You Should Freeze Your Butter. Here's Why

If you're someone who loves to cook and bake with butter, then you might feel like whatever butter you have on hand is constantly not in the state you need it. Things like baked goods or things like toast that need a spreadable dollop usually call for room-temperature butter. Pastry and foods like biscuits, however, must be made with really cold butter. Believe it or not, storing your butter in the freezer could be the answer to all your cooking and baking needs. 

Butter stores in the freezer beautifully because its taste and texture do not change after it has been frozen. Butter can actually go bad after a few months in the fridge if you don't go through it quickly enough, so for those who don't use butter frequently (or spot a great deal), keeping it in the freezer could extend its shelf life (via Taste of Home). If you're worried about having to thaw the butter from frozen to use it, there are a couple of reasons this isn't even a problem.

When butter is frozen, it becomes really easy to grate — and grated butter comes to room temperature much faster than a whole stick. If you need room temperature butter to bake a cake, frozen, grated butter will warm up in no time; if you want butter for toast, grate it directly on while your toast is still hot and it will quickly melt into a spreadable consistency.

If you're someone who loves to make homemade pastry, Epicurious says using grated frozen butter is a great trick for mimicking fraisage, a traditional pastry method. This technique uses the heel of the hand to knead or flatten walnut-sized lumps of pastry dough so that the butter inside the dough is flattened into discs. When you grate your frozen butter, you don't have to go to all that extra effort since the butter will already be in small, thin pieces spread throughout the dough. By having skinny pieces of butter well-dispersed within the dough, you'll create tons of little butter pockets which cause the dough to puff up after the heat hits it in the oven. What you'll end up with is a deliciously buttery, flaky pastry with tons of layers. So no matter what your butter needs, keep a stick or two in the freezer for easier cooking and baking.