Stop Refrigerating Your Butter

[Misfit]

http://gizmodo.com/stop-refrigerating-your-butter-1624023431

It’s likely that you keep butter in the fridge because you think it’s safer that way. After all, butter is made from cream, and if you leave cream out in the open for too long, it can go bad. And if you consume bad cream, you could get sick, if not from the rancid taste then certainly from the foreign bacteria that feasted on the stuff when it was out in the open.

This line of thinking doesn’t really apply to butter, though, at least not in that extreme. The cream that’s used to make your standard market variety butter is almost always pasteurized, and it takes quite some time for pasteurized dairy products to go bad. Foreign bacteria is still attracted to pasteurized dairy products. Butter can indeed go bad. But as long as you keep it covered, it’s very unlikely that anything bad will happen to the butter before you’ve had a chance to eat it all.

So let’s review. Keeping butter in the fridge makes it hard and flavorless. Keeping butter on the counter makes it soft and delicious. As long as it’s done right, leaving butter out at room temperature is also just as safe as leaving it in the fridge. Any questions?

 

[stgislander]

Grandma always kept it covered in a kitchen cabinet.

 

[vraiblonde]

I've always left butter out on the counter and I'm not dead yet.

 

[Roman]

I've always left butter out on the counter and I'm not dead yet.

Same here. I do keep margarine in the fridge though.

 

[CrashTest]

Also a myth that you have to refrigerate store bought mayo.

 

[Misfit]

Also a myth that you have to refrigerate store bought mayo.

So I can store my butter in my mayo jar.

 

[GURPS]

indeed

..... grandma the butter on the kitchen table, her has did not have AC


funny though, the tub of margarine was in the fridge

 

[vraiblonde]

Okay, I have to ask: why would you have margarine if you already have butter?

 

[lucky_bee]

Okay, I have to ask: why would you have margarine if you already have butter?

why would you need margarine, period

 

[Misfit]

I buy that Promise margarine stuff because it spreads easy and I cook with butter.

 

[RoseRed]

Margarine is disgusting.

 

[Hodr]

Wait, are we talking REAL margarine, or oil spreads like "I can't believe its not butter" (ICBINB)? Because margarine is disgusting, but I do appreciate some of the oil spreads. I cook with butter, and put butter on my pancakes/waffles, but I prefer ICBINB on bread/toast.

 

[Grumpy]

Also a myth that you have to refrigerate store bought mayo.

 

[RoseRed]

Same goes for raw chicken. Just ask K_Jo. :shrug:

 

[lucky_bee]

Wait, are we talking REAL margarine, or oil spreads like "I can't believe its not butter" (ICBINB)? Because margarine is disgusting, but I do appreciate some of the oil spreads. I cook with butter, and put butter on my pancakes/waffles, but I prefer ICBINB on bread/toast.

ICBINB and any of those fake oil spreads are just as bad for you as real margarine. you're literally eating a spoonful of chemicals and additives. If I can't pronounce more than 2 ingredients in something, I put it back. I cook with EVOO, organic grass-fed butter (but very rarely, as that #### is $$) and coconut oil. http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/butter-vs-margarine

My mother started using that SmartBalance crap. I cannot get thru to her. Why consume something that has absolutely no real food or nutritional value and contains a list as long as my arm of a bunch of long-winded additives and chemicals?

 

[Grumpy]

Same goes for raw chicken. Just ask K_Jo. :shrug:

I thought that was a Big Mac that had the 30 day shelf life guarantee.

 

[DEEKAYPEE8569]

ICBINB and any of those fake oil spreads are just as bad for you as real margarine. you're literally eating a spoonful of chemicals and additives. If I can't pronounce more than 2 ingredients in something, I put it back. I cook with EVOO, organic grass-fed butter (but very rarely, as that #### is $$) and coconut oil. http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/butter-vs-margarine

My mother started using that SmartBalance crap. I cannot get thru to her. Why consume something that has absolutely no real food or nutritional value and contains a list as long as my arm of a bunch of long-winded additives and chemicals?

For a while we used Parkay. Then we switched to butter. Same if not better taste; fewer 10+ letter ingredients.

 

[vraiblonde]

Why consume something that has absolutely no real food or nutritional value and contains a list as long as my arm of a bunch of long-winded additives and chemicals?

AND tastes like the plastic tub it comes in.


But what is "real" margarine vs. the artificially flavored congealed vegetable oil in a tub? I thought it was the same thing.

 

[Hodr]

AND tastes like the plastic tub it comes in.


But what is "real" margarine vs. the artificially flavored congealed vegetable oil in a tub? I thought it was the same thing.

I guess I may have the wrong terms in my head, but I always equated margarine with the hard "plasticy" spreads that made use of a lot of chemicals, as you mention, to give it a texture/taste that is supposed to be butter-like.

Whereas the vegetable oil spreads are what is popular now, and are mostly water, vegetable oil, and salt.

here are the ingredients from ICBINB:
Purified Water
Soybean Oil
Palm Oil
Salt
Mono and Di-glycerides (fancy name for fat, animal or plant)
Soy
Palmitate (another component of palm oil)
and Beta Carotene for color (extracted from carrots or sweet potatoes).

So, no weird unpronounceable chemicals or strange substances. They do take the time to list sub-components, so rather than just list Palm Oil, they list Palm Oil/Palmitate/Mono&Di-glycerides. Just because the name is unfamiliar, doesn't mean it's unnatural or unhealthy.

If you don't like ICBINB because of the taste, I would say to each their own. But I don't think it's any more or less natural than butter, it just has more components.

 

[RoseRed]

I thought that was a Big Mac that had the 30 day shelf life guarantee.

I thought it was both.