How long is garlic butter safe, and why is it not a botulism risk like garlic in oil?
I've been making garlic butter for years, storing it for months at a time. When I read that garlic-in-oil can grow dangerous amounts of botulinum toxins after similar lengths of time, I wondered how safe garlic butter is and why.
Evidently, the safety warnings specifically target storage in oil. I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation for butter not being mentioned with a preliminary search. The first Google result turns up a grossly unhelpful Yahoo! Answers page whose sources do not mention butter at all.
To the point: is garlic butter safer than garlic-in-oil, and why? Is butter not also an anaerobic environment, so that the same precautions should apply as with oil?
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There's no reason to believe it's safer.
Garlic in oil is "unsafe" by FDA standards. Which means that roughly one in 100,000 bottles of homemade garlic oil kills someone. Before reading about the botulism risk, my friends and I used to make garlic oil at home and hand it out; I'd say we distributed probably 100 bottles, some of which stayed on the shelf for years before being used. In that time, nobody got sick from it (most bottles went to friends, so we'd have heard).
So the fact that your garlic butter hasn't killed anyone yet just means that you're playing the odds. Chances are, unless you get really sloppy, you could go on making garlic butter for the rest of your life and never get botulism poisoning. But not everyone is comfortable with that risk.
EDITED PER BELOW: You can improve your odds of avoiding botulism by straining the oil/butter through cheesecloth (to eliminate solids which would hide spores), and heat-treating it to 160F or more for 45 minutes. This will not eliminate all risk of botulism, but will improve your odds.
Unlike oil, butter isn't pure fat. Typically, it's around 80% fat in an emulsion with roughly 20% water and dissolved milk solids. So, no, it's not a truly anaerobic environment. If it were melted or clarified, it may be a different story. Furthermore, butter's crystaline structure -- at room temperature and below -- is bound to be aerated to some degree or another.
Also unlike oil, which is usually stored at room temperature, butter is usually stored at or below 40 degrees F, which retards bacterial reproduction of any kind. The botulism bacteria itself isn't inherently dangerous. It's pretty common in soil and also, therefore, in agricultural products, especially root crops like onions and garlic. When the bacteria reproduces under anaerobic conditions, however, there is a toxic chemical by-product of that specific process. Since low temperatures retard bacterial reproduction, they also reduce the risk that the toxin will be produced.
Realistically, the risks of garlic-in-oil preparations are probably mostly over-stated, but it can be a complex issue, and the consequences of botulism poisoning are too grave to take any chances.
That said, if you're making garlic butter with fresh garlic and storing it anywhere but the freezer, "months at a time" seems like too long, from a quality perspective if not a food-safety one.
Garlic butter should be safer because you make it by chopping up garlic and cooking it in butter. The cooking reduces the water content in the garlic to low enough levels that botulism bacteria should no longer an issue.
The garlic in oil issue is that at the water content and pH of garlic, oil blocks the oxygen, allowing the anaerobic bacteria to thrive. But if you change either the water content, by cooking, or the pH, by pickling, then the bacteria can't grow.
Of course, either cooking or pickling will change the taste of the garlic, but both are delicious, so it's fine. :)
Lactic acid has been shown to inhibit the growth of Clostridium botulinum. That is why it is safer to use butter than oil. link
I thought that our stomach acid kills botulism spores... Which is why we recommend that infants under 12 months do not eat honey. Honey can store botulism spores... But it's not dangerous for older kids and adults.
3 days if not refrigerated. 14 days in a fridge. Freezing is not recommended.
I suspected that @FuzzyChef 's answer was essentially correct, but I felt that the question was not conclusively answered without sources, so I ended up never accepting an answer. Thankfully, Linda Harris published this very comprehensive summary (which I recommend you to read if you are a fan of garlic), from which these parts stand out:
Garlic is a low-acid vegetable. The pH of a clove of garlic typically
ranges from 5.3 to 6.3.
[...]
Adding wine or vinegar to garlic
provides an acidic environment (less than pH 4.6) so that Clostridium
botulinum cannot grow.
A quick Google search reveals that butter has a pH of 6.1 - 6.4, so there is indeed no reason to believe that garlic butter is safer than garlic in oil.
As the summary says that garlic in oil is safe for up to 4 days in the refrigerator, it should be safe to assume that the same would hold for garlic butter.
Most interestingly, however, the document explains a method to acidify garlic for long-term storage in oil, based on research that was published a year after this question was originally posted. The method should be just as valid for garlic butter. In short:
Prepare 3 parts of 3% citric acid solution (about 15 g citric acid / 500 ml water) per part of garlic to be acidified (and don't change this ratio, obviously)
Coarsely chop the garlic into pieces no longer than 6 mm (1/4 inch) in any direction
Put the garlic in the solution, mix, cover and let soak for 24 h at room temperature, then drain/sieve.
This acidified garlic is safe to use in oil (and presumably butter), according to science. Enjoy!
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