Cut off tomorrow’s butter tonight

Mostly by keeping a little of it out, covered, and the accounts have three versions. Four separate conversations keep a salted block out on the counter, covered by a dish or a butter bell, and say it stays good and spreadable with no softening ritual; two conversations use the water-sealed crock — a butter bell — where the butter sits inverted in a cup that seals against water, keeping the air off it, and say it holds for weeks; one account says a plain lidded plastic tub does the same job without buying anything, and another that a butter mill, which shaves cold butter spreadable straight from the fridge, is the gadget answer. One account keeps the house at a steady temperature and finds the butter is simply always right; one buys a spreadable tub of butter cut with oil for toast and keeps blocks for cooking; and one — the account this page is built on — cuts the next day’s portion the night before and leaves only that out, which is the version that satisfies both the counter people and the fridge people, and the food-safety guidance in the note above. Two smaller things the accounts do: one caution says an airtight lid matters because oxidation makes counter butter taste off even when it is not spoiled; and one account says if you go through a block in a few days, none of this matters, because the argument in the next answer is about weeks.

Warm the knife, not the butter, and the people here have a small toolkit. Three separate conversations run the knife under hot water, or rest it on the toaster, and say a warm blade glides through cold butter and spreads it without changing the butter itself. Three conversations soften a block for baking with the microwave in short bursts on low power, or by standing the stick on its end; one caution says the moment it turns to liquid the cookies are ruined, so short bursts on low power, because one caution says a puddle ruins cookie dough. One account cuts the block into pieces ahead of time so a piece is ready when it is needed; one uses the radiant heat of a hot glass to soften butter quickly — and one correction is firm about a version of that trick: pouring boiling water into a cold glass can shatter it, so use the microwave instead. For a cold airline butter packet, one account tucks it under the hot main course. For pastry the answer is the opposite, in the fourth answer: keep it cold and grate it.

The people here disagree, the food-safety guidance is clear, and this page carries both. The guidance: the US Department of Agriculture says to leave out only what you will use within a day or two. The accounts: in one conversation one account says two days and six say weeks, months or in one case a year without trouble; in another, three accounts say unsalted butter goes off quickly at room temperature and three say it sits covered for weeks; in a third, two accounts each way argue two days’ worth on the counter against keeping it out for days or even months. The corrections narrow the gap. One account explains that what happens to counter butter over weeks is mostly oxidation — it goes stale and sour, and one caution says many households have simply stopped noticing that taste — while bacteria can reach a level that matters within a week at room temperature. One correction says the salt in a modern salted block is not enough to preserve anything, so ‘salted is safer’ is a matter of degree at best; another correction says that people kept butter out for thousands of years is not an argument, because the risk of spoilage exists whatever the history. One account says unsalted butter is fine for a few weeks if you are eating it steadily, and another that if your household uses butter rarely, the fridge or the freezer is the honest answer and the counter is not. This page reads all of that as: a day or two on the counter is the rule the guidance gives, the accounts who warn against keeping it out longer name both taste and safety, and cutting tomorrow’s slice tonight means you never have to know who is right. One caution says rancid butter has a smell and does not always look wrong, so if it smells sour it goes.

Keep it cold and grate it. Three separate conversations grate frozen or very cold butter straight into the flour for pastry, biscuits and scones, and say the fine, even shreds make a flakier result than cubes of soft butter ever did; one account puts the block in the freezer the night before a biscuit morning for exactly this. Two conversations keep the butter wrappers and use the film of butter left on them to grease baking tins, which one account says is exactly enough for a light coat and wastes nothing. One account butters corn on the cob with a fork instead of a knife, so the softening butter does not skate off. And an aside from seven separate conversations in this record that this page will not turn into a lesson: for the outside of a grilled cheese sandwich, they use mayonnaise instead of butter and say it browns crisper — the page on the cake mix is where this site talks about swapping fats.

For pastry, some of the people here say yes; for toast and a frying pan, they mostly say no, and they argue it. Two conversations say a higher-fat butter spreads better and keeps longer at room temperature because it has less water in it. One exchange, two accounts each way, and another, one to two, ask whether the difference between a standard block and a higher-fat one is worth the price — one side says it is a couple of percentage points of fat and unnoticeable in most cooking, the other that for pastry and patisserie the fat content changes the result drastically; the accounts’ decider is whether you are doing precise pastry work or ordinary cooking, and one account buys the cheap block for the pan and the good one for the bread. Two corrections are worth carrying because they puncture a shopping habit: one account said yellow butter is the good butter, and was told that colour comes from the cows’ feed — carrot, in one account’s telling — or from vitamin A added at the end to keep the colour consistent, so yellow is not a grade. One account says standard supermarket butter in their region — and, they say, in the US — is cream and salt and nothing else, whatever the marketing implies. One caution says a butter shipped across an ocean carries a footprint the local one does not; one account says feeling guilty about using the nice butter until it goes off is irrational — you would not hoard the good coffee that way. And one correction for the ambitious: you make butter by churning cream, not buttermilk — buttermilk is what is left over — and one caution says the homemade kind holds more water and spoils faster than the shop block.