Shelf life of butter: does butter belong in the fridge?
Buttered bread, buttered pretzels, buttery biscuits. Just a few examples of how intrinsic butter is to German cuisine. No doubt butter is a regular fixture on your shopping list. In this article, we tell you how long butter’s shelf life is and what you need to do when storing it. We’ll also tell you how to make butter easy to spread.
The key points
- For butter to keep for as long as possible, it should be stored somewhere cold, airtight and dark.
- Butter keeps for 30 days in the fridge.
- Butter keeps for 90 days in the BioFresh Meat & Dairy safe.
- At room temperature, butter only keeps fresh for about three days.
- Frozen butter keeps for nine months.
- A French butter dish allows your to store butter at room temperature for a long time.
Shelf life of butter – list of contents
How long does butter keep?
Butter keeps for 30 days in the fridge. Butter stays fresh for up to 90 days when kept in the BioFresh Meat & Dairy safe at just above 0 °C and low humidity.
Butter should be stored cold. That’s why it’s better to store butter in the fridge.
It makes sense to store butter somewhere airtight and dark. This means that butter stays fresh for longer and doesn’t absorb outside smells.
If you are looking for a dishwasher-safe butter dish that is visually attuned to your fridge, Liebherr has what you need.
It’s important to use clean cutlery with butter; not doing so impacts its shelf life.
The warmer the temperature butter is stored at, the shorter the time it will keep fresh for. This means that butter keeps fresh for about three days outside the fridge. In a cool room, butter keeps fresh for slightly longer. If the sun heats up the room where the butter is kept, this reduces its shelf life.
If you freeze butter, it will keep for up to nine months.
Making butter easy to spread
To enjoy easily spreadable butter, take it out of the fridge about half an hour before eating.
Butter is often kept outside the fridge so that it is always easy to spread. However, butter at room temperature only keeps fresh for about three days.
Keep butter easy to spread and fresh without cooling it
Want easy-to-spread butter for your breakfast in the morning but also want your butter to keep fresh for longer?
In that case, the container you need is called a French butter dish.
This ceramic container has two parts. The cylinder connected to the lid is filled with the soft butter and water is poured into the other section.
The lid is then placed in the water with the butter facing down. The water keeps oxygen away from the butter so that it does not oxidise and go rancid.
The water must be replaced every two to three days.
It is important to know that this method only works up to an ambient temperature of about 27 °C. When the temperature goes above this, the butter needs to be stored in the fridge again.
