Another thought… how would butter behave in a microwave oven? Could a defrost cycle be used for softening a hard brick? The in-depth delivery of energy could be just what’s needed here.
As the penetration depth of microwaves is limited, precutting the butter to thinner slabs could be helpful, too.
f you nuke an ounce or two with medium power for 15 second bursts you can generally get it soft. Generally, though, I end up with a liquid centre and have to stir/mash it through the rest. It all averages out in the end.
It just doesn’t get much simpler, or cheaper ($5 or less, and airtight), than this:
To soften butter for recipes: take a wrapped stick of butter out of the fridge and put it into a bowl of warm water. For a couple of minutes.
Works for eggs too.
That would be much more compelling if the USDA “guideline” mentioned food safety as the reason for its storage hints. It doesn’t. Instead, the prefatory section talks about how butter absorbs the flavour of strong foods it is stored with.
Because of its delicate flavor and aroma, butter is sensitive to strong-flavored foods. To keep butter at peak quality, follow these simple hints:
That’s what they want you to think.
Exactly. Thank you. Unglazed. Kitchenware companies in the US don’t seem get the concept.
Just as wine doesn’t stop being an alcoholic beverage even after the yeast has died.
Those are harder to clean than the butter crock I used. Which cost $8.50 at the hardware store, by the way.
I just throw it in the dishwasher between sticks, or every few sticks, it depending on how gunky it is, and it comes out good as new. I have cleaned it manually and found it to be a non-issue.
All of this work to use a special water sealed Butter Bell but I haven’t seen any comparison tests that prove that it actually stores and keeps butter fresh any longer then a covered butter dish.
It sounds like you get 3 days to 2 weeks worth of storage out of the refrigerator with either method depending on conditions. The butter bell website says that you only get three to five days worth of storage with herbal butters.
Thought. There are membrane-based nitrogen generators for tire inflation. Could the generators be shrunk to (say) marker-size and used for inerting things like butter bells, fridge compartments, or cupboard sections? Would be good to e.g. keep fats from becoming rancid, or to keep insect from invading spices.
Hmm… They do sell nitrogen set ups to preserve opened wine bottles - though using bottled nitrogen not using a concentrator. I don’t think small concentrators are very efficient.
Also, for an entire cabinet I would worry about accidental hypoxia.
According to here, a pressure-swing adsorption generator can provide 99.9% (and up to 99.999+%) nitrogen. That’s enough purity for food packaging for long-term storage. As of throughput and energy efficiency, it may not be stellar but could be fairly decent.
The safety is certainly a factor. There are two factors; one is the hypoxia risk of the nitrogen-inerted compartment, one is the fire hazard of oxygen-enriched “waste” air stream. With smaller cabinets this may not be much of a risk; the slight oxygen enrichment in the room will cancel out the oxygen depletion of the cabinet, and a fairly rapid mixing when it is being open will take care of the rest. Actual safety tests would probably require experiments.
A bottle is less safe; it contains a lot of gas and if it leaks it can inert an entire room or basement. (Oops.)
But a kitchen is a pretty unsafe area anyway; just look at all the hazards associated with handling a flat, open vessel full of very hot and flammable liquid… which people consider normal.
Sure, but eating 3x as much of the same butter is probably less healthy, overall. 
Again, de-vilified. Besides, fat is a nutrient that makes you feel full, so you’re less likely to overeat it than something that’s high in, say, sugar.
Generally puts it above room temp or otherwise destroys certain properties room temperature butter is used specifically for in cooking. However, I will agree that if you’re just spreading it on bread or doing something that doesn’t call on special butter powers, this method suits just fine.
I do this for eggs all the time since it’s not safe to store regular U.S. eggs at room temperature. I haven’t tried it for butter as I’d never considered it. Next time I need a whole stick for something that doesn’t call on special butter powers, I’m going to give it a try.
It’s kind of like sous vide for butter. This idea makes me happy. I wonder if the water should be at like 65-70F or if that will just drop the temperature in the bowl of water too quickly and thus not warm the butter. This calls for experimentation and inexpensive experimentation at that. You are my best friend for the day.
All this said, while I do appreciate butter’s many qualities, whenever this butter crock subject comes up I go “Huh. That’s interesting,” take a quick poke at it and decide “nah, never mind.”
I’d suggest some multimeters with thermocouples. One in the middle of the butter brick, one on its surface, one in the water. (Or more, if you have spare sensors, to catch the thermal gradients if you don’t stir it.)
Ideally with logging to a computer. If datalogger is not available, a manually acquired table and hand-drawn graph is a more laborious but sufficient alternative.
Christ on a bike. I love your contributions wherever they arise, but I’m having trouble imagining your kitchen. Where I content myself with pots, pans, some paper towels, a couple of knives, and maybe an egg-timer, you bring in thermocouples and dataloggers.
So a compartment to heat the butter inside the refrigerator to keep food cool, inside the centrally heated kitchen?
We have six people living in our home, in addition to whatever couchsurfers happen to be staying with us. Our fridge is only about 100l, so space is pretty tight at times. I insulated a cupboard with styrofoam so whenever we need extra fridge space for a day or two, we put some freezer blocks in there and store anything that just needs to be kept relatively cool. The butter generally stays on the counter in a butter dish until late spring, when it retires to the fridge until autumn. It’s only about 15-17 degrees in the kitchen for about 5 months, so the butter doesn’t go rancid while it’s out.
