Butter management.

[Pipbin]

So in accordance to the lore of Mumsnet I have now given up margarine in favour of good honest butter.
Over the summer it was fine, I have a thermal dish and it lived in the cupboard and it worked well, keeping fresh even on the hottest day.

Over the winter I have changed to a glass butter dish and kept the butter on the side in the kitchen but even though the house is warm the butter is solid.
I have taken to doing what my great aunt (who was a dairy maid) used to do which is to pop the butter on the radiator for a few minutes before use.

My question is how to keep butter soft enough on a cold day?

I must admit I only use butter for cooking or spreading on toast (use olive spread for sarnies) so I just slice the butter and melt it on the hot toast etc. Not much help really, sorry.

I will add that even in summer we keep it in a butter dish on the side in the kitchen, it's never gone off or melted into a liquid. Your thermal dish sounds fascinating!

We microwave ours for ten seconds before using it on bread. It's ok a bit hard on toast.

No microwave Josh, but thanks.
I got the thermal dish years ago from Lakeland.

I'm another one who microwaves it briefly.

Doesn't the thermal dish keep it softer in winter too?

in winter I freeze the butter before putting it in the butter dish.
for some reason that makes it easier to spread.

Same problem here, and the dish is metal so it can'tbe microwaved (although that's no bad thing, DH used to zap it in our old fish and inevitably overdid it which ruined it). It's not just winter, even now it's too hard to spread on soft bread. It's better in the summer, but when it gets really hot it has to go in the fridge. When it's cold I shave thin slivers off the top and lay them flat on the bread.

My mum proudly showed me her heated butter dish the other day. No idea where it came from though.

DH used to zap it in our old fish

I'm not sure that's a good idea. It must have been a large fish in order to be able to shove a packet of butter inside...

I have the Lakeland Insulated Butter Dish and use it all summer and winter and it keeps the butter at the temp you put it in at. In the winter I take the new block of butter out of the fridge when I put the butter dish in the dishwasher to clean. Somehow, magically, the length of the dishwasher cycle is the right amount of time to soften the butter just enough to go in the dish and be usable straight away.

Why don't you go back to using your insulated metal dish rather than the glass one?

But the glass one is so pretty.

Butter repels liquid, so if it gets wet the water doesn't 'stick'. If I need one bit of butter for some bread, I put some lukewarm water in a cup, scoop a knifefull of butter up and dip it in the cup for a few seconds before spreading it. If I need enough for several slices, I scoop up lots of little 'pats' and drop them in the water, then scoop them out as I need them.

I use a glass butter dish, and only have to do this on the freezing bitterly cold midwinter mornings. Any other time, I can just pop a bit of butter on the bread and wait 30 seconds, the warmth of the house is enough to soften it so I can spread it.

It's the Lakeland insulated one I use and it most definitely doesn't keep the butter at the temp you put it in at in our kitchen, it goes rock hard overnight in winter and stays at fridge temp all day (it too hard to spread) and is melting in the height of summer. It might as well not be insulated TBH.

The warm water idea is a good one. My mum used to have a butter curler, you dipped the curler in and out of a glass of hot water between curls.