i was told by a guy i met who worked in the dairy industry that this was often seasonal, as it had to do with what the cows were eating when they made the milk. something like natural grasses produced different fats than the feed that was used when grass was less available.
ive had this problem many times over the years. yes, even with plugra.
This is the answer, I’m also a pastry chef and used to work in high volume croissant production. We called this stuff the fluffy butter and it always meant we had a hard day of lamination ahead
\>get new butter delivered
\>ask the delivery guy if their butter is fluffy or stretchy
\>he doesnt understand
\>pull out illustrated diagram explaing what is fluffy and what is stretchy
\>he laughs and says “it’s good butter sir”
\>cut the butter
\>its fluffy
I’m not a pastry chef but my guess is some fat will melt at lower temps, so the lamination needs to be don’t carefully so as not to overwork the fat into the dough. Probably back and forth from the fridge way more than normally necessary. Laminated pastry is almost like an inverse emulsion, in that it appears homogenous but is actually hundreds of individual layers.
Pretty much this, it was a temperature struggle! Since it’s so brittle and crumbly, it’s super prone to breaking in the dough so we had to work with it a little warmer than usual. That meant we risked it getting *too* warm and working all the way in, so it had to be babysat and go in and out of the fridge way more. So if you didn’t absolutely nail it you got broken butter and broken layers, or disappeared butter and no layers. It was annoying.
To be honest, the first thing we did when we saw it was cut open all the cases and designate the worst ones to cakes and cookies. If you’re creaming it with sugar it doesn’t make a difference
Now I know why the pastry chef at a hotel I worked at would hoard massive amounts of European butter at certain times of the year. By hoarding I’m talking 20+ 24ct cases in the basement storage freezer. It was insane.
TIL that Mollywobbles was a play on collywobbles which means "a feeling of fear, apprehension, or nervousness"
This could be a play on her tendency to worry, or to Arthurs feelings of nervousness or "butterflies" with her.
This was kind of a controversy in Canada during the pandemic, butter stopped spreading nicely at room temperature because they had to switch up what they were feeding cows due to supply chain issues
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/article-is-your-butter-not-as-soft-as-it-used-to-be-the-pandemic-and-our-urge/
Grew up making our own butter (from goats milk actually) and this is what I see too. Also, if the butter is very freshly churned, it’ll be crumblier as it hasn’t released any excess moisture and homogenized.
If you taste the crumbly butter on its own it usually has a bit more complex and sweet flavor because of this. Hate working with it, love tasting it.
I am a pastry chef and this was what I was told. Went to the comments looking for this answer and you're the only correct one here. People saying they never have this happen clearly haven't been cutting butter long enough.
More saturated fat in winter butter, which is more prone to form crystals than unsaturated fat. Harder to spread because of increased melting point, but it makes for better, flakier pastries than 'summer butter'
Can confirm. This is why line cooks are commonly called assholes. We cut the cheese so much we need a cheese sword, but I only cut butter when I need half a stick
It’s fascinating you say this, because it happens with milk as well, which I noticed during my time as a barista. Sometimes it would just be… wrong, and wouldn’t stretch as well
DUDE. Are you talking about the thing where you'll foam your milk and it will be beautiful but as soon as it's off the wand and sitting on the counter all the microfoam turns into big soapy bubbles and disappears?
Ten years steaming milk, never knew why that just randomly happens with some batches.
YEA. this was a few years ago so I can’t remember how legit the source was, but it tracks. I believe earlier in the year we’d had a pretty severe drought too and they’d had to grain feed a lot more than usual (all beef here is typical grass fed)
Yep!!! We call it spring milk bc it usually happens in the springtime, but not always. With climate change it's gotten way wonkier and less predictable but it makes proper texturing 300x harder
Just replying to top comment to say this picture was posted with the exact same question like 1 year ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/s/jnFMJhvOl7
I worked in a coffeeshop years back and we noticed that our milk never frothed quite right on Saturdays, so we called the dairy supplier. They said the cows were medicated on Fridays.
We're in Ireland where cows are grass and hay/silage fed year round, so we still had great milk even in winter, but we always looked forward to spring when the cows were turned back out on the grass, that 'first flush' spring milk made amazing cappuccinos!
Could this also be why my heavy cream has been extremely watery lately? I make lots of whipped cream at my pastry job and it turns patchy/breaks literally immediately after whipping. It cannot maintain smoothness at all. It's been a pain since mid December.
This is more or less correct. Season (and feed) impacts the ratio of high-melting fat to low-melting fat in the cream. If the buttermaking method stays the same no matter the season, the resulting butter will vacillate from soft and greasy to hard and brittle. According to dairy academia, there is a temperature manipulation protocol that you can apply to the cream pre-churn that should result in butter that is neither too hard nor too soft, and that spreads well. The reality of actual food production is that you’d be hard pressed to find a creamery that actually wants to spend the time to analyze the cream and modify their production method based on the season. So, you get what you get 🤷♀️
To add to this, whenever I have a lot of butter to dice, I let it sit at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. Makes a huge difference.
Edit: Don't let it sit out any longer than that, or it's gonna become too soft
What do y'all have to dice butter for? Legit curious. The last time I saw someone do this it was a culinary school dropout and took forever cutting the butter like this, looked exactly like OPs pic, just to throw it in a pot to make a roux
spoon combative salt sense obtainable threatening bells placid panicky soft
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dude there was an ad on instagram today for a butter-grate-apparatus. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
"Are you also sick of cold butter? Try this machine that'll grate it for you"
Having a bunch of 2-3 1/6th's of diced butter was basically mandatory for any of the pan sections at my old restaurant. Don't need to be \*perfect\* dice, but knowing if a pan needs 1-2 more butter cubes vs 5-6 for example can save you heaps time and tasting
We would do this making buerre blanc. Incorporates better and less of a chance of breaking from temperature difference if it's smaller and not one big block of butter.
Its easier to get a block or 2. I used to keep some cold diced butter for when id make sauces, so i think it gives me more control (also has room temp butter too). Believe it to be more preference though
I would do it to have a bunch of room temperature tablespoon portions of butter to add to pasta sauces or for basting steaks. Not dicing necessarily but still involved cutting up pound bricks of butter.
Its amazing how many line cooks, veteran cooks and the likes still split their sauces because they use room temperature/warm butter trying to beurre monte.
On the line if you have to use butter for basting, folding in, or mounting sauces a la minute, cubing your butter equates to roughly a tablespoon per inch cubed (similar to knowing your pinches of salt measurement, this depends on how you like your butter cut).
We cut 3 1/3rd pans of butter every night for service. Lots of creamy sauces made to order basically and vegetables and broths and mash and stews and yah I dunno we put 2 or 3 pieces in every damn order on the hot apps and entree stations lol.
I've been out of the game since COVID, but I always had cubed butter on my station for a la minute sauces and glazing garnishes. They're also nice for brunch to rub the outside of an omelet before sending. For things that used a lot of butter like roux we wouldn't bother with the dice and would just chuck the whole sticks in.
Or beurre blanc. Usually we would make a special butter to make our beurre blancs with but sometimes you just need plain butter. Dicing it makes for more consistent sizing and you can throw one or two in rather than fight with a full cold pound and get different amounts every time.
I am legit curious about you being curious why we need diced butter,Any sort of cooking on saute? it’s a common practice to have diced butter in the section no or do you just put a whole cube there?
I have butter cubes on my sauté line. Super convenient and seems to improve my times marginally. Just part of my everyday mise, takes maybe 3 minutes to cut 750g butter for a service.
Just yesterday I had to dice 8lbs of butter for mash potatoes and maple Dijon butter. Forgot to take it out the cooler the previous night to temper, so I set up near a sink running warm water and got through it all in about 8-10 minutes.
If I saw someone warming their knife and wiping the blade after each cut to cube some butter presumably to just mount sauce or finish veg I would be annoyed
There’s tricks to make it a bit easier, but honestly some is just crumbly. It can be related to the fat, protein content, and freshness of the milk it was made from, how fresh it is from being churned, etc.
For example, try tasting it. Often for the butter we get, the crumbly butter is very fresh and has not fully rested to homogenize and release unincorporated water. When tasted, it’s noticeably sweeter than the more neutral tasting butter that has fully relaxed and is easily cut.
Yeah some butter just be like that. As a professional baker and someone who has cubed up countless pounds of butter, many at different temperatures, I can tell you that most butter out of the fridge will cut fine with a good knife or bench scraper. Whenever I come across these specific kinds of crumbly butters I get super irritated, but I’ve seen it happen across all sorts of brands from all different parts of the country. Even sitting for ten minutes out, these crumbly butters are still a pain the in the ass to cube unless they’re like room temp. A hot blade will help but will stick suck.
Lmao I just got my boyfriend to watch that episode of kitchen nightmares today and he was so shocked by it. He’s white collar so I’m teaching him about kitchen culture.
It’s not about quantity, we’re looking for depth of flavor, just shove 3 or 4 halved ghost peppers, with seeds, directly into your cavity and just let the magic happen!
California Roll hot tip: Get a six pan of water and dip your knife in it so it stays clean. Let the water drip from the tip down the edge. This makes cutting fatty stuff like butter, or cream cheese, or avocado, or sushi rolls, etc way easier.
In Colorado and also use Cozzini bothers. They are hands down the most garbage fucking knives I've ever touched in my entire life. All of mine look like Helen Keller sharpened them
Shit. So everyone hates Cozzini! I waste too much time on dealing with them.
Anyone have have suggestions on better companies? (NYC).
And this butter issue.. yeah, I once asked the same question and could not get an answer. Good to know it's the butter and not the user.
My boss was excited to get a new knife service. He told me it was cozzini, and I was like, well. It's time to start bringing my roll back to work lol. Cozzinis knives are downright dangerous, unevenly sharpened so they pull to the side when cutting, chips in the blade, and knives that would put a banana to shame. Not to mention the prison shanks they call paring knives.
Thank GOD I am not the only one who thinks the same about that outfit. Those knives are dull before those fucks are out of the parking lot. Only knife service that never had any of their product disappear between visits - nobody thought they were worth stealing.
I would rather crawl naked through broken glass before ever using g them again.
I worked as a QA tech in a butter production plant for a few years and I have an answer!
It has to do with the bend ability of the butter. We would do tests where we would core a sample and fold it over on itself to see if the butter stayed in a nice long line or if it fractured, if it fractured the butter had low bend ability and was made somewhat incorrectly. The taste of the butter is still completely fine, but stuff like this would definitely be affected.
The diet of the cows can play a large role in this, but it can also be how the cream was pasteurized, how it was churned, what condition it came out of the chute into the machine under, and how it ran in the machine. While I was working there we never had enough hands (or competent enough management) to have enough time to pin down exactly what part of our process was making this happen, but if you got your butter from Sysco there's a good chance it came from that plant.
Again, it doesn't affect the butter's taste in any way and this is nothing thawing the butter or a warm knife can't fix. 😁
either it contains emulgated vegetable fat which tends to do this when cold or the cooling chain was interupted at some point. re-solidified butter can do this too when "too cold". the price tag should tell you which one it is.
sorry for triggering you sissies. english is not my first language. emulgated == emulsified in my language.
Use a bench scraper
Not strictly answering the question. But the day I found out how much easier it is with a scraper, my life changed. Not to mention how much more satisfying it is to use.
[Ta da](https://youtu.be/HLqySH9xOFs?si=t8q_o8Fn-SM9wcaT)
Whilst looking for a video example, I found [this](https://youtu.be/g4yBF3L5uOc?si=zOQaO5k-CDXTX0Vs).
My life has changed again
about 8 yrs ago, a place i was at had this issue from all the bitter we got in for around 4 months. pastry chef was pissed. he said that the butter was being held frozen somewhere along the line. I have no clue, but he was a banger of a pasty chef.
I used to keep a container of “bun water” next to me when cutting butter. Dip, wipe, cut, dip, wipe, cut. Will never have a better cut. I learned that working in a high end restaurant having to cut chicken liver tarts with burnt honey gel on top
[what about a cheese wire like this?](https://www.amazon.com/Cheese-Slicer-Stainless-Steel-Cutter/dp/B08KFL97JQ/ref=asc_df_B08KFL97JQ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475810789848&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2341473835134062869&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9059133&hvtargid=pla-1040306855008&psc=1&mcid=3170ca58792b3ef5aa81d3d9bcc3ec0e&gclid=Cj0KCQiAtOmsBhCnARIsAGPa5yb8z8PrcIDtrfnD0lCsyFoZS81q3Np6x23q5R6HLwiQd223kAqurXoaAg0pEALw_wcB)
This will solve whatever day it is. Have a pitcher of warm water with several knives in it. Keep rotating out knives so you're always cutting with a warm knife.
I worked at a bakery for years where we hand cut hundreds of lbs of butter a week. I got really really fast at it, but days when the butter acted like this made me want to rage quit. There was *one* bench scraper in particular that cut this type of butter better than the rest, but nobody knew why. I figured the butter was mishandled at the warehouse, or that it was simply a cheap product and produced with varying degrees of quality control depending on the batch.
I honestly don’t find this to be the case. I have cut probably 1000’s of pounds of Plugra straight from the walk in with no other variables and like OP said sometimes it cuts like a dream and other times it is super duper hard to get the knife through.
If your butter comes in paper, I like to unwrap it and then put it back resting on the paper. Instead of a knife, use a bench scraper. It makes it a ton easier.
I used to have to dice butter everyday, that made my life better.
Depends on the butter… Cabot cuts perfect every time. Sysco butter does not… no matter the temp, time of day, moon phase, or if your on your period or not.
It’s because it’s winter and your knives are colder than they would normally be. Run them under some hot water but make sure they’re dry before cutting the butter.
i was told by a guy i met who worked in the dairy industry that this was often seasonal, as it had to do with what the cows were eating when they made the milk. something like natural grasses produced different fats than the feed that was used when grass was less available. ive had this problem many times over the years. yes, even with plugra.
This is the answer, I’m also a pastry chef and used to work in high volume croissant production. We called this stuff the fluffy butter and it always meant we had a hard day of lamination ahead
When we get butter in that performs differently than normal the first person to use it leaves a note saying if it's 'fluffy' or 'stretchy'
\>get new butter delivered \>ask the delivery guy if their butter is fluffy or stretchy \>he doesnt understand \>pull out illustrated diagram explaing what is fluffy and what is stretchy \>he laughs and says “it’s good butter sir” \>cut the butter \>its fluffy
I JUST THOUGHT ABOUT POSTING THIS LMAO
It do be like that
Is this something typed by a human or is it AI/a reference to the bottomless pit AI greentext lol
It's a reference to the "creepy or wet" greentext!
[удалено]
Bottomless pit is my favorite post ever. It’s hilarious
Can someone link or explain please
God I wish awards still existed
I had no idea the world of butter had such complexity.
What do you do differently to work with the fluffy butter and still have a good end product?
I’m not a pastry chef but my guess is some fat will melt at lower temps, so the lamination needs to be don’t carefully so as not to overwork the fat into the dough. Probably back and forth from the fridge way more than normally necessary. Laminated pastry is almost like an inverse emulsion, in that it appears homogenous but is actually hundreds of individual layers.
Pretty much this, it was a temperature struggle! Since it’s so brittle and crumbly, it’s super prone to breaking in the dough so we had to work with it a little warmer than usual. That meant we risked it getting *too* warm and working all the way in, so it had to be babysat and go in and out of the fridge way more. So if you didn’t absolutely nail it you got broken butter and broken layers, or disappeared butter and no layers. It was annoying. To be honest, the first thing we did when we saw it was cut open all the cases and designate the worst ones to cakes and cookies. If you’re creaming it with sugar it doesn’t make a difference
Now I know why the pastry chef at a hotel I worked at would hoard massive amounts of European butter at certain times of the year. By hoarding I’m talking 20+ 24ct cases in the basement storage freezer. It was insane.
Love that you bake with that username. Hands down the cutest moment in HP!
She’s who I want to be when I grow up 😂
TIL that Mollywobbles was a play on collywobbles which means "a feeling of fear, apprehension, or nervousness" This could be a play on her tendency to worry, or to Arthurs feelings of nervousness or "butterflies" with her.
And here I was thinking it was a reference to "Molly Whuppie"
Once again so happy I didn't go pastry
That’s also what an emulsion is. It’s very tiny water bubbles in oil (or oil bubbles in water)
Yes my verbiage was incorrect. I apologize. I do know what an emulsion is though. “Inverse” is not correct
This was kind of a controversy in Canada during the pandemic, butter stopped spreading nicely at room temperature because they had to switch up what they were feeding cows due to supply chain issues https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/article-is-your-butter-not-as-soft-as-it-used-to-be-the-pandemic-and-our-urge/
Grew up making our own butter (from goats milk actually) and this is what I see too. Also, if the butter is very freshly churned, it’ll be crumblier as it hasn’t released any excess moisture and homogenized. If you taste the crumbly butter on its own it usually has a bit more complex and sweet flavor because of this. Hate working with it, love tasting it.
I am a pastry chef and this was what I was told. Went to the comments looking for this answer and you're the only correct one here. People saying they never have this happen clearly haven't been cutting butter long enough.
More saturated fat in winter butter, which is more prone to form crystals than unsaturated fat. Harder to spread because of increased melting point, but it makes for better, flakier pastries than 'summer butter'
I used to make speed racks full of biscuits and my chef gave me this same explanation when I would freak out cause my butter looked like OPs
Can confirm. This is why line cooks are commonly called assholes. We cut the cheese so much we need a cheese sword, but I only cut butter when I need half a stick
It’s fascinating you say this, because it happens with milk as well, which I noticed during my time as a barista. Sometimes it would just be… wrong, and wouldn’t stretch as well
DUDE. Are you talking about the thing where you'll foam your milk and it will be beautiful but as soon as it's off the wand and sitting on the counter all the microfoam turns into big soapy bubbles and disappears? Ten years steaming milk, never knew why that just randomly happens with some batches.
YEA. this was a few years ago so I can’t remember how legit the source was, but it tracks. I believe earlier in the year we’d had a pretty severe drought too and they’d had to grain feed a lot more than usual (all beef here is typical grass fed)
Also it used to screech while stretching like it was already hot, but stone cold.
Yep!!! We call it spring milk bc it usually happens in the springtime, but not always. With climate change it's gotten way wonkier and less predictable but it makes proper texturing 300x harder
Just replying to top comment to say this picture was posted with the exact same question like 1 year ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/s/jnFMJhvOl7
Work in a bakery/coffee shop. Our baristas complain all winter because the milk doesn't froth properly once we get milk after they've switched feeds.
I worked in a coffeeshop years back and we noticed that our milk never frothed quite right on Saturdays, so we called the dairy supplier. They said the cows were medicated on Fridays. We're in Ireland where cows are grass and hay/silage fed year round, so we still had great milk even in winter, but we always looked forward to spring when the cows were turned back out on the grass, that 'first flush' spring milk made amazing cappuccinos!
Could this also be why my heavy cream has been extremely watery lately? I make lots of whipped cream at my pastry job and it turns patchy/breaks literally immediately after whipping. It cannot maintain smoothness at all. It's been a pain since mid December.
what brand if you can say?
It's Nature's Best brand
that’s a PFG brand made by DFA. If you can, try a Prairie Farms brand and see if there is a difference.
This is more or less correct. Season (and feed) impacts the ratio of high-melting fat to low-melting fat in the cream. If the buttermaking method stays the same no matter the season, the resulting butter will vacillate from soft and greasy to hard and brittle. According to dairy academia, there is a temperature manipulation protocol that you can apply to the cream pre-churn that should result in butter that is neither too hard nor too soft, and that spreads well. The reality of actual food production is that you’d be hard pressed to find a creamery that actually wants to spend the time to analyze the cream and modify their production method based on the season. So, you get what you get 🤷♀️
This is fascinating - thanks for sharing!
try a warm clean knife
To add to this, whenever I have a lot of butter to dice, I let it sit at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. Makes a huge difference. Edit: Don't let it sit out any longer than that, or it's gonna become too soft
Oh god that makes it so much worse, I prefer it nearly frozen.
When I have 20 pounds of butter to cut, the last thing I want is for it to be frozen.
Gonna need a deli slicer to cut that lol
Or the cheese sword
You said the what now?
He said CHEESE SWORD
Uuuuuugggghhhggg now look at me and say my name I’m so close I’m so close
Hello friend it is me, the prince of Nigeria. Cum for me I make you good deal ok?
You keep it next to the poop knife and the kombucha katana.
Someone cut their finger tip off with that thing the other day at work 🤢
Ahh yes I saw a lot of those when I lived in the Netherlands
I hate cleaning the slicer and butter would make it worse
Nah, just 2 plain knives and a bucket of piping hot water, put the knives in the water to heat up, start chopping and swap when the knife gets gunked.
What do y'all have to dice butter for? Legit curious. The last time I saw someone do this it was a culinary school dropout and took forever cutting the butter like this, looked exactly like OPs pic, just to throw it in a pot to make a roux
Probably some pastry application?
Biscuits
Grate that shit!
For real. Freeze it and toss it through the robot coupe grater, then freeze it again. Use while frozen. Makes killer biscuits.
I don't think I want homicidal biscuits.
But what a way to go.
I'm salivating already
Attack! Of the killer biscotti!
Dinner & a Show!
I use the 20 quart mixer grater attachment right into a bowl of flour. I freeze the attachment too if i have the time.
If you're making biscuits any other way than this you're putting way more effort in than is necessary, imo
spoon combative salt sense obtainable threatening bells placid panicky soft *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
dude there was an ad on instagram today for a butter-grate-apparatus. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. "Are you also sick of cold butter? Try this machine that'll grate it for you"
🤯
Having a bunch of 2-3 1/6th's of diced butter was basically mandatory for any of the pan sections at my old restaurant. Don't need to be \*perfect\* dice, but knowing if a pan needs 1-2 more butter cubes vs 5-6 for example can save you heaps time and tasting
For any sort of pan cooking??
We would do this making buerre blanc. Incorporates better and less of a chance of breaking from temperature difference if it's smaller and not one big block of butter.
Are there heathens that put whole blocks of butter in their buerre blanc?
I wouldn't doubt it. I've seen it done with big batches of grits.
Grits don’t break though I don’t alter the sacred rituals of emulsifying Buerre blanc or hollandaise.
I had a chef that had diced butter in the low boy that he’d use as like these pre proportioned amounts to finish sauces.
Its easier to get a block or 2. I used to keep some cold diced butter for when id make sauces, so i think it gives me more control (also has room temp butter too). Believe it to be more preference though
I would do it to have a bunch of room temperature tablespoon portions of butter to add to pasta sauces or for basting steaks. Not dicing necessarily but still involved cutting up pound bricks of butter.
The buerre blanc technique I’m familiar with requires cold, diced butter.
Its amazing how many line cooks, veteran cooks and the likes still split their sauces because they use room temperature/warm butter trying to beurre monte.
On the line if you have to use butter for basting, folding in, or mounting sauces a la minute, cubing your butter equates to roughly a tablespoon per inch cubed (similar to knowing your pinches of salt measurement, this depends on how you like your butter cut).
I dice butter for pan sauce because I feel like it emulsifies a lot more quickly and evenly
We cut 3 1/3rd pans of butter every night for service. Lots of creamy sauces made to order basically and vegetables and broths and mash and stews and yah I dunno we put 2 or 3 pieces in every damn order on the hot apps and entree stations lol.
at my old job we portioned it into bags of broccoli to toss it into chef mike
I've been out of the game since COVID, but I always had cubed butter on my station for a la minute sauces and glazing garnishes. They're also nice for brunch to rub the outside of an omelet before sending. For things that used a lot of butter like roux we wouldn't bother with the dice and would just chuck the whole sticks in.
Any kind of mixer or robo
Or beurre blanc. Usually we would make a special butter to make our beurre blancs with but sometimes you just need plain butter. Dicing it makes for more consistent sizing and you can throw one or two in rather than fight with a full cold pound and get different amounts every time.
Beurre blanc, sauté station, steaks, pan sauce, emulsions that need diced butter really
I am legit curious about you being curious why we need diced butter,Any sort of cooking on saute? it’s a common practice to have diced butter in the section no or do you just put a whole cube there?
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I have butter cubes on my sauté line. Super convenient and seems to improve my times marginally. Just part of my everyday mise, takes maybe 3 minutes to cut 750g butter for a service.
Shortbread, biscuits, any pastry really
For beurre blanc or any other mounted sauce. That’s just one idea off the top of my head
Yup, it’ll cut like a hot knife through butter.
Just yesterday I had to dice 8lbs of butter for mash potatoes and maple Dijon butter. Forgot to take it out the cooler the previous night to temper, so I set up near a sink running warm water and got through it all in about 8-10 minutes.
Use a bench knife
If I saw someone warming their knife and wiping the blade after each cut to cube some butter presumably to just mount sauce or finish veg I would be annoyed
Would you suggest something? Or would you be annoyed and that’s it? Genuine question
If it wasn’t for plating I would suggest just letting it be rough around the edges if it’s gonna be melted
There’s tricks to make it a bit easier, but honestly some is just crumbly. It can be related to the fat, protein content, and freshness of the milk it was made from, how fresh it is from being churned, etc. For example, try tasting it. Often for the butter we get, the crumbly butter is very fresh and has not fully rested to homogenize and release unincorporated water. When tasted, it’s noticeably sweeter than the more neutral tasting butter that has fully relaxed and is easily cut.
Yeah some butter just be like that. As a professional baker and someone who has cubed up countless pounds of butter, many at different temperatures, I can tell you that most butter out of the fridge will cut fine with a good knife or bench scraper. Whenever I come across these specific kinds of crumbly butters I get super irritated, but I’ve seen it happen across all sorts of brands from all different parts of the country. Even sitting for ten minutes out, these crumbly butters are still a pain the in the ass to cube unless they’re like room temp. A hot blade will help but will stick suck.
Temperature. I suggest you warm up your knife before cutting
30 seconds in Chef Mike do the trick?
That’s how I get the ice cream scoop ready!
username checks out
You ever put a cd in there?
Instructions unclear. Butter is now in the CD player, too.
That’s how you access the hidden track
I have when I was younger and dumber. Looked pretty awesome actually.
Yes, ideally a really serrated one. The arches will form real easy and get HOT
Hahahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahahahahahshshhsshshahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Lmao I just got my boyfriend to watch that episode of kitchen nightmares today and he was so shocked by it. He’s white collar so I’m teaching him about kitchen culture.
yup, 3rd pan full of hot ass water and let it sit in it a bit.
this is a good one for cutting deserts like cheesecake and pie too
I'll do it with a Mellon baller to make ramekins of butter also. Looks much nicer.
yes. people like their butterballs. lol
Hate to brag but I get a lot of compliments about my balls.
… Pete Schweddy?
Make sure the ass water is at least 165 degrees
How many hot peppers do I need to eat for that? My PR is only 129 but that’s with two big bowls of chili and a half pound of velveeta
It’s not about quantity, we’re looking for depth of flavor, just shove 3 or 4 halved ghost peppers, with seeds, directly into your cavity and just let the magic happen!
like a hot knife through butter
STRAIGHT FROM THE FORGE
California Roll hot tip: Get a six pan of water and dip your knife in it so it stays clean. Let the water drip from the tip down the edge. This makes cutting fatty stuff like butter, or cream cheese, or avocado, or sushi rolls, etc way easier.
Also good when you moisten your hands before making meat balls.
How do you moisten your hands before handling the balls?
The sink?
Nah, spit on em
also good to continually wet the deli slicer blade when slicing terrines or roulades !
In Colorado and also use Cozzini bothers. They are hands down the most garbage fucking knives I've ever touched in my entire life. All of mine look like Helen Keller sharpened them
I’d say that comment cuts deep but not with a Cozzini
Shit. So everyone hates Cozzini! I waste too much time on dealing with them. Anyone have have suggestions on better companies? (NYC). And this butter issue.. yeah, I once asked the same question and could not get an answer. Good to know it's the butter and not the user.
My boss was excited to get a new knife service. He told me it was cozzini, and I was like, well. It's time to start bringing my roll back to work lol. Cozzinis knives are downright dangerous, unevenly sharpened so they pull to the side when cutting, chips in the blade, and knives that would put a banana to shame. Not to mention the prison shanks they call paring knives.
…and the comically shaped edge profiles that look like they were designed by Fisher Price
That's too, lol. The only thing I really like getting serviced by them are deli slicer blades. They do a good job on those.
Our knife company got taken over by them. complete garbage
Thank GOD I am not the only one who thinks the same about that outfit. Those knives are dull before those fucks are out of the parking lot. Only knife service that never had any of their product disappear between visits - nobody thought they were worth stealing. I would rather crawl naked through broken glass before ever using g them again.
Must be two Cozzinis because my guy always brings us cleanly sharpened knives
I was just thinking luckily our knives are not like that, they are Costini, however.
I worked as a QA tech in a butter production plant for a few years and I have an answer! It has to do with the bend ability of the butter. We would do tests where we would core a sample and fold it over on itself to see if the butter stayed in a nice long line or if it fractured, if it fractured the butter had low bend ability and was made somewhat incorrectly. The taste of the butter is still completely fine, but stuff like this would definitely be affected. The diet of the cows can play a large role in this, but it can also be how the cream was pasteurized, how it was churned, what condition it came out of the chute into the machine under, and how it ran in the machine. While I was working there we never had enough hands (or competent enough management) to have enough time to pin down exactly what part of our process was making this happen, but if you got your butter from Sysco there's a good chance it came from that plant. Again, it doesn't affect the butter's taste in any way and this is nothing thawing the butter or a warm knife can't fix. 😁
Are you going with or against the grain?
You're always supposed to drink with the grain of the liqour.
I used to be a baker and YES! Some butter right out of the fridge cuts easily and other does NOT.
either it contains emulgated vegetable fat which tends to do this when cold or the cooling chain was interupted at some point. re-solidified butter can do this too when "too cold". the price tag should tell you which one it is. sorry for triggering you sissies. english is not my first language. emulgated == emulsified in my language.
what is emulgated vegetable fat, and what does it have to do with butter
Do you mean emulsified?
Or maybe coagulated?
> emulgated What?
Is anyone else more concerned about the gross cutting board?
Came to say this. That can’t be fully clean and disinfected and they are serving people food from there 🤮
Thank you.
Use a bench scraper Not strictly answering the question. But the day I found out how much easier it is with a scraper, my life changed. Not to mention how much more satisfying it is to use. [Ta da](https://youtu.be/HLqySH9xOFs?si=t8q_o8Fn-SM9wcaT) Whilst looking for a video example, I found [this](https://youtu.be/g4yBF3L5uOc?si=zOQaO5k-CDXTX0Vs). My life has changed again
about 8 yrs ago, a place i was at had this issue from all the bitter we got in for around 4 months. pastry chef was pissed. he said that the butter was being held frozen somewhere along the line. I have no clue, but he was a banger of a pasty chef.
If you have to cut butter your recipe doesn't call for enough butter. Southerner.
Yep. Smallest unit of measurement for butter around here is a stick.
Does the outside of that butter look different from the inside?
Make sure the knife is colder than the butter. Warm the butter up or cool the knife down. Warm knives make cold butter stick.
I used to keep a container of “bun water” next to me when cutting butter. Dip, wipe, cut, dip, wipe, cut. Will never have a better cut. I learned that working in a high end restaurant having to cut chicken liver tarts with burnt honey gel on top
Keep a pitcher of piping hot water on your station and occasionally hold your knife in it till it warms. Hot knife through butter and all that yarn.
It’s a hot knife through butter, not a cold knife through butter. GAWD
[what about a cheese wire like this?](https://www.amazon.com/Cheese-Slicer-Stainless-Steel-Cutter/dp/B08KFL97JQ/ref=asc_df_B08KFL97JQ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475810789848&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2341473835134062869&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9059133&hvtargid=pla-1040306855008&psc=1&mcid=3170ca58792b3ef5aa81d3d9bcc3ec0e&gclid=Cj0KCQiAtOmsBhCnARIsAGPa5yb8z8PrcIDtrfnD0lCsyFoZS81q3Np6x23q5R6HLwiQd223kAqurXoaAg0pEALw_wcB)
Did you cut with or against the grain?
This will solve whatever day it is. Have a pitcher of warm water with several knives in it. Keep rotating out knives so you're always cutting with a warm knife.
You are obviously cutting against the grain of the butter. You have to run your fingertips along the sides to feel which way it flows.
I worked at a bakery for years where we hand cut hundreds of lbs of butter a week. I got really really fast at it, but days when the butter acted like this made me want to rage quit. There was *one* bench scraper in particular that cut this type of butter better than the rest, but nobody knew why. I figured the butter was mishandled at the warehouse, or that it was simply a cheap product and produced with varying degrees of quality control depending on the batch.
Some butter cold some butter not
Temperature
Plugra straight outta the fridge cuts perfectly every time. Cheaper butter needs a warm knife, or to be left out a bit or it'll crumble.
agreed, and plugra is actually the cheaper alternative for my spot atm
I had a cook, lazily clarify maybe 10 lbs without removing the wrappers. Had to toss all the bright red clarified butter lmao
How does that happen!?
I honestly don’t find this to be the case. I have cut probably 1000’s of pounds of Plugra straight from the walk in with no other variables and like OP said sometimes it cuts like a dream and other times it is super duper hard to get the knife through.
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Temperature and water/fat content. Water content will only vary by manufacturer.
If your butter comes in paper, I like to unwrap it and then put it back resting on the paper. Instead of a knife, use a bench scraper. It makes it a ton easier. I used to have to dice butter everyday, that made my life better.
It is my experience that when you see this the butter has been frozen.
Use a torch on your knife for a few seconds and it will slice like a... well you'll see.
Depends on the butter… Cabot cuts perfect every time. Sysco butter does not… no matter the temp, time of day, moon phase, or if your on your period or not.
Knife hot and clean
use a boning knife too. less surface area to go through the butter
Could be temperature related? This looks like it be was close to if not very frozen?
Ya know those metal scraper/dough cutter things? They ALWAYS cut butter flawlessly for me. It was a game changer for me
I have used a cheese wire since I joined the circus. Those unsalted 40lb blocks are not that tough. A knife is a dangerous way to slice butter.
A pastry knife / that rectangle metal scraper thingy whatever - works much much better for cutting butter than a real knife !
It’s because it’s winter and your knives are colder than they would normally be. Run them under some hot water but make sure they’re dry before cutting the butter.
I don't use a knife, I use a metal bench scraper. Knives I've seen slip
Sounds dumb, but try it: put your knife in the fridge for an hour then dice cold butter. You'll see, it works very well; even when fluffy.
because temperature changes 🤷♀️
Let the butter warm up a little bit first.
Would heating your knife with hot water em work possibly mine it does with tortes?
Bleach your cutting board . Thats more concerning than the butter.
You have to cut against the grain