As something of an avid toast eater (don’t judge me gluten haters, we all have our crosses to bear) I find spreading hard butter a soul-destroying experience. What should be a simple exercise turns into a surface-churning, hole-creating fiasco that none of us need go through. None of us.

Now if you’re still living in the dark ages and think your butter is best left in the fridge it is time to have some serious words. No, just no, take a long hard look at yourself and realise the error of your ways. I don’t care what flimsy excuse you put forward, it just won’t fly with us. Nor will Gizmodo take mercy on you as is evident from this below:

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…

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.

‘But it goes all warm and gooey if I leave it out’, I hear you saying to yourself. Have you heard of a butter dish or butter crock? If not get Googling, I won’t do your dirty work for you. Let’s finish with Gizmodo laying down the law in no uncertain terms:

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?

None, none at all.

[source:gizmodo]