Hi Ann! What a good question! For the recipes here on Grandma’s Kitchen, you should use salted butter unless the recipe says otherwise. If you don’t have salted butter on hand, you can use unsalted butter (also called sweet butter) – just add a little bit of salt to the rest of the ingredients. For other recipes, I would probably do the same and use salted butter. But look at the rest of the recipe first – if it has a more than, say, 1/2 teaspoon salt OR if it uses a lot of processed food (canned soup or sauce, cake mixes, etc.), you might want to use unsalted butter – especially if it’s a recipe that you can taste and add more salt if necessary before serving. If you’re making a recipe from a cookbook and it doesn’t specify salted or unsalted, you should check the introduction or introductory chapter for guidelines. Many cookbooks include some tips for using the recipes and they may indicate what kind of butter to use if a recipe doesn't specify.