Posted on 11/03/2022 5:42:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It took a while, but I have now softened up to the concept of "house butter."
Let me get this part out of the way: According to the Food and Drug Administration, it's safe to leave butter and margarine out at room temperature. The agency warns that leaving your butter in this temperate state for a few days may result in its flavor turning toward rancid, but I like to live my life on a knife's edge, and I take the risk. This isn't how I was raised.
Did you grow up in a butter household? I didn't. It was one of the great mysteries of my childhood, why food tasted better when my Grandma Kinsman was around, until I finally put it together that it wasn't some sort of old-world nana mojo, but rather that my dad would eschew our regular Parkay or Imperial and spring for the real stuff when his mom would come to visit. The woman had grown up kneading a dye packet into lumps of oleo to make the whole mess a more appetizing yellow rather than a pallid, unappetizing white, and she deserved a gentle, sunny spread.
I texted my dad about it just now, and he explained that his father, a milkman, used to deliver butter, so that was all they would ever use, save for during the war years and a little after. "During the war butter was in limited supply for domestic use and people used margarine," my dad explained. "The butter producers were worried about getting the domestic market back post-war and got several legislations passed to retard margarine sales. One was that margarine couldn't be colored at the production facility."
With the slow, patient force of her hands, my grandmother wrought gold from white fat, but the moment she could, she ran back into the soft, supple arms of her first love. "My mother always left the butter out," my dad wrote. "In the summer and when they cranked up the heat in the winter, it was close to being a liquid, which was good for spreading. I always thought it would go rancid, but it never did." Young, thrifty, and with two daughters to feed, my parents opted for margarine sticks, hard and chilled in the fridge door. (My dad just admitted to me that his concerns are not health-based, but rather that of flies and ambitious cats.) Further into the health-fad '80s, those bars became crocks of spreads, chemically calibrated to remain softish in their refrigerated tubs with a fraction of the calories of real-deal butter. Flavor, too. Not that I knew it at the time; carved into my memory is a moment in my adulthood when I got to fulfill a yearslong dream of finally getting a paycheck that allowed me to, at least once, feel financially stable enough to walk into a grocery store and fill my cart without scrutinizing the cost down to the cent per ounce. I grabbed butter — probably the store brand because I'm an eternally anxious recovering Catholic with bone-deep guilt and terror around pleasure and frivolity — but nonetheless, butter.
But again with the anxiety, the sticks remained fridged until the day I learned about "house butter." Huh? I'd never heard the term until my husband told me about the West Village diner he frequented in the late '90s, when his two-egg special cost $2.90 and felt like something of a splurge. One day another regular plopped down and preemptively announced to the waiter, "Don't gimmie none of those packets; gimmie the house buttah." My husband watched as the short-order cook swiped off a hunk from the softened block next to the grill and slathered it onto the man's toast as easy as you please. House butter, I'm home.
I aspire to be a meticulous, fancypants cook with the wherewithal to swap out the water from my Le Creuset butter keeper and keep the stuff fresh like a French lady would, but I'm just not. My baking butter stays chilled or even frozen, but the stuff I slather onto bread and English muffins, dab into my popcorn, smear onto radishes, and just generally luxuriate in — that stays nestled into its wrapper, high up enough that even my most dedicated butter hounds can't make a leap for it. OK, one did recently, and I found the foil licked clean and flattened in the hallway, but can I blame him? Having softened butter at the ready feels like a minor opulence. I just needed to warm up to it.
When I was young I learned that bugs will not eat margarine so why should you?
So I never have. It is not good fat.
Butter is good fat. Lard is good fat, cottonseed Crisco is not a good fat. Margarine and Crisco, vegetable and soy oil are bad fats.
All mayonnaise except for very few expensive brands contain soy bean oil as the number one ingredient. It causes an increase in estrogen. That’s why they call people soy boys. So I try not to eat anything big in Hoyle if I can help it. They say that it also can cause breast cancer in women.
But I leave about half a stick of butter in a butter dish on my counter. I keep all the rest except for one stick in the freezer. I do not know why. I also make ghee and two sticks of butter and put it in a covered jar and leave it on the counter to cook with. I usually use about one jar of ghee per month. Ghee is butter with the milk solids removed.
My mother was born and raised in England and we always left our butter out. I leave mine out in a covered butter dish, and for the last few years I’ve only bought Kerry Gold Irish butter. It’s twice as expensive as regular butter but it’s worth it. I leave my eggs in the refrigerator though, usually Eggland’s Best if available.
Spreading cold butter on toast is just the worst!
And then there are those idiots that put peanut butter in the fridge :-(
I always left margarine out but I refrigerate butter.
We have backyard chickens so I gather the eggs everyday and leave them out on the counter in a bowl for up to a week before lightly washing and refrigerating them. But fresh eggs have a coating that keeps them fresh at room temperature. Eggs from the store have had that coating washed off. I would not leave store bought eggs out.
Costco butter sits out at this house and never a problem.
I get freshly ground peanut butter and almond butter from my local store and keep it in the pantry for months at a time. The oil seeps to the top so you have to stir it each time you use it. So good. Putting that in the refrigerator will ruin it.
The supermarket peanut butters like Skippy and Jif is absolute junk with all the sugar and hydrogenated oils they stick in it.
My Butter is in the fridge.
I leave our butter out, on an ant tower, and it is used before it can turn rancid. Margarine is just plain yuck.
I also leave my eggs out on the counter, but only when I’m away from the US. Otherwise, into the fridge they go!
LOL!
In the US store bought eggs are washed which removes a protective coating from the shell and requires eggs to be refrigerated. In Europe where the shells are not washed eggs keep without refrigeration.
My mother always had a small container of butter kept on the shelf so it would spread easily. I do as well. There is a ceramic container called a French butter keeper where the butter is kept at room temperature but underneath water. I have one but the water needs to be changed frequently so I just revert to keeping butter on the shelf
I leave butter out, but my wife wants it in the refrigerator.
I haven’t used margarine in years. Real butter only. I freeze the packages when there’s a sale on and I buy in bulk. I also use both salted and unsalted butter.
I do both. A half stick out for spreading and the rest in the fridge. If a recipe calls for more room temp butter, I’ll leave more out, but most of my baking recipes need melted or cold butter.
My butter is in the fridge also, but on cold nights ,I do lift it out before bedtime to soften some for the morning slice of hot toast!.. Nothing better than that and a cup of hot coffee!!
Butter is all fat as opposed to eggs which has full list of nutrients for the future chick. Fat can be left at room temperature longer than anything else.
Growing up in India, my parents boiled home made butter and separated the fat in butter from other stuff. The result was called “ghee” which could be stored at room temp for a few months without turning rancid. Good procedure when one does not have refrigeration.
How about Ketchup? I leave it out of the fridge.
Are you thinking of a Butter Bell?
I don’t know if this is the official name but I call those a French butter crock.
You do because you keep your wife happy.
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