Butter left out in a butter dish

[RedPringleGirl]

I have always kept my butter out in a butter dish with a lid. For as long as I can remember this was the done thing in order to have spreadable real butter. I literally thought this was what butter dishes were invented for.

Just read that you're not actually supposed to keep butter out for longer than 2 days.

How did I not know this!!! Mine stays out for weeks sometimes until the butter is all used up.

Well noone's dropped dead yet which I'll take as as a good sign. But please tell me I'm not the only one who's done this!

How about a butter crock, for extra freshness without refrigeration?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/3855F99A-BE12-4C7B-BABD-E301D76BF0A4

I remember in a book set in the USA, rural somewhere nearish Chicago somewhere around the turn of the 20th century someone bemoaning how butter was hard blocks in winter and oil in summer.

Ambient temperatures, sans aircon, can be brutal in places.

Ours is out on the side for a few days, too. I guess maybe it's gone within 3-4 days at the most, though.

Same here, stays out all the time. As others have said, you can tell when butter has gone off. I do cut a block of butter in half lengthways and put half in the dish at a time but that's only because it fits better.

The only time I've put a butter dish in the fridge was the other summer when the temperature got into the mid 30s and the butter was almost completely liquid one day.

Tonja Engen, based in Minneapolis, and the butter expert for Land O'Lakes, an American agricultural cooperative you mean?

The only actual advice I can find for the UK is on Anchor's website and just says 'Keeping block butter in the fridge will keep it fresher for longer, but you can also keep it out so long as it’s in a sealed container or a nice butter dish. Leaving it out will make it softer and easier to spread, but remember that it won’t stay fresh as long.'

We use butter dishes but size them appropriately for our butter consumption levels so that the butter isn't out for an unreasonable time. If it's in term time so DC having school lunches we only use a tiny butter dish. DC at home or having a guest we will use a medium size one. If we have several guests a large one. I would expect the dish to be emptied and run through the dishwasher roughly every 48 hrs though I expect it goes to 60 hours sometimes.

Ah thank you for that!

It didn't say she was American!

I second @PuppetQueen's suggestion wrt a butter crock, cheaper versions available too

eta; my original link doesn't work because of mumsnet suffix!!

I too have a butter crock with the water reservoir. It supposedly keeps for weeks if you change the water regularly.
It has been sitting in the fridge for 2 years (empty) waiting for its moment of glory. Truth is, I’m the only one who likes buttered toast and I’m quite happy to hack away at the block.

I only have out a quarter block at a time in a lidded glass tub, never gone off.

Ours lives in a lidded butter dish on the side throughout the year. Maybe in a heatwave I'd put it away and when we go away. I put out about a third of a block at a time. Never noticed any rancid taste or been ill.

My tiny bugbear is that holiday homes rarely seem to have butter dishes.

Same here. If our butter ever goes rancid, which is rare because I think it takes at least a week or two and like many others, we generally put a third to a half of a block out at a time, especially in warmer weather, it reminds me of my grandparents, because their butter was sometimes a bit rancid.

But just because it starts to taste a bit off, it doesn't mean that it's not safe to eat. We had butter out at room temperature in Spain a couple of weeks ago for 6 days and, while it went very soft, it didn't go rancid in that time.

TBH a lot of modern food safety legislation is ridiculously conservative and best ignored within reason. Plus on the advice from 'Tonja Engen, Culinary Content Specialist for butter experts Land O'Lakes' is also almost certainly aimed at the US market so not relevant in the UK.

I don't, but only because I hate mess and seeing stuff everywhere, but I am lazy so the butter dish goes in the fridge between each use.

It would feel weird to put it in a cupboard.

Isn't this because French butter is usually unsalted? British butter is usually salted and therefore has a greater rate of preservation.

This thread is making me want to invest in a nice butter dish to be kept on the counter, rather than my boring tupperware in the fridge.

Love how you have multiple different sized butter dishes, rather than just putting some or all of the block in a normal one.

We're obviously complete slatterns as if we run out, we just put more butter on the dish, it doesn't always go through the dishwasher.

I like the look of those butter bells, but they look like they're made to keep butter cool, not warm it up to make it softer, which is our problem. It's only in the warmer summer months that butter is spreadable in our house.

My glass butter dish is always out on the worktop. In winter the butter is still solid and in summer it's just about spreadable. It is salted butter

We have the Lakeland insulated butter dish which does prevent walking off on its own on the hottest days.
Very little chance of rancid butter in the NW of England.
Probably less so in Florida with air conditioning but a lot of older homes in e.g. California don't have AC if they are by the ocean but will also be hotter than here.

My glass butter dish is always out on the worktop. In winter the butter is still solid and in summer it's just about spreadable. It is salted butter

Us too, glass butter dish from the 60's.

I only ever use salted butter. It sits in a very pretty Emma Bridgewater butter dish which isn't dishwasher proof,on my worktop next to the bread bin. Kitchen faces north. Butter goes into the fridge when coming back home from weekly shop. I didn't have a fridge in the 1970s, bucket of water in the corner for the milk.

Says Big Butter.

That is what butter dishes were invented for.
It depends on the ambient temperature but unless it goes rancid it's fine.

In summer I sometimes keep mine in an old-fashioned (and about 100 years old) butter cooler - an unglazed clay pot with a lid which you fill with water, and the butter sits inside in a glass dish, and is cooled by the evaporation of the water through the clay pot - this one, in fact

https://www.1900s.org.uk/life-times-images/butter-cooler.jpg

I used to do this but don't now as I buy unsalted butter. But yes, I grew up with butter out all the time and it's fine. You know if it has been left out too long because it goes rancid, but even then I've never known that making anyone ill.

Can you do this will already spreadable butter or only the non spreadable?

I have two gripes here:

1. The ridiculous rules that are written on food packaging for ridiculous reasons and that anyone born before about 1990 knows are mostly bollocks (there was a thread on here the other day where mustard was supposed to be used up within 30 days.....).
2. The fact that we don't teach our children what is happening when food goes off as a way to learn what to look out for. I learnt this in three different ways - from my parents, from doing food tech (or whatever it was called then) and in science/biology classes. I probalby also learnt it at brownies and guides.

Except in the heat of summer, I wouldn't be worried about butter in a butter dish in this country. Growing up in SA, we only left relatively small amounts in the butter dish at a time as it could get very hot and frankly, would melt into disgusting mess so someone would put out a block in the morning, sufficient for the day. In winter, the whole block would just go in and be used until it was finished.