Butter is better as far as flavor is concerned. I leave a stick out all the time; it’s only a problem in summer when there’s a bad heat wave that melts it to liquid.
If you want to soften butter quickly, try this method.
I use butter for pretty much all of my cooking (and baking, of course - god forbid). I keep margarine around because that’s what I grew up with on toast, and sometimes I want toast. Please don’t exile me!
Thanks everyone for all your input so far!
Especially:
hmmm…if only there was an emoji for a contemplative fist under the chin, conveying thought, conveying the consideration of feasible options.
Canola is spawn of the devil. They used to call it Rapeseed, m’kay?
Seriously though, it’s cheap for a reason. It was used in the paint industry and maybe got too expensive for that, so let’s feed it to humans. When it degrades it has a god awful odor, like varnish. Fuckers. Is corn oil or safflower going to break the bank guys? They even use it in peanut butter, to use peanut oil is just a little on the crazy side, apparently.
/rant off
Margarine USED TO almost universally be made out of partially hydrogenated oils, which contain substantial amouts of trans fat.
Thanks to the trans fat labelling laws that went into effect in 2006-2008 in the U.S., most margarine was reformulated to use fully hydrogenated oils, or naturally saturated-fat-heavy oils such as palm oil, instead of partially hydrogenated oils. Nowadays, unless you’re using stick margarine like Imperial, it’s gonna have less than 1/2 a gram of trans fat per tablespoon.
There are actually spreadable butters that don’t include anything else. Maybe not available where you are but they exist and are delicious. The trick is NOT to leave them out as they soften more but then once back in the fridge they harden up and lose their long term spreadability.
I grew up using margarine, so that’s the taste and consistency I’m used to (likewise with Miracle Whip vs. mayonnaise); I don’t find anything particularly superior about the taste of butter. Plus margarine always spreads nicely, it’s generally cheaper, and I have some uncles and cousins who are canola farmers.
Butter tastes superior to those who prefer the taste of butter over marg ;). I think the issue arises from those who reluctantly use marg for various reasons but who don’t really like it.
Every time you choose butter over margarine a French chef gets its wings.
Right now I can’t eat either of them. Back when I had a gall bladder, though, margarine was not allowed in my house.
Pretty much ditto, except substitute ‘salted’ in all instances for us. I use unsalted for frying food, though, or use ghee when I have it.
Somebody mentioned olive oil. Years ago, I used to whip softened butter with olive oil and keep it in the fridge. It worked fine for most things, but had a stronger flavor. It seemed a healthier alternative to plain butter.
I completely agree about having butter on the counter. It takes a lot for it to go rancid.
Yeah, I just sprinkle salt on it when needed. Easier for me than keeping two types of butter around. 
The butter bell idea mentioned about is pretty good, though. I used one for a number of years until I realized that our house is climate controlled enough that a simple butter dish works just as well and is a bit less fussy (at least for the rate of butter we go through.) If room temp is regularly in the upper 70s or so then I highly recommend it. Butter remains soft at about 65-75, and by the 80s, it starts to melt.
I do not consider margarine to be food. It tastes nothing like butter. Some people cook with it, but that puts me back to Emeril’s comment on cooking with cheap wine: If you wouldn’t drink it, why would you put it in your food?
Well, like I said above, I do use it for one thing: chicken wings. I find that it incorporates with the hot sauce better; butter has a tendency to break/separate in the sauce and seems to have a thinner or different consistency. Margarine seems to help keep the sauce homogenous/emulsified better. It’s a bit of an argument in chicken wing circles (such that they exist), with the “purists” insisting it’s only margarine, and others saying the flavor of butter makes up for any perceived textural issues, so try both and see what you like. I fell on the side of the margarine folks for this one application, and this is exactly the one and only application where I use margarine.
psst- water is one atom away from being extremely corrosive, reactive, and toxic.
Ditto. I even left it out when I lived in Florida. As long as the a/c worked, it was fine.
I’ve never eaten margarine because it’s disgusting. Butter all the way. I also don’t bake with margarine, which I think is why people go, “OHMYGAWD these are GREAT COOKIES!!!” Hey, baked goods are supposed to be a treat. Make them worthwhile.
I realized a while ago that you don’t need to use extra butter on your toast if you sprinkle some salt on it.
That’s not entirely right; the idea is that you don’t want to use cooking wine, because it’s extremely cheap wine that’s loaded with salt to get around alcohol sale restrictions. It’s not “don’t cook with something you don’t drink” because that lends itself to people doing stupid-assed things like putting expensive Burgundy in beef bourguignon instead of inexpensive, but drinkable wines, since they only drink the expensive stuff.
I think the idea behind margarine was originally a cost thing, but over time it morphed into an anti-cholesterol thing. I recall my parents specifically getting margarine when I was a boy, because it was low in cholesterol and saturated fat. Now that they’re finding that trans-fats are worse than saturated fat, and that dietary cholesterol apparently isn’t as big of a deal as once thought, margarine doesn’t seem quite as attractive as far as being “healthy” as once thought.
And… Common Tater,
Rapeseed oil and Canola oil are two similar, but different things- classic rapeseed oil is inedible, because of high amounts of erucic acid, but canola is a specially bred variety of the rape plant (a relative of cabbages, BTW) with very low levels of erucic acid, grown specifically for human consuption. In other words, it’s NOT the same stuff used in the paint industry at all.
You can make butter in your kitchen at home, it is food.
I’m not sure what you’d need in your kitchen to make margarine. Some kind of reaction vessel? Tesla coils?