Help me find a practical butter dish!🧈

[Montuaklighthouse]

Is it just me, or are all butter dishes just a bit crap?

Latest purchase has a bamboo lid that fits into a china dish, but it just gets covered in butter and becomes so tricky to remove due to being wedged into the dish and causing a sort of vacuum - I usually end up with the dish itself slipping out of your hand and using a knife to lever the lid out!

All I want is a basic dish with a lid/cover that doesn’t slip out of your hand and is big enough to fit a 250mg butter pack.

Is this too much to ask?🫠

(Lighthearted-ish😅)

@Montuaklighthouse we are clearly butter dish twins so I present my second one (I like to use once then in dishwasher so one is being used, one is being washed): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QJZ38Y6?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1

The handle on this one is not quite as good, but still works well. It's quite deep which works to keep things under control but I find mildly more difficult to access the actual butter. It's not a deal breaker. I also supsect (I've only had this one since late last year), that it will be less irritating when the butter is less cold.

I have a Le Creuset one. It has a flat base then domed lid with a knob and the whole thing can go in the dishwasher.

I got this Tesco one recently - very basic but cheap, has a handle and can go in the dishwasher so I'm happy with it!

The 'butter bell' linked above is intriguing but my life is too short to be fashioning rectangular butter into a small upside down bell every few days.

And the accompanying video of people buttering bread on the palms of their hands makes me feel a bit sick.

The cow is the bottom, not the lid!

Having just made some toast, the bee one I posted above has an added benefit I had not consciouslt been aware of - the bowl where you put the butter in has a slight flare/outside lip at the top (where the lid sits), making it MUCH easier to pick up the whole dish and move it around.

We've got this one, the handle makes it easy to get the lid off, you just turn the lid over and sit it on the counter upside down while using the butter and it goes in the dishwasher. I don't like the dome ones as someone inevitably digs the edge of the lid into the butter when putting it back on and you get smears round it, don't like glass ones (FIL has one) because they look messy when the butter is half used especially if it's soft.

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/1496/insulated-butter-dish

Snap. Does the job perfectly.

Another Le Crueset one over here- the lid is domed so you don't have to put your hands inside the dish, it's got a handle, and it all goes in the dishwasher. Wouldnt be without it.

We have a Denby one which works well for us.

I have this! It’s the best butter dish and costs about £7.

I fell in love with a butter dish at the Boudin store in San Francisco but when I returned the next day to buy it, it was gone. And they didn’t have any more. 😥

That sent me down a rabbit hole quest for the perfect butter dish (and now this thread has set me off again!)

I ended up with this lovely handmade butter dish from Feldspar but it’s almost too nice to use:

https://feldspar.studio/products/butter-dish

This one looks good and practical.
Unless the design allows you to cut a thin vertical slice of the whole block then I think they are a waste of time and annoying.

Me too, they can be expensive but often are cheaper in TK Maxx if you’re not fussy about colour and they last forever (as long as you don’t drop them on a hard floor). We actually have two, so that we can use a clean one for a new block of butter and put the dirty one in the dishwasher.

Sophie Conran https://www.johnlewis.com/sophie-conran-for-portmeirion-butter-dish-white/p230400928?sppc=2dxxmixedhomeeBAU&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclsrc=aw.ds&gadsource=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD2el1yhW6zNlCYbkICo063nYyqER&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIn6-OvLbhiwMVR49QBh3w7SIgEAQYAiABEgKDUUDBwE

Get butter lob it into warm water in its paper while unpacking shopping. Remove paper and put it in to a big Bon maman conserve jar (swisher down with paper). Put lid on. Welcome to the world of butter in a jar. Easily softened by plopping in warm water or in the microwave (remove lid for microwave obv). Fits in the fridge. Easy to pass and seal.

you are welcome.

<stands up>

I feel VERY STRONGLY about this subject.

Point I: I cannot and will never fathom the butter dish design that favours a deep dish with a lid, and not a flat base with a dome. Having your butter sunk into a dish gives no access for the blade of a knife, meaning the user needs to dig straight down into the pat and brace it against the sides so that the whole thing gets covered in butter and the butter gets all crummy and messy and gross.

The ONLY acceptable butter dish design in my view is the flat base with dome; and - point II - in my view, the only acceptable butter dish material is ceramic, which helps control the temperature. I have seen butter dishes composed of glass, meaning that if your butter dish lives on your kitchen counter and is ever exposed to sunlight, you are essentially melting it like a shipwrecked sailor trying to start a fire on a desert island. Like others have already mentioned, the Le Creuset dish is the way forward. Plus it comes in pretty colours.

<sits down>

The Le Creuset ones are really ugly IMO though. DH bought one once and I asked him to take it back as I was not having it on my worktop.

<faints dead away>

I think they are beauteous!

I have dropped, bashed so many, I now use a plastic sandwich box, upside down, which fits a pat of butter perfectly and bounces wonderfully, take it from me. It is the smallest of this stack from Lakeland https://www.lakeland.co.uk/27238/5-lakeland-clip-rectangular-nestable-storage-containers

I have this one! I love it. We use it with the cow on the bottom so the butter sits up as I like to scrap the knife along the top of the butter when it's cold and you can't do that with the butter inside the deeper part.

Oh I've never had that problem with mine 🤣

It was partly the colour, admittedly, but I didn't like the angular style, it just doesn't suit our kitchen. He also bought the salt and pepper grinders in the same colour but they are kept in a cupboard so are out of sight.

Totally off subject, but my Mum always rubbed butter into kittens' paws to stop them roaming too far. I asked if it was because it made their pads too sensitive to cross the road (I was about 12) and she told me it was because butter instills love, and no cat would ever leave you if they thought there was a chance you'd willing hand some over.

Anyway. The answer to the butter dish question is the glass cow. I been using mine for 40 years and alternate with a Emma Bridgewater one these days.

On the cats' paws thing, my understanding has always been that the only reason they don't run away is because they are so busy licking it off.

Disclaimer - I have never actually tried this, despite my username!