I have been purchasing certain items in bulk. The butter came in a one pound brick - it looks like four sticks of butter together. It is a bit cumbersome.
Any ideas or tips on seperating into traditional "sticks" and then, what types of containers or supplies do you use to store it?
Thanks!
Edit*** Any tips to cut it up - knife sizes, heat the knife, room temp butter? I ask becuase I have tried this with my bulk cheese and it is tricky. LOVE the suggestions so far - keep em coming!
awesome advice. I love the cheese cutter and piano wire ideas. YES!!
We go through a lot of butter (yikes!) but I'd say 2 lbs a month and I buy in 5 lbs. so I will def. freeze the others in their packaging.
Love this kind of help:)
cut it up, wrap in plasticwrap, and freeze it in blocks. Take it out of the freezer as you need it. :-)
ETA: As others have said, leave it out a bit so it's softer. Use a very big watermelon type of knife. It'll slice up nicely.
Cut them up and freeze them. Butter freezes beautifully.
I am surprised I haven't read this yet, piano wire. I suppose metal guitar strings would work as well. Loop it around so that it is touching where you want it on the corners and pull, lather rinse repeat.
Unlike floss, which is another good idea, piano wire can be warmed up and cut cleanly even on hard butter. I will also cut cheese. :)
We buy butter in bulk too. We just store it in the fridge, in the door where there's a covered plastic flap, no fancy containers. We always measure by weight when we cook, so I never take the time to pre-cut anything. I just slice a chunk off an put it on the scale.
If you do want to cut it up, you can weigh it out and cut with a cheese slicer.
I'd use a large knife (like I would use to cut into a water melon) and slice the butter brick (at fridge temp) into 4 quarters.
Warm butter or warm knife will just make things messy.
Lay the brick down length wise, cut it in half, then cut the halves in half one more time.
Wrap the quarters in wax paper, then freeze anything you are not going to use in the next few weeks.
I wonder if dental floss or string or a cheese slicer would work?
I know they use string to cut layer cake layers.
Probably a knife will work.
I'd wrap in wax paper, then freezer paper.
I'm with the others on the freezing - butter freezes really well.
If you want to break it down in to more "user-friendly" bits, I would suggest leaving it out for 45 minutes or so. It'll soften a bit and be easier to cut (I do this also if I'm serving butter with a meal, or baking with it - so much easier when it's soft!) Don't heat it - it'll over soften, and never harden up again just right. Just leave it at room temp; butter doesn't curdle, so you don't need to worry about the dairy being left out, as long as you do it in an air-tight container so no germs can get to it.
We buy butter in bulk all the time.
My question to you is how much do you use in a month. We use about 1 lb, probably about 3/4. If you use this much then you can take the whole pound and keep it in the fridge and just take off what you want to keep at room temperature. We use a standard butter dish for this, it may not be in an exact rectangle but it still tastes like butter.
If you use less then I recommend you slice off the amount you plan to keep in the fridge or on the counter then freeze the rest. You can wrap it in saran wrap, zip lock baggies, wax paper, etc...all you are doing is keeping the dehydrating effect off the surface of the butter. Most any cover will work as long as it is not in there more than a few weeks.
Otherwise keep it in the original wrappers in the box. Have you opened them yet?
I buy butter in bulk and the sticks are individually wrapped inside the box. If yours are all 4 sticks clumped together then perhaps next time you might try Sams or some other wholesale place that has them like this. We get anywhere from 8-10 packages of these 4 stick boxes at Sams once or twice per year and just pop them in the deep freeze. We put one or two boxes in the frig freezer for convenience. Then we open one box in the fridge.
One stick goes in the butter dish for toast and breakfast dishes. When I cook with butter I use cold or frozen. It melts okay in things that don't need to have softened butter like a frosting, mac and cheese, or oatmeal would.
Use wire to cut, the thinner is better. To wrap, use waxed paper as it is most similar to how individually wrapped sticks are wrapped.
Get them close to room temp, cut in half, then half again for your 4 usual sticks. Freeze extra sticks individually wrapped in wax paper until needed.
I use my dough scraper to cut up butter for pastry dough and it would be the perfect size for a pound of butter. So...how much do you pay per pound? I pay about $2 per pound at the grocery store but we go through a lot (2-3lbs per month, 20 lbs from Thanksgiving to New Year) so if it's cheaper in 1 lb bricks, I would totally buy it that way. Where do you get it?
