Both is the correct answer for this Dane as well. Remember, butter is one of the food groups for us. If I have English muffins or I am baking bread you bet there is a stick of softened butter in the cupboard. It keeps just fine for many days (except summer). A covered dish is mandatory as it keeps longer that way.
For fun, try Tillamook butter, it has one of the highest butterfat contents in town. Keeps longer and tastes better.
As to a question above, it is the milk solids in butter that make it go bad. Once butter is clarified it will keep for extremely long periods of time. This is why Ghee is clarified over in torrid old India.
Shoot. At first glance, I thought this was a thread about doing the help (Butler: In the fridge or on the counter?) so I tried to come up with something clever about the servants’ entrance being in the rear.
Another “both” in the refrigerator for baking and one stick in a covered dish on the counter for buttering things (except for the maybe two weeks a year when it is too hot to do so.)
I’ll put in another plug for Tillamook butter. I didn’t know about the butterfat content- it just tastes better.
It’s a constant battle. However, I keep it inside. 2 seconds on high in the microwave…or resting a plate on top of the toaster or stove for a minute is long enough to soften it.
Wow, thanks for the responses!
Yes, I bought two covered butter dishes - one for me and one for my friend. (I have a cat, she does not, but still…icky things can abound.)
Okay, Zenster and obfusciatrist, you both mentioned Tillamook. Is that a local brand? Do you have some sort of link? I’ve never heard of it. Sounds intriguing.
Tillamook cheese is the best cheddar (or at least the best cheddar you are going to find in your basic grocery store).
Tillamook is a little town on the Oregon coast (though by Oregon coast standards it is a big town).
As for being a local brand, I don’t know how common it is in other parts of the country (or world). I grew up in Vancouver, Washington, so it would never have occurred to us to eat a different brand of cheese (and Tillamook is more expensive than other brands). But I have had no problem buying it in Seattle, Honolulu (though it is ungodly expensive, though all dairy products are in Hawaii), or San Francisco (heck, I even saw it in a Wisconsin grocery store in 1996 and I hear they are a bit stuck-up about their cheese).
The web site linked above even has webcams (though not very good ones) and e-cards!
I spent my very young childhood in Northern CA and most of the rest of my life in the Seattle area, and we could always find Tillamook Cheddar in the cheese aisle next to Kraft & the store brands. (It also doesn’t occur to me to buy any other brand.)
When I was stuck in Massachusetts, a few years ago, I could only find it extremely overpriced, in the specialty cheeses aisle of the ultra-yuppie, healthfood, all natural, organic, sugarfree grocery store far away from any mode of public transportation. Still worth the trip and the price. So, I doubt it is impossible to find off of the west coast.
Oh man. Have you ever saw one of those programs on TLC or PBS somewhere where they show the MICROSCOPIC view of cheese that has been left out? It’s got thousands of tiny little critters, unseen to the eye, crawling all over it. It has made me keep EVERYTHING in the fridge.
We keep ours on the counter in a covered dish. I use real butter and have never had it go bad and I use it every day. Takes me about a week to go through a stick, but we’ve left it out (like when we’ve gone on vacation) and it’s been fine when we get back.
The butter I’m not using is stored in the freezer - I usually buy a couple boxes at a time cause I use it for baking (I DESPISE even the idea of margarine!) and like to buy in quantity.
Another vote for keeping it on the counter in a covered dish… However, margerine stays in the fridge unless I’m softening it for cooking - it won’t hold its shape like butter.
Not true, I just thought I would point out other possibilities. My butter is kept safely in the refrigerating unit that’s now humming happily away in my kitchen and doing its best to aggravate California’s power crisis.
I keep about a three-day supply on the counter, covered. In the summer, more like a one-day supply. After a few days it starts to go rancid, but you can scrape away the outer layer and find a last morsel of the good stuff before you throw it out.
I also keep a stick on standby in the fridge, ready to be rotated in; and a container of clarified in the cupboard, for cooking. Clarified butter will keep for weeks without refrigeration.
Do you realize that refrigeration only inhibits growth and does not kill organisms? Even freezing doesn’t kill microbes. So all the little critters are still on the butter, just agowing at a little bit of a slower rate. But still there. And growing, slowly growing…
I don’t use butter often to eat; I use soft tub margarine, so I keep my butter in the refrigerator for when Drachillix wants some. Fats don’t spoil as fast as other proteins–think of cooking oil. Frosting is butter, milk and sugar, but it gets eaten up pretty quick, at least mine does, because it’s yummy…
