I keep butter on the counter in a container and have never had mold. We use a butter crock https://www.southernliving.com/butter-crock-vs-butter-dish-7693713

I keep it on the counter but I think it depends on your climate and house temps and how quickly you use it. Just put out 1/2 a stick at a time if you don't use it quickly enough that it spoils.

You might try a butter bell if you want it on the counter. It uses water to seal it. Though, IME, mold is such situations often starts with crumbs, lingering.

I have a beautiful round butterdish which takes up way too much room in the fridge, they've stopped making the round butter, and the square butter doesn't fit. I have a couple of cut glass old butterdishes, somewhere, which would fit in the butterbox in my fridge, but the box door flips up and holds with a magnet, but sometimes comes open and things fall out, so bad for glass. I have a usefully designed plastic one which holds either kind of sticks, has measures and a securely snapping on lid, but it won't hold the square table butter and is ugly beyond utilitarian.

I use Ziploc sandwich bags. I have partial sticks of baking and cooking butter in my prep zone little fridge, and the square table butter on the butterbox in the main fridge, I do reuse and conserve, but I like the air-tight seal, the ease of storing any number of opened sticks of different kinds of butter, and the recycleability when they're no longer serviceable. They take no extra space, don't mind the shape of the butter, don't break if they fall, and are easily replaced when they're worn out. They don't mind sitting on the counter if one wants to warm the butter (about five minutes is enough in my warm kitchen). If the butter gets too warm (hasn't happened to me, but could) the mess would be contained. Yes, conserving on disposable plastics is a good thing, but a plastic bag is sometimes infinitely useful!

ETA: With the bags, I leave the butter in the wrapper, which also gives it a clean surface when cutting. For serving company, I dig out a butterdish or small plate and unwrap the butter, but put the remainder away in a bag, usually, and improvise a cutting surface, if needed, or transfer to the ugly plastic butterdish.

Butter Boat

I use a butter boat linked above. To the water reservoir, I add 1/2 white vinegar and 1/2 water. Also, I never put more than 1/3 stick in it at a time. That way, if it does develop mold or rancidity, I haven't lost a whole stick.

Most of the year, I keep the butter boat in the drawer beside the cooktop. In the hottest part of the summer, if I see that the butter is too soft, I'll move it to the refrigerator.

As @plllog said, always use a clean utensil because crumbs will hasten mold development.

On the counter. Never had mold. It might conceivably go rancid but moldy? Never had that.

If the dish is in the wash we just use a plate.

I keep a half stick out most of the time in a stoneware butter dish from Le Creuset someone gave me. A half stick works fine for the two of us. I have a good supply of butter in the freezer, and usually keep a pound in the fridge (minus the half sticks for the counter).

We do not use butter at the table, and so I store it in the fridge, but I keep a supply in the freezer so that I do not run out.

Whatever butter we use goes into the food before it reaches the table. An exception might be corn on the cob, but that's the only one I can think of. I do not make baked potatoes, and I almost never make mashed potatoes, but if I do, I add the butter before serving.

I tend to make and use sauces instead of butter, but butter can be an ingredient. I often make velouté sauces for vegetables, using the cooking water for liquid.

I also sometimes make garlic bread or toast, and I mix softened butter with olive oil and garlic to make that. In general, when we eat bread at the table, it is without butter - I've never felt that bread needed butter.

Hello. It has been a very long time since I have been here to Gardenweb. Am hoping to be able to start reading again on a daily basis.

I always keep butter in a stainless steel butter dish on the kitchen counter. Have done this ever since living in Europe many years ago and seeing for myself that the butter did not spoil when not in the refrigerator and hard as a rock. I have never had mold or rancid butter and an always soft, spreadable butter. My children and grandchildren do not keep butter in the refrigerator either.

Waving Hi! 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏿‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️

Clarification: I don't want the baking or cooking butter to be soft for handling's sake, and don't even want table butter that soft. It's not that the butter goes bad (though it will get rancid at the rate we consume it (or not)) but that it gets gloopy and nasty and unpleasant. My kitchen is quite warm. It gets pleasantly soft very quickly when out, and stays nice, otherwise, in the fridge door (warmest part of the fridge).

With reference to Lars' comment about adding butter before food goes to the table. We do not use butter at the table either. I use it in cooking but we also use it on toast and in sandwiches whereas I believe mayonnaise is more usual in the US. I use only butter in cakes and pastry and for those it needs to be workable. So we use quite a lot of butter and it can't be hard.

I also keep a lot in the freezer as back up.

I keep butter in a clear glass butter dish on the counter. I like the clear glass for seeing when it needs replenished. It never goes bad and is fairly soft for spreading and using for cooking. I also keep a good supply of butter in the freezer.

Oooo someone needs to sell a tiny butter cooler, with a cute glassfront door and miniature interior light, that sits on your countertop and holds your butter at the perfect “room temperature” 65F, in addition to controlling humidity and filtering out air contaminants! Or tell me that such exists.

Bonus if it has a mini ice-maker and water dispenser! Like super-cute levels of mini. Six ice cube capacity, dispenses into Dixie cups.

That and a vintage Sunbeam toaster and a heated butter spreading knife, and we’d all set. For what, I don’t know.

There’s a box of sticks in the freezer, a couple of sticks in their box in the refrigerator, and a stick in a covered butter dish on the counter. It’s nicely spreadable in summer, and the house is 70°+, but in winter when it’s </=68° in the house, not so spreadable. We, including the butter, survive.

John, I'm so confused! Why do you need a heated butter spreader if you have a perfect temperature butter? Hot ”knives” are usually for carving foam. The countertop chiller with glass door is meant for wine, but could be adapted. Not cute, though, and the ice/water machice is a separate device, but cute. Both smaller than Giselle. Then there's the electric butter dish, which seems popular but not durable…

John's a sucker for a new gadget!

I keep butter in a clear glass butter keeper with lid on the counter. More in the fridge, and even more in either the garage refrigerator or my freezer. Do stores other than Costco carry butter? 😁 It's been a long time since I've purchased anywhere else.

I've never had butter left on the counter spoil - I will use some at the table but DH only rarely.

In this mild climate my house is infrequently too cold or too warm. I did find butter melted in its keeper on the counter during an unusual-for-us hot stretch - once. My kitchen windows are an eastern exposure, its not a room that lends itself to becoming overheated on a warm afternoon.

I also keep my butter on the counter in a little Polish pottery dish that I got as a gift. I buy a lot during the holidays for baking, etc., and store it in the freezer. One stick goes in my butter dish and the other 3 go in the fridge. When they are used up I pull another pound from the freezer.

I've always kept butter on the counter, winter and summer and I've never had any go moldy or rancid. When I was a child we churned our own butter with cream from the family cow and kept that on the counter too. I've no recollection of that ever going bad either.

Annie

Bread and butter is a staple food where I come from ,(Oxford). Also I live in Brittany so baguette and salty butter also staple food lol. I've never seen or heard of butter going moldy..... Rancid yes. Winter is a small amount on a dish, summer is a small butter boat. A useful thing to have is a spreading knife. A rounded blade with holes down one side which "massages"the butter and makes it easier to spread.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fm.media-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51LayigAMhL.jpg&tbnid=c17otp23LyoodM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FStainless-Steel-Butter-Spreader-Knife%2Fdp%2FB0721T9RDR&docid=nEjQW0aWqNqjXM&w=1000&h=1000&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2&kgs=afa9fcdf1722c258#vhid=c17otp23LyoodM&vssid=_9-B4Z_fHFcmgkdUPwrfSoAs_24

I use one of those glass food keepers with a snap on plastic lid. I live in the Texas Gulf Coast area where warmth and high humidity are perfect conditions for mold, I've never had mold on my butter, I suspect because of the cover? Also I put the keeper in the dishwasher after every stick of butter is used (I have several).

Nicole

One stick in a butter dish in the frig...I freeze the rest.

I buy unsalted butter in sticks and Earth Balance dairy free margarine in sticks. The butter, one stick goes in the Corelle Blue Onion container and stays on the counter. The open pack of butter goes in the refrigerator and a spare pack of 4 goes in the fridge in the garage. The Earth Balance, one stick goes in a glass butter stick container in the fridge until needed and the rest stays in one fridge or another.

I have never had butter go bad on the counter. My house stays at 73* year round, because at least one of us is up all hours of the day and night.

No formal routine here. If I want softened butter and none is on the counter, I'll cut a chunk off of a stick, put it in a small bowl or remakin, into the microwave on power level 1 for a few seconds until it's soft but not melted. After using what I need, the bowl usually stays out until its been used up. That might take a few days or a week. Eventually but rarely, it'll get to the point where it takes on that translucent look, at which point I try to use it up more quickly, in frying pans. Never seen butter mold.

Yeah, it's the crumbs that mold. I'm thinking the translucence is the beginning stage of going rancid, so using it up is wise.

“Why do you need” never leads anywhere fun :-)

Point taken, but never say never… Really, that whole post was my sense of humor at its most dry. ;D You really should check out the electric butter dish, however. Who's to say you couldn't rig up one of your own?

A couple of days ago, it was cold but sunny out. I used my very instant read Thermapen to check the ambient in my kitchen. 75F. No kitchen heat source on that whole day. It takes a couple of months to get through an 8oz. block of cultured table butter. It takes five minutes out for it to warm to easily spreadable and half an hour to squishy. Unwrapped butter can get rancid in the fridge, let alone the counter, though I do keep a compact box of wrapped baking butter sticks in the fridge and do use it up before it gets anywhere near turning. I suspect you ”nevers” use it up a lot quicker.

I guess it really does depend on your climate - if I left butter out here, it would be a puddle 😄

I just take it out ahead of time if I want it soft.