Not that they're in danger of going extinct or anything, but they sure are useful.
Like many people, I used to buy non-stick spray. Handy stuff for baking, you know. My main use for it was greasing my bread pans when I baked bread. But I found the spray kind of annoying for two reasons.
One is that it's in a can that gets thrown out when the spray is gone.
The other is that I could never remember to buy more when I ran out, because it was an infrequent purchase. So I found myself often not having it anyway, and then just greasing pans with butter.
Which is how I decided it was really stupid to be buying a product for one purpose that produced trash when I already had something in the house that would work just as well.
I'm not sure when the logical next step occurred, but eventually, I started saving all my butter wrappers for pan-greasing jobs.
Because I leave my butter out on the counter right in the wrapper*, it usually has little bits of butter still on it when the stick is technically "gone." So I just fold the wrapper over (to contain the greasy butter part) and stick it in the butter compartment of my refrigerator door until the next time I need to grease a pan.
When I need one, I take the wrapper out to warm up a bit--this takes about thirty seconds if I warm it in my hands--so it will spread properly, hold the buttered side down, and grease my pan without getting my hands all buttery.
Is it as fast and clean as using the spray? No. But it's less wasteful and the butter tastes better than the spray.
It also resulted in the amusing incident when my parents were visiting and looking for butter for their toast, only to encounter several empty wrappers in my refrigerator instead of sticks of butter. "Is this a joke?" asked my dad.
I explained. They understood.
I should note that this won't really work if you habitually keep your butter in the refrigerator, because cold butter comes cleanly off the wrapper and there won't be much left on there. You can still save a wrapper for greasing, though, and just use it with softened butter to keep your hand from getting greasy.
I don't have any photos of spent butter wrappers, because do you really want to see that? No. But perhaps you do want to see this photo of a GIANT old refrigerator sitting in an abandoned building in a very remote ghost town about half an hour from us. This place definitely never had electricity, so I must assume this refrigerator was propane-powered.
* You may have figured out by now that I operate my kitchen at a strictly practical level. No fancy and aesthetically pleasing butter keepers grace my counters, I'm afraid.
7 comments:
I do this all the time.
Linda
The BEST food comes out of kitchens like yours!
I’m glad you explained that you keep the wrapped butter on the counter and use it from the wrapper. I have seen this too before and could not figure out what they were talking about because my wrappers never had any butter on them. I keep my butter in the refrigerator. When I need a new stock, I take the cold butter out of the paper and put it in my vintage butter dish which stays on the counter. All the leftover butter is in the dish and gets washed down the drain. Maybe I should start keeping it in the wrapper in the dish.
Kristin--My mother used butter wrappers to coat baking tins! Mary in MN
Yes, I do this, sort of. I keep my butter in a butter dish but save the wrappers for greasing things. Though I don’t bake or cook as much these days, or use as much butter, it’s still something that’s a habit! AND, if the wrappers pile up in the fridge, I’ll use them as fire-starters! Perfect!
Joellen: Yup. You need that soft, smearing butter to have a wrapper worth using.
Mary: Oh, she would have liked this post then! It's definitely not a new idea, but I figure sometimes we could all use a reminder about some ideas that may not be in the general pool of knowledge anymore. I bet your mom would have a lot more of the same kind of ideas.
Anonymous J: I never thought of using them as fire starters. Thanks for the idea!
I do use baking spray (and have a favorite brand for all the right reasons, lol) but am mainly writing to suggest that if you or urchins make quick oatmeal in the microwave, greasing the bowl prevents it from overflowing. Me, I prefer cream of wheat, but same thing.
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