Is this gross? (Using butter left out at room temp.)

Cafe Society
1

My sons and I love us some garlic toast. We have it with a significant amount of our meals.

The standard proceedure in our house is; we’ll take a glob of (real) buttrer put it in a cup with some minced garlic and salt. Then we just nuke it in the microwave for a few seconds.

Whatever is not used is left in the cup sitting on the counter untill some else needs to use it again. This cup can last from seven to ten days.

So is this practice gross? My sis seams to think so. My arguement is that Britts don’t refrigerate their butter. But I don’t know. What do you guys think?

2

Butter doesn’t need refrigeration for a week.

3

In the winter, I leave butter in a cabinent against a north-wall. Usually about 50-60 deg F in the cabinet.

summer, when the house in the 70’s deg F, I don’t leave butter out for more than day. I cut the sticks into qtrs and put them in as cool as place possible overnight so the butter will spread easily on toast.

AFAIK, I never been sick from rancid butter.

4

Butter does not have enough water in it to promote quick bacterial or mold growth. It will eventually go rancid - the fats in it will oxidize, changing the taste - but it won’t kill you and it will taste “off”, so you’ll know.

People have been safely making and using butter since long before home refrigeration was an option.

5

Leave it out until it goes rancid, then, don’t do that again.

6

I would worry when putting vegetation in an anaerobic situation. Botulism is nearly impossible to detect without getting sick. I know there have been problems with storing garlic or basil in olive oil at room temp. As far as just plain butter stored in a butter dish, I do it all the time.

7

Get one of these. Basically you put your butter in the cup and then turn it upside down in a cup of water which provides a seal to keep the air out. No putrification!

8

$33? Well that’s money well spent.

9

$8 sound better?

10

Growing up, we never refrigerated butter.

And here I am.
mmm

11

An abstract I found

12

The issue is more the introduction of the garlic into the butter may possibly cause issues (such as sitchensis quoted above)

Beyond that, no there is no problem leaving the butter out. If it gets too hot, it’ll melt and you’ll go “Dang, shouldn’t do that”. But as WhyNot said, people have been making and leaving butter out since before refrigerators even existed.

Also, Brits only has a single t.

13

Ditto for me, I just have a plain old butter dish that doesn’t do much more then keep dust off of it. I just used some butter today from a stick that’s been sitting in my butter dish for probably two months. Tasted just fine. As you said, been leaving butter out my whole life. Now that I’m single, it stays out significantly longer since I really don’t use it very often, but I’ve never even seen butter go bad.

To answer something specifically in the OP, if that’s fresh garlic, I wouldn’t leave it out. If it’s dried minced garlic, I’m not sure, I’d probably refrigerate it to be safe.

14

I’ve kept butter on the counter in a butter bell, and I’ve kept it on the counter in a regular dish. Both worked equally fine, especially if the butter’s being used up in a week.

15

The garlic-in-oil thing refers to jars of oil that have garlic floating in them, and they generally stick around a lot longer than a week. I honestly wouldn’t worry about it, but if it concerns you, then yes, use dried granulated garlic or garlic powder, instead.

16

for decades in butter friendly areas of the USA a covered butter dish on the table was fine. this was just the stick of the unaltered butter.

17

I’d leave butter out if I didn’t have pets.

18

Here is another abstract for a case where 36 were sickened due to chopped garlic stored in oil.

Now obviously you haven’t died of botulism but any time you store uncooked food in a low acid anaerobic environment, especially a root vegetable which already has so much contact with soil, you’re risking botulism. If I were you I would just keep a small dish in the freezer.

This also goes for your herb garden. If you want to make some homemade pesto or fancy basil, garlic, olive oil. Eat it or store it in the freezer.

19

I’ve never used fresh garlic in garlic butter. The powder tastes significantly different from the fresh garlic I’ve found, and I can’t imagine it would taste the same in butter.

20

I am not sure what I would do with butter I’d added things to, but for plain butter I use a normal butter dish in the winter (covered to keep out dust and cat) and a butter bell in the summer. I find a butter bell keeps the butter too solid to be spreadable in the winter, and a normal butter dish lets it get too warm in the summer, and it goes rancid.