The Butter Trick Chefs Love That'll Change Your Cooking Forever

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Mashed previously brought you some amazing butter hacks that you wish you knew sooner, including storing sticks in the freezer to extend shelf life and relying on unsalted varieties for sweet treats. We're here with another impressive butter trick, courtesy of Norma Salazar, chef-instructor of Pastry & Baking Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education's Los Angeles campus. In our exclusive chat, Salazar reveals why using a bench scraper instead of a knife to cut butter is the superior method. 

"Bench-scrapers are sharp enough to cut dough, butter and other ingredients but not too sharp to cut yourself," Salazar explains. That means you can better avoid injuries in the kitchen. However, that's not the only benefit offered by these tools. The flat, wide surface is ideal for carrying butter from your cutting board or counter. As Salazar says, "[Bench scrapers] can easily pick up chopped nuts and herbs off the cutting board to place in a bowl." The size of these tools also perfectly matches up with sticks of butter, making cutting them much easier and more efficient. And when it comes to clean-up, Salazar states that bench scrapers are the perfect tools for tidying up your work area. 

According to chefs, certain cooking utensils are downright useless (looking at you, vegetable spiralizer). On the other hand, bench scrapers are in a league of their own when it comes to versatility and usefulness in the kitchen. In addition to cutting butter and dough, bench scrapers can also be used to trim homemade pasta, dice veggies, crush garlic, and apply cake frosting — among numerous other kitchen tasks. According to Norma Salazar, the key is choosing the right type of scraper. 

"Metal bench-scrapers are intended to cut hard items," says the chef, "whereas plastic bench-scrapers are best used to scrape down the bottom and sides of a bowl and to cut soft doughs that are on a wood bench (preventing the wood from becoming cut and chipped)." Based on Salazar's advice, you may benefit from keeping both metal and plastic bench scrapers in your kitchen. Remember that the hardness of butter can vary according to temperature, and some preparations require it to be cold (such as our bakery style chocolate chip cookie recipe). Cold butter can be quite firm, so a stainless steel bench scraper is the best option for certain recipes. Conversely, plastic bench scrapers have a lot more give than stainless steel, which makes them perfect for cutting room temperature butter and other applications like handling doughs and batters.