There was a thread not long ago, something like “Products you wish existed” or something like that. (Sorry, I can’t find it right now to link to it.)
Someone suggested: A kitchen utensil to spread cold, hard butter on soft bread without tearing the slice of bread to pieces.
I had an idea: Just get a grater, and grate your brick of butter like it was cheddar cheese. Seems like it ought to work, sort of.
Well, I tried it tonight. Result: Yes, it works. Sort of.
Problems: The hard butter grates well, but softens too quickly at room temperature. Too much of it ends up smeared all over the grater, basically. Also, I ended up with a pile of gratings on top of a slice of bread, but the gratings all stuck to each other so I couldn’t really distribute them evenly on the slice.
Seems to me, this comes close to being the solution. With just a little more thought and ingenuity (Give me time, I’m working on it!) this might be a practical idea.
Two immediate thoughts (which I haven’t tried yet): (1) Keep the butter in the freezer so it will be colder and harder and slower to soften up. (2) Keep the grater in the refrigerator so it will be cold too.
– Hard butter fighting soft bread since 1973! (It’s taking longer than we thought!)
I must use butter too quickly or something. I just leave mine in the cupboard and have never had it go rancid on me and I never tear holes in my bread with too-hard butter.
Aha! My grater has a slot like that on it – This picture approximately resembles my grater, except mine doesn’t have any such plastic frame box around it. I should try that, then. (I always pictured it for thin-slicing potatoes. Never even occurred to me to try it with cheese or butter.)
:Shudder: I wouldn’t even have thought to just leave my butter sitting out at room temperature. It doesn’t go bad quickly? Really? I never would have thunk that.
Don’t you make or buy cookies with butter in them? How long do you think you can store those? Days and even weeks unless it’s very warm where you live. They’ll turn stale after some weeks, and that’s the finely distributed butter that spoils faster than a brick of butter does, b/c of the larger surface area of the butter particles in the cookies.
Butter keeps for a long time in room temperature. Butter on the benchtop will be fine for days, even weeks. Especially if it’s in brick shape and covered, so air doesn’t have easy access to all of it. The surface layer may take on a rancid taste after some weeks, but it’s quite harmless even then.
ETA: And Askance’s suggestion about a cheese planer is excellent. I was going to suggest that myself.
(3)Use a flat grater (as opposed to a box style grater), so you can scrape the softened butter off the underside, then spread it onto the bread as normal.
I just keep my butter in a butter dish. I didn’t realise some people kept it in the fridge! I do keep butter I’m not currently using in the fridge - if I’ve bought two sticks in a two-for-one offer, or something.
Another vote for just keeping it on the counter.
Replacement tubs and sticks stay in the fridge, anything opened stays out on the counter.
Soft, spreadable, non-chilled buttery goodness 24/7.
Another vote for keeping the current stick of butter at room temperature. We do not use much, yet have never experienced a problem. We keep our eggs out as well, although we collect them daily from our own hens.
Alternatively freeze your bread so that it is the consistency of a floor tile. Then spread it with your rock hard butter using a brick layers trowel if necessary. Allow both bread and butter to attain, at their leisure, a temperature appropriate for consumption. The resultant comestibles may then be devoured.
