What Is Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil?
Country Crock has spent decades as a fixture in the dairy aisle, which is exactly why its Plant Butter line trips people up. This is not the same tub your grandmother kept next to the toaster. Plant Butter with Olive Oil is a separate, dedicated line from Unilever built specifically to be 100% dairy-free, sold in a 10.5 oz tub and in 4-count stick packs, and positioned as a direct, budget-friendly rival to Earth Balance and Miyoko's rather than a reformulated version of the classic spread.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Country Crock still sells an "Original" spread and several other lines that are not vegan, so grabbing the wrong tub off the shelf is an easy mistake. The Plant Butter sub-line — which comes in Olive Oil, Avocado Oil, and Almond Oil varieties — is the one you want if you're avoiding animal products. We're focusing on the Olive Oil version here since it's the most widely stocked and the one most often compared to competitors like Earth Balance's Original Buttery Spread and Miyoko's European Style Cultured Vegan Butter.
Ingredients
According to Country Crock's own product page, the Plant Butter with Olive Oil tub contains:
Blend of Plant-Based Oils (Soybean, Palm Fruit, Palm Kernel, Olive and Extra Virgin Olive Oil), Water, Salt, Pea Protein, Soy Lecithin, Citric Acid, Natural Flavor, Calcium Disodium EDTA (to protect freshness), Vitamin E Acetate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene (color).
A few things stand out. First, it's a blended-oil spread rather than a single-source-fat product like Miyoko's (which leans on coconut and cashew) — the palm fruit and palm kernel oils are doing most of the work to get a butter-like solid texture at fridge temperature, with the olive oil mostly there for flavor and marketing. Second, the vitamins (A and E) are the kind of fortification you'll see on margarine-style spreads generally, and neither is a red flag for vegans on its own — but see the note on Vitamin D below, because that's where Country Crock's other product lines get people into trouble.
If you want to run any ingredient list — this one or a competitor's — through a quick automated check, the spvegan.com ingredient checker will flag ambiguous entries like "natural flavor" so you're not left guessing.
Is Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil Vegan?
Yes. The Plant Butter with Olive Oil tub and sticks are dairy-free and contain no animal-derived ingredients based on the published ingredient list. There's no whey, no casein, no milkfat, and — importantly — no added Vitamin D3, which is the ingredient that gets Country Crock's non-vegan lines flagged. Vitamin D3 is frequently sourced from lanolin (wool grease from sheep), and several of Country Crock's other spreads use it. The Plant Butter formulation doesn't list it, using Vitamin A palmitate and Vitamin E acetate instead, both of which are typically synthesized or plant-derived in this application.
The bigger risk with this product isn't the formulation — it's the shelf. Country Crock sells Original, Plant Butter, and a handful of other spreads in nearly identical tub shapes, sometimes right next to each other in the same refrigerated case. If you're vegan, get in the habit of reading the front label for "Plant Butter" or "100% Plant-Based" specifically, not just the Country Crock name, and flip the tub over to confirm there's no buttermilk, milk, or Vitamin D3 on the ingredient panel before it goes in your cart.
This is a broader pattern worth internalizing beyond just this one brand: a company having one vegan product does not make its whole lineup vegan, and vice versa. Plenty of shoppers assume that because a brand markets a "plant-based" or "dairy-free" tagline prominently on its website, every SKU under that name follows the same recipe. Country Crock is a clean example of why that assumption fails — the Plant Butter line was formulated from scratch as a separate product, not derived from the Original recipe with dairy swapped out, which is exactly why the ingredient panels look completely different between the two.
Nutrition Facts Comparison
Here's how Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil stacks up against two of the most established names in vegan butter, all normalized to a 1 tablespoon (14g) serving.
| Product | Calories | Total Fat | Saturated Fat | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country Crock Plant Butter (Olive Oil) | 100 | 11g | 4g | 105mg |
| Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread | 100 | 11g | 3g | 105mg |
| Miyoko's Cultured Vegan Butter (Unsalted) | 90 | 10g | 8g | 0mg |
Calorie and fat totals land in roughly the same neighborhood across all three — this is still a fat-based spread, so don't expect a "light" product regardless of brand. The saturated fat numbers are the more interesting split: Country Crock and Earth Balance sit lower because they lean on a wider blend of oils, while Miyoko's coconut-oil-forward formula runs meaningfully higher in saturated fat, which matters if you're tracking that number for heart-health reasons. None of these are nutritionally dramatic swings, but if you're choosing between them on health grounds rather than taste, the saturated fat line is the one worth actually reading.
Taste and Texture
Straight out of the fridge, Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil is noticeably softer than a stick of Earth Balance and much softer than Miyoko's, which tends to firm up hard when chilled. That softness makes it easy to spread cold, which is the single biggest practical complaint people have about vegan butter in general — nobody wants to shred their toast waiting for a rock-hard spread to give way.
Flavor-wise, it reads as mild and slightly savory rather than distinctly "olive oil forward." The soybean and palm oils dilute the olive oil enough that you're not getting a strong, fruity olive flavor the way you might from a good extra virgin olive oil drizzled straight — this is closer to a neutral buttery flavor with a faint savory note than a Mediterranean-style spread. For direct comparison, Miyoko's cultured version tends to taste noticeably tangier thanks to the fermentation step, which some people prefer and others find distracting in simple applications like toast. Earth Balance sits closer to Country Crock on the flavor spectrum — mild, buttery, unobtrusive.
Where it does perform closer to dairy butter is browning: because of the oil blend, it browns reasonably well in a pan for sautéing, though — like most vegan butters — it won't give you the same deep, nutty brown butter flavor you'd get from real dairy butter, since that flavor comes from milk solids that simply aren't present here.
In baking, it behaves closer to a soft margarine than a firm European-style butter, which is a mixed bag depending on what you're making. Drop cookies, quick breads, and muffins turn out fine — the extra softness barely matters once it's creamed with sugar or melted into a batter. Where it struggles is in anything that depends on the fat staying solid and cold going into the oven, like pie crust or laminated pastry, because a softer starting fat makes it harder to keep distinct fat layers intact through rolling and folding. If flaky, layered pastry is your goal, a firmer stick-style vegan butter — including Country Crock's own stick format, which is formulated slightly firmer than the tub — will get you closer to the result you want.
How It Compares to Alternatives
| Product | Best For | Texture (Cold) | Price Range | Vegan? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country Crock Plant Butter (Olive Oil) | Everyday spreading, budget baking | Soft, easy to spread | Budget ($3–4 per 10.5 oz) | Yes |
| Earth Balance Original | All-purpose baking & cooking | Firm, needs a minute to soften | Mid-range ($4–5 per 13 oz) | Yes |
| Miyoko's Cultured Vegan Butter | Fine dining, croissants, laminated dough | Firm, cultured tang | Premium ($6–7 per 8 oz) | Yes |
The short version: Country Crock undercuts both competitors on price while matching Earth Balance almost spec-for-spec on the nutrition label, which makes it hard to justify paying more for Earth Balance specifically for everyday use. Miyoko's earns its premium price with a genuinely different, cultured flavor profile that's worth it for pastry work, but it's overkill for spreading on toast or stirring into weeknight mashed potatoes.
Who Should Buy This
Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil makes the most sense if you're feeding a household that goes through butter fast — toast, sandwiches, everyday sautéing, basic baking — and you don't want to pay a premium price for a name-brand vegan spread. It's also a sensible pick if you're newly transitioning to a plant-based diet and want something that tastes close to what you're used to without a big learning curve or a big price jump at the register. Because it's carried at mainstream grocery chains, big-box stores, and even dollar stores in some markets, it's also one of the more accessible options if you don't live near a store that stocks specialty brands like Miyoko's.
It's a weaker fit if you're doing precision pastry work — laminated doughs, croissants, anything where butter flavor and fat structure need to perform like European-style dairy butter — where Miyoko's cultured version or a specialty European-style vegan butter will give you more consistent results. It's also not the pick if you're specifically trying to avoid palm oil for environmental or ethical reasons, since palm fruit and palm kernel oil are both high on the ingredient list here; Earth Balance's soy-free line and some Miyoko's products are more likely to be a better fit for that particular concern, though shoppers should always check current labels since formulations change.
Final Verdict
Country Crock Plant Butter with Olive Oil does what most people actually need a vegan butter to do: it's genuinely dairy-free, it spreads cold without a fight, it tastes mild and buttery rather than weird or oily, and it costs meaningfully less than the specialty brands it's clearly built to compete with. It's not going to replace Miyoko's for someone chasing restaurant-quality pastry, and the reliance on palm oil will be a dealbreaker for some shoppers. But as an everyday, budget-conscious vegan butter you can find at almost any grocery store, it earns its spot in the fridge.
Rating: 7.8/10
