Stupid Guest Tricks

I don't know for sure, but it seems that any bacteria will proliferate if it has the right temperature and growth medium.....wouldn't take chances. IIRC, protein-based items are more likely to spoil and cause food poisoning.Butter-protein in cream(milk)

Well, when we visit The Cheesecake Factory, and the butter they bring us is cold and hard, we always put it under the warm plates (if they are warm) or the bread (again, if it is warm) otherwise we just hold it between our hands until it softens.

One of the waiters told us that they are required to keep the butter in a fridge, but it seems that we have been getting soft butter on recent trips.

My butter is in the fridge, but that is because we hardly use real butter.

I've always kept my butter in the refrigerator. And if I need it soft, just toss it in the Microwave for 10 seconds.

Though I quite honestly don't like the taste/texture of soft butter, so others might be different.

Mayonnaise wrote:All this talk about butter made me hungry.

*Eats a PB&B Sammich.*

8^)

With mayo?

Fridge for me and the way I deal with not having rock hard butter is Country Crock (I don't think that's real butter, but whatever) has sticks of butter that are made so they're softer, they spread nicely straight out of the fridge.

Maybe I am the wierd one but we leave our butter out for days. Never had any problems.

But the more I think about it the supermarkets all sell butter out of the fridge and if anyone would know how it should be kept it would be them.....

Organic butter rock hard and if I want it melted that is what pans, stoves and microwaves are for.

I tend to agree with those who say it's quite safe to leave butter out, especially modern products made from pasteurized milk.

However, food safety codes require most food to be kept either hot or cold at all times until ready for serving. This technically makes it illegal to serve soft butter!

Two alternatives to achieve both goals: whipped butter (first popularized by IHOP, back when they first started), or margarine alternatives. We eat Olivio here at home, keeping stick margarine only for baking.

hobie16 wrote:Does anyone remember Last Tango In Paris?

It was three years before I could eat buttered toast again. Worst movie ever made, btw!

Lehman's has the ancient butter crocks too: http://www.lehmans.com . Mom's from Pennsylvania, and we leave our butter out for days, even in hot weather. It may melt, but we've never gotten sick from it. Zazu is right--pasteurization makes the difference. The only time we have butter in the fridge is if it melted on a hot day, we just stick it back in the fridge to harden. Or in the fridge door if it's not ready to be used. In the freezer if we just bought a big box of it at Costco.

Margarine isn't that good for you anyway--studies have shown that margarine is more likely to cause heart disease than butter, because butter is made of cream, which is natural, vs. margarine, which is made of vegetable oils, which actually are not that heart-healthy. People have been eating butter for thousands of years, margarine's only been around less than 100 years. Funny how heart disease as a major cause of death started around the same time as the popularization of margarine, among other things. A hundred years ago the number one cause of death was pneumonia.