It drives me nuts that “vegan” companies like Earth Balance use palm oil in their “vegan” butters.
I’ve written to them about it and received no response.
But you and I both know that palm oil is not eaten by many vegan for ethical reasons.
Unfortunately, it’s fairly hard to find a good vegan butter without palm oil. Most common “natural” and plant-based brands like Country Crock have palm oil in them. Every margarine I’ve looked at has palm oil in it as well (sometimes hidden within “vegetable oil”).
I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking and evaluating different options. I’ll sum them up here for you in this post.
My preference is to make my own, so I’ve included 2 vegan butter recipes at the end, but there’s also a few commercial products you might be able to find.
Table of Contents
Miyoko’s Vegan Butter
Miyoko’s is known for having amazing vegan cheese, but their butter is top-notch too.
It doesn’t have any palm oil, and and is very similar to real butter.
The only issue is that it’s hard to find in most places, and like all their products, is quite expensive.
Naturli’ Spreadable Butter
Naturli’ is a company that primarily sells their new palm oil free, vegan butter in the U.K.
You can find it at most major grocery stores, and hopefully you can order it online soon. It’s your best bet if you live anywhere in Europe as far as I’ve found.
Salted Whipped Butter
Wayfare is a good option if you live in the United States.
You can order online and they’ll ship it to you.
Culcherd Butter
This is a Canadian brand, and while it’s easily found in Canada, it hasn’t expanded (yet) to the U.S. or overseas, however, they do ship to the States if you’re willing to buy online.
It’s based on coconut oil, sunflower oil, and cashews. While a little on the expensive side, it tastes really good, and it even says “palm oil free” on the box, which shows the people behind the product share similar values.
Spreadable Olive Oil Vegan Butter (LEGIT!)
This is my go-to vegan butter recipe, and the one I make pretty much all the time now.
It’s very similar to the taste and quality of Earth Balance, but no palm oil needed. It’s also very cheap and easy to make.
It’s a bit of a pain to get all the ingredients the first time as there are some uncommon ones, but once you do they’ll last you a long time.
The guy who made this recipe seems like a butter genius who’s done a ton of experimentation on vegan butter, and this was one of his winners. I don’t think you’ll really find a better quality one.
Easy Vegan Butter
When I initially didn’t have all the ingredients for the above recipe, I went with this easy vegan butter.
It uses ingredients that you probably already have around, and of course no palm oil.
It doesn’t include any soy lecithin (one of those harder to find things), which means it’s not quite as smooth as ideal.
It’s still a good option, just not as good as the one above.
Note that you can use any of these butters as a vegan substitute for butter or ghee in recipes.
Thanks so much for this article. I have been buying Earth Balance vegan butter since becoming a vegan 2 yrs ago and just recently discovered that they use palm oil. I contacted the company to express my concerns and to see if they use ethically harvested palm oil (if there actually is such a thing) and the only response was to read the label. I plan on “outing” Earth Balance to make other vegans aware of this so options are much appreciated!
Yes, I received a similar answer.
They do use “sustainable” palm oil, but that hardly seems like a guarantee that it’s different from regular palm oil from what I’ve read.
Thanks for your article!
Would you reccomend using the olive oil butter recipe for vegan baking? Cookies, brownies, ect?
Hi Elissa,
It’s fine for most baking.
For certain things that require a LOT of butter (e.g. pie crust), it works, but not as well as a store-bought one like Miyokos.
Thank you! Earth Balance is a subject that drives me nuts. When they finally responded – as Conagra – they said, “We purchase palm oil from U.S.-based suppliers, who sometimes run integrated operations that both harvest and process the palm oil or from commodities traders who simply purchase and distribute palm oil. Over the past several years, we’ve become increasingly aware of the potential environmental and social risks associated with the cultivation, harvesting and processing of palm oil, and we have taken steps to improve the sustainability of our palm oil supply chain.” No idea what that would be, given that people sell “sustainability certificates” to any palm producer who wants to pay for it – and the “sustainable” producers have been found to be bigger culprits that those not certified. Sorry. Soapbox…ears steaming. Anyway, we have been using Miyoko’s, but it’s so expensive, there are no measurement marks and it’s not quite salty enough for me, so we were looking for something softer or with measurements on the wrapper – on or the other. We’ll try these recipes!
Hi Mel,
I agree it’s annoying.
That first recipe (on veganbaking.net) has a few different types of butter (e.g. for spreading, baking, etc.). I’ve made a few different ones for different occasions and they’ve all turned out great for about 20% of the price (or less depending on where you live).
Oh no! The first recipe – “Spreadable Olive Oil Vegan Butter – LEGIT!!!” has a broken link!
Can you please fix the link or at least point us to another place to get it? Or can someone who has it post it in the comments? If it’s as good as you say, I really want to try it! Thanks!
Hopefully it’s only broken temporarily.
Here’s an archived link you can use in the meantime:
http://web.archive.org/web/20201111195044/http://www.veganbaking.net/recipes/fats/vegan-butters/spreadable-olive-oil-vegan-butter
Thank you so much for the archived link, Dale!
Thank you so much for writing this article. I have been very frustrated with butter substitute options on store shelves all containing palm. It never occured to me that I could make my own. Will give some of these other brands a try too if I can hunt them down. Appreciate this info very much, thank you again.