Butter bells

A

av3ng3dwarri0r

New member
I think that's what they're called. Those little jar type things that you put
butter in, the invert into a jar of water so You don't have to refrigerate the
butter? Anyway, do they really keep butter fresh? I've always refrigerated
butter and as much as I'd like to have soft butter and not hard, bread ripping
butter for everyday use, I wonder if it's really safe. Anyone using one? Thanks.
 
On Apr 18, 2:16 pm, [email protected] wrote:

They are a solution in search of a problem, imho. You want soft
butter for spreading on bread/rolls? Then take the butter out of the
fridge when you start fixing dinner. How hard is that? Safe? Of
course it's safe. It takes a very long time for butter to go
rancid. -aem
 
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:16:54 -0400, [email protected] wrote:


They work. You do have to change the water every couple of days, and
pay attention to the water level.

We found the water on the lip of the bell to be a minor inconvenience
to deal with at times in using the butter, so we ditched ours.

For cooking, I use ghee almost exclusively, and keep a large jar in
the cabinet closest to the stove, so the butter bell didn't help much.

-- Larry
 
On 2011-04-18, aem wrote:


Strikes me as one of those gimmicks like dosing sugar jars, the one's
with the tube you're forever refilling before they're empty.

nb
 
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:37:51 -0700 (PDT), aem wrote:


How long DOES it take for butter to go rancid/unuseable without refrigeration?
 
aem wrote:



I leave a stick of butter in a glass enclosed butter dish on the kitchen
table. I use "quarter" sticks of unsalted butter. It hasn't gone rancid
or caused me any food illness. The while-not-in-use sticks do sit in the
fridge.

I bought a butter bell on a visit to Fant?s (www.fantes.com) in South
Philly, PA's Italian market out of interest expressed by other rfc
members in various related threads. I never did use it, being in deep
"fat-reducing" mode. I threw it away.

I could see the novelty in them but also the awkwardness in actually
using them.

Andy
 
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:10:17 -0400, [email protected] wrote:


2 weeks? I can't remember when the last time I had a stick go bad.
[1976?] We refrigerate until it hits the dish-- then it sits on the
table in a covered dish. A stick rarely lasts a week.

If I lived in GA with no a/c maybe I'd have to refrigerate it.

Jim
 
On Apr 18, 5:40?pm, [email protected] wrote:
What's the purpose of the water? What happens if the water level is
too low?
I was never tempted to get one - I figured one more thing to spend
for, clean, take up counterspace, drop and break, check water level.
KISS.
 
Mark Thorson wrote:



Mark,

Right!

And how an upsidedown bell full of butter didn't simply slip out and
into the water upon removal? It's grease, not Elmer's Glue!!! :D

Best,

Andy
 
Andy wrote:

Good point. You have to reshape and mash the butter
to load it into the butter bell. They'd probably be
a lot more popular if they accepted an unmodified
standard cube of butter (of which there are two types
in North America). A square or rectangular butter bell
makes much more sense.
 
Kalmia wrote:

It keeps air away from the butter. Oxygen from
the air causes rancidity.

Of course, frequent water changes are necessary
because of the bugs that can live in water.
 
On 18 Apr 2011 22:02:03 GMT, notbob arranged
random neurons and said:


We've used a butter bell for years. Minimal fuss. Just change the
water in the bell every two or three days. We just like having the
butter soft and ready to use, but there's only two of us. If we kept
it out in a butter dish, it might go rancid and it would for sure look
messier than being kept in the bell. YMMV, but it works for us.

Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd

--

To reply, remove "spambot" and replace it with "cox"
 
On Apr 18, 9:05?pm, Terry Pulliam Burd wrote:

There's only me here and I can guarnatee butter will not go rancid for
many, m-a-n-y days. Mine stays in a regular plastic butter dish on
the counter 365 days a year and haven't encountered 'off' butter yet.
Sometimes I can go through a stick in a day or so or it might take me
7 or 8 days to finish off a stick.
 
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