I ran into an interesting cultural divide yesterday, and I wanted to poll the teeming millions on this. The question of earth-shattering cultural importance is this:
[ul][li]Where do you keep your butter? [/li][li]Where are you from?[/ul][/li]I keep mine the same place my parents keep it, on the counter. This way, it’s always nice and soft when you want to butter toast, rolls, etc. I’m also a cultural hybrid – born in England, raised in America, and culturally a little bit of both. On the other hand, when I went to butter some toast Monday morning, I found the gentleman I’ve been seeing had tidied the butter into the refrigerator. I asked him about it, and he’d never heard of keeping the butter on the counter; he’s certain it will go rancid.
I’m curious now. Is this habit of keeping the butter on the counter another quaint Britishism of mine? Also, does where you live make a difference? I could see keeping butter in the refrigerator if you live in the deep South or the Southwest, but that’s not where the gentleman’s from.
We keep it in the fridge. If I plan to use it, I set it out beforehand- that is, when we use stick butter. Most of the time we use vegetable-based margarine in whipped form, so it spreads well even if cold. But for the most part we keep it in the refrigerator.
I’m from southern England, and I generally keep it in a dish in the cupboard. My parents always did, but I’m a little more fussy about food hygiene and do put it in the fridge if I’m not going to be using it for a while, or if the weather is hot.
It doesn’t seem to go rancid, at least not in the time it takes for me to get through a pack of butter…
My parents keep theirs on the counter, but as there’s only me eating my butter, it goes in the fridge as it will definately go rancid by the time I eat it all.
I keep mine in the fridge on the door were they tell you to keep the butter.
Do British fridge’s have that little cuppord on the door. -With the door on it. (Hope that makes sense.)
Its funny for some reason this reminds me of when I was a kid; my Mom would always bitch and moan at me because whenever we would have corn on the cob I would always get the corn cob (while still hot) put the corn cob holders on both sides, then roll it over the stick of butter.
Makes for perfect uniform buttering all the way around the cob!!
I live in the Netherlands (originally from Germany), and we keep it on the counter. With a family of four, there is no way the butter will go rancid before we finish it.
I used to be a refrgerator butter keeper, but then I got a butter bell (Google it if you’re not sure what I mean). It is the greatest thing. Now I always have soft butter, and it doesn’t go rancid if you keep water in it.
English but in Ireland. Used to keep it on the counter, but we use so little butter that it always went off, so now we keep in in the fridge and give a lump of it a little nuke in the microwave to use.
We keep the pound of butter in the freezer, and lop off chunks to keep in the butter dish on the counter. We don’t use it very fast, so we don’t keep a lot of it out at a time.
We don’t keep the extra butter in the refrigerator because my husband is convinced it absorbs flavors from the other food.
He’d eat food with ants on it and not notice, but serve him anything made with butter that was even thinking about going bad, and he can tell. He’s a butter savant. :rolleyes:
Fridge. Always fridge. It never even occured to me to leave it out, not with an SO who won’t eat sour cream three days after it’s bought (yes, he counts).
My parents didn’t do this either, and they would cut moldy parts off bread and say “Eat it anyway, it’s OK.”
If you had asked me, I would have said no one does this anymore, it’s a 50’s thing. Guess I was way off!
On the counter. Oh, yes. There must always be a soft stick. I grew up in Kansas, but I don’t know that it’s a Kansas thing, because whenever I have people over for a meal and they’re helping to clean up afterwards, it never fails that someone will come across the butter on the counter and put it away!
I usually don’t discover that it’s gone until the next time I want toast or an Eggo, and boy, am I chapped! :mad:
Butter in my house gets used for baking sweets. In the summer, it gets used on corn on the cob. Being that the corn is hot, it doesn’t matter that the butter is chilled.
Butter is generally not part of our diet (me, wife, 2 kids). Just not a good use of calories.
