This butter cutter is a goofy, gimmicky thing, but believe it or not, it actually does work.
Now, you may be saying "Nothing a knife can't do just as well", right? Yes, but then you have to wash the knife, or use a plastic knife that gets gunky and gross, especially if you live with boys. We're perpetually out of clean knives, usually because they're all in the dishwasher awaiting the next cycle.
I got tired of never having clean knives, so I figured $12 for the butter cutter wouldn't put me too out of sorts if it was as hokey as it looks. However, when it arrived, loading a stick of butter was a painless process. Using the clicking handle to dispense perfectly proportioned slabs of butter for easy spreading is pretty awesome, and I've found that it has lots of uses.
One little pat of butter:
- per bagel half
- in mashed potatoes
- in vegetables and rice
- in the frying pan
- etc
The results are also a big hit when I host fancy dinner parties and everyone has restaurant-style buns and neat, perfectly formed little butter pats artfully arranged. The devil's in the details, after all, and the butter cutter will help you impress your friends.
Previous reviewers have done the hard work for you and me and and I've verified that, indeed, 4 pats = 1 tablespoon of butter. No guessing, no broken bits of butter littering the countertop, no half-opened sticks of butter in the fridge to pick up dirt and smells.
Know what the best part is? Since I got the butter cutter, we've used a lot less butter overall. How's that for health benefits from a seemingly goofy product?
Of course, it's not perfect, but these are all little nitpicks and oddities specific to this butter cutter:
- it's a little bulky, but it fits just fine in my fridge's butter area
- sometimes if you press too quickly, the butter pats will fold around the blade and stuff themselves up against the large opening in the back, but a good shake will make the pat come right out
- if you're at the end of the stick (half a tablespoon or less), sometimes the blade will miss and you'll get the remaining butter dumped out, so it's not 100% precise
- no "butter almost empty" visual indicator (see above). If it had some kind of transparent window, I think that'd be neat and useful.
Minor flaws aside, this butter cutter has really been worth the money for me. In fact, I'm going to buy another one (or maybe even two!) for when I start making infused butters again. Easy-spread garlic butter, anybody?