Just a random thought as I was making toast this morning…
Do you scrape across the top of the butter stick for your toast, leaving a big swayback valley in the middle of the stick, totally unusable for measuring out without piecing together chunks of butter to make three tablespoons like the recipe requires?
Or do you delicately slice off a neat little pat so it looks like the shot of professional foods used for the “as part of a healthy breakfast” section of an advert (you know, with a cup of coffee, toast, cereal and fruit juice posing for the camera, as if I am gonna have time to make a big Martha Stewartish production out of breakfast daily).
Me, I’m a scraper, but I do keep one or two sticks for cooking (for when I have to use the measuring grid on the side of the wrapper).
Slice! I never even thought about doing it any other way. However, your way sounds slightly tempting for getting a huge gob of butter, but I don’t like butter that much.
That is just gross. Slice of course! Any other way is just further evidence that you dine with heathens. If you feel the urge to scrape, why wouldn’t you just cut to the chase and grab the stick of butter with your hands, rub it all over your toast, and then plop it back down for the next little piggy to use.
I find a scrape is easier to spread than a slice, and less likely to rip the bread to shreds. I hate when the toast curls up and rips apart. Hence my penchant for scraping.
And yes, I do clean the toast crumbs from the knife before scraping for the next slice of toast. Dalmatianed butter (toast crumbs all over the butter) is gross.
Slice. If the butter is too hard to spread, put the whole thing in the microwave on low for about 5-7 seconds. It will soften the butter but noe melt it. Any more than this, and you get the subsidence and butter flow from the center of the stick.
The only acceptable non-slice application of butter is a dedicated stick for corn on the cob that you roll the cob over before salting.
No microwave. At least one that doesn’t emit sparks. :eek:
And actually, I have a corn butterer - it looks like a cheap, flimsy garlic press, or a hand-held Play-Doh extruder machine. Simply insert a slice/chunk of butter**, close the clover and voila!, controller spreading of butter. This way I don’t need three dedicated butter sticks (slicing, scraping, and corning).
**yes, I do know how to slice!
We use the spreadable stuff that comes in tubs. (ICBINB Lite these days, I think.) We keep a few sticks of butter in the back of the fridge for recipes.
This is a no-butter/spread household, but when we used to have it, it was slice. (What sort of boor would scrape across the top, thus tainting it for anyone else who wants to use it?) If you’re a fan of scraping (and I do agree it’s easier to spread that way) it’s no big deal to buy butter in a tub, which is DESIGNED for it, right?
My son got me a Butter Bell for Christmas a couple of years ago, so I don’t do either. Having soft, spreadable butter all the time is really cool, and as long as you remember to change the water every couple of days you don’t have to worry about it going rancid. Pre-Butter Bell, I was a slicer and my wife did both slicing and scraping.
Has anyone tried one of those new thingies where you put the butter stick in the container and turn the crank to get thin little butter shavings? If it works I’d like to get one.
