This won’t give you real French butter, but honestly, it comes pretty darn close. It’s incredibly easy to make and checks two out of three descriptive boxes for the real thing. This fake French butter is sure to bring back the joy and wine-soaked memories of vacation days gone by. Here’s how to make crispy French butter the lazy American way.

Fat content. Butter is butter, right? Well, almost. European butter has a slightly higher milkfat content than American butter, 82% minimum versus 80% minimum, and while that’s important, it’s not the only critical factor at play. (If you want less water, you can just go with ghee, which has 0%.) That’s box one: butterfat.

It has cultures. Traditional French butter is special because it is made with cultured cream. The bacterial cultures added to the butter, much like yogurt or cheese, give the butter a subtle but distinctive flavor. There is a slight tang to French butter and, forgive my shortcomings with this description, it has a stronger dairy milk flavor. Again, that is the hardest to replicate at home, but still just a subtle team player. Box number two: cultured cream.

Embrace the salt. The final difference, and the easiest to spot, is the salt. I may be a little salty-loving, simply as a personality trait. As soon as I slathered a loaf of bread in demi-sel butter in my Parisian Airbnb, I discovered pockets of crunchy salt. “What is this?” I thought. “A dream come true?” Indeed. Large salt crystals pepper the salted butters in France, and for someone who always thought American salted butter could use a little more salt, I felt validated. French demi-sel (partially salted) butter contains 0.5% to 2% salt, and fully salted contains about 3% salt. Yes, even you salt-shy can get your own semi-salted butter. So many options! That’s box three: crunchy salt.