Many of us can’t go a day without reaching for the butter, and while there’s plenty of brands available out there, there’s only one kind that’s worthy of enjoying as a meal on its own when slathered on bread.
If you do enjoy eating butter with a slice of bread, you probably find that you get through it pretty quickly, too, and it’s not always the cheapest item to purchase. While it’s fairly straightforward to make at home, if you don’t want to add another thing onto your to-do list, you can also get more from your butter by storing it in one place in your kitchen that will help it last for months.
As butter is a dairy-based product, it can spoil easily, especially if it’s left out in your kitchen and exposed to light and heat for a prolonged period.
While salted butter generally lasts longer, thanks to salt’s ability to preserve food when added to it, it’s still recommended to keep butter in the fridge to slow down oxidation and bacterial growth.
But there’s one place in your kitchen that will keep butter fresh and tasty for up to nine months, and that’s the freezer.
Freezing food is often an effective way of preserving it, and as butter can be a pricey purchase in the supermarket, if you find it on sale you can stock up on it and simply keep it in the freezer to use at a later date.
While you can keep it in its original packaging if storing it in the freezer, Southern Living also advises wrapping it in a freezer-safe bag or an airtight container to avoid any freezer burns that can occur when butter is kept there.
When it comes to using butter that’s been kept in the freezer, you can simply go ahead and thaw it by placing it in the fridge overnight.
But in an article shared by All Recipes, they pointed out that if you use butter regularly, “it may be worth cutting it into tablespoon-sized pieces before freezing” so that you don’t have to thaw the entire block each time you need a slice.
If you often use butter for cooking and baking, you can simply grate it straight out of the freezer, which will help make dough flaky, or melt it in the microwave and add it to batter.
This won’t work for all butters, however, and spreadable butters won’t last as long in the freezer as salted and unsalted ones as they contain oil. Although this makes them easier to use, it also means they’re harder to preserve.
Salted butter generally lasts longer than unsalted butter, even when kept in the fridge, and Southern Living instructed that while unsalted butter can keep for up to six months in the freezer, salted butter will last for nine months.
