Second-Best Butter in the World Is Martha Stewart’s Favorite

Martha Stewart, the Eternal Queen of All Things Domestic, is known for her (usually) foolproof recommendations. 

If she says you shouldn’t shake your iced coffee, then we’ll do our best to keep those ice cubes from clattering into each other. If she cooks her scrambled eggs in clarified butter, then we know exactly what’s for breakfast this weekend. And if she recommends a lobster-stuffed chicken — a dish that looks like a cross between something you flicked past on Syfy and an unholy abomination against the natural world… well, we’re still with her on the scrambled eggs. 

Recently, Stewart shared her super simple tips for creating one of the most luxurious high-low meals ever: the caviar-topped baked potato — a dish that relies on the quality of each component and ingredient. Of course, Martha being Martha, gave shoutouts to a couple of her favorite supermarket staples, which you know is guaranteed to be the best of the best. In her Instagram video, she recommended topping each glorious potato with “a dab of the best unsalted butter,” before adding “Vermont Creamery is really good…this must melt into the potato.” 

As she continued, pronouncing “potato” in the most entertainingly stacatto way, she also suggested topping it with something else from the dairy section. “After the potatoes are buttered, then a big dollop of delicious sour cream,” the 82-year-old icon said. “I use Breakstone’s a lot. It’s all-natural sour cream.” 

And, because this is Martha Stewart we’re talking about, she finished each potato off with a truly massive helping of caviar. “For those of you who don’t like caviar, [the butter and sour cream are] good enough,” she said. “But for those of you who love caviar, like I love caviar, a big spoon of Black Diamond Golden Ossetra right on top. That looks pretty good to me.” 

One Instagram commenter even joked that she’d spooned “a Toyota’s worth of caviar” onto each potato. And we’re not about to disagree. 

OK, so the Golden Russian Ossetra may not be available at the Publix around the corner — and it retails for $125 per ounce online — but Martha’s butter and sour cream choices are definitely much more accessible. (Also: a beautifully baked potato dressed simply with good butter and good sour cream needs no assistance from caviar.)

Vermont Creamery’s Cultured Butter comes in both unsalted and sea-salted versions, with an eight-ounce package containing two sticks of butter currently listed for $3.48 on Walmart. Another fun fact: Vermont Creamery’s Unsalted Cultured Butter also took second place in the Unsalted Butter category at this year’s 35th biannual World Championship Cheese Contest, which recognizes some other dairy standouts too. Meanwhile, Breakstone’s Sour Cream is available in 8-ounce and 16-ounce tubs, which can sell for $2 to $3 dollars, depending on the retailer. 

If Martha says it’s good, then it’s good. We might even try a pat of Vermont Creamery on that terrifying “chobster” dish. Maybe.