a near-lost tradition of handmade butter in Ireland, having begun producing Abernethy Butter around 10 years ago and growing it into the award-winning brand it is today, with a variety of flavours as well as handmade fudge and lemon curd. A unique dairy product, commercially unlike any other in Ireland in terms of process, their small-batch, slow-churned, hand-rolled butter
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EVERYBODY THOUGHT BUTTER JUST CAME FROM THE SUPERMARKET, APPEARING PERFECT AND FULLY FORMED, AND THAT WAS IT.
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