> My roommate.... stores the butter dish
> on the kitchen counter instead of the refrigerator.
> I've just never heard of such a thing and it's grossing me out.

I nearly always keep butter on the kitchen counter. Sorry if that sounds
awful, but I'm with your roommate on this score! The butter is so much
easier to spread. However, a big point: we use a lot of the stuff so it
goes quickly. It's not like the same stick of butter sits there for three
weeks. And even on the counter, we still keep it covered. Yes, butter
*will* go rancid if it's left out too long, but you can always taste it the
instant it starts to happen. Pretty difficult to get butter poisoning just
for that reason. If it's bad enough to hurt you, you wouldn't want to eat
it anyway.

Butter is a dairy product, but it doesn't go bad nearly as quickly as milk
does. I'd be queasy about milk that was left out for 6 hours. Butter? Not
a problem at all. Two completely different animals there.

Also, refrigeration is not necessarily a cure-all. I've tasted a *lot* more
bad butter that came out of people's refrigerators than I ever have with
butter that was out on the counter. For one thing, the stuff absorbs
refrigerator odors like crazy. You've got to keep it unopened, or under
thick plastic or metal. I sure wouldn't want to just schlep a half-eaten
stick of butter back in the fridge without sealing it up somehow. *That's*
what a lot of people do, and it's much nastier than butter sitting on the
counter for a while.

Plus that, butter gets old in the refrigerator too. It just takes longer.
Watch those expiration dates, and freeze it if you don't use it right away.

And by the way, for people who mentioned peanut butter--- most store-bought
brands really don't need to be refrigerated. Really! And if you do
refrigerate peanut butter, just as some kind of obsessive thing, be very
careful about microwaving it to "make it soft". Many brands of peanut
butter use a foil seal. Unless you carefully remove every last molecule of
foil when you first open the jar--- which is nearly impossible--- it can
spark and arc in the microwave. Peanut butter also burns easily.




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