this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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You know what's the real bullshit? Listing melted butter as an ingredient. Mother fucker, who keeps melted butter on hand? Make the ingredient oil, or make melting it part of the instructions!
This is such a tiny hill to stand on, and I love it.
"Melt butter!? How the hell do I do that!?"
"What am I, a chemist?"
I'm fine with melting butter, but show me where in the prices I'm supposed to do it.
The pancake recipe my wife likes me to make say something like:
Milk
Flour
Sugar
Egg
Melted, slightly cooled butter
add the lemon juice to the milk and let it thicken while preparing the dry ingredients.
Beat the egg into the milk then whisk in the melted butter.
If it was slightly cooled at the beginning it's not whiskable by the time I get to the step. If it's solid at the beginning it's not slightly cooled when I go to whisk it in (it will be straight out of the microwave)
...
As someone else said, it's an extremely small hill but I don't think you're going to push me off of it.
Sugar in pancakes? That's my hill now
Lol. Not one I'll try to push you off of. For reference il the recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of sugar compared to two cups of flour and two cups of milk.
It's probably got to do with Americans measuring everything by volume, they have to melt it to measure it.
Our butter stick wrappers have volume measurements on them. I've never melted butter to measure it.
So then why don't you measure butter in centimetres? Oh, inches, I'm sorry.
Our butter is usually marked out in tablespoons. It's also just known that a stick of butter is half a cup.
Every person measuring butter in cups (melted or not) is deranged and not worth listening to.
To be fair that kind of goes for measuring anything in cups. Measuring by weight is way more precise (although less convenient).
How's that less convenient: You take the scales, take a bowl, hit tare, put stuff in, hit tare, rinse and repeat. Also just for the record milk and cream can be assumed to have the same density of water in the home kitchen, 1g/ml, oils get as low as 0.8g/ml which may or may not make a difference. Usually there's plenty of tolerance.
Where things get awkward with common kitchen scales is spices and stuff in case you want repeatability with small batch sizes. OTOH milligram scales aren't expensive, just don't expect to use them to weigh out a whole bread they take like 100g or so max.
Measuring spoon go brrr... Is what I would say if I grew up in imperial hell.
Don't underestimate the degree of stupidity that leads to measuring both liquids and solids by volume still being a thing.
I don't even get how you're supposed to do that without trial&erroring melting enough in the microwave. I know butter has the measurements written on the side (in Canada/USA at least) but it doesn't help if you don't have a fresh stick of butter
Truth
As much as I want to agree with @Stamets on the basis he's a cool guy, this is an argument I can get behind.
As someone who can't eat butter, 99% of the time you can make this move with a neutral-tasting cooking oil. Some folks are in love with how butter changes a dish's flavor or richness, but there are many other ways to add fatty acids and glutamates to food. So it really is kind of bullshit - save time and reach for the vegetable oil.
The only exception are dishes that need the cooking fat to solidify in the fridge. Coconut oil and lard (suet too - but who has that?!) can work for those uses, but think ahead and beware of your melting points. You don't want to deliver an oily mess of food to a friend's house because it was warm out.
Remember though that butter is only 80% fat. Especially relevant for baking recipes where you have a ton of butter and if you replace that can make it denser and greasier. E.g. 200g butter you should replace with ~160g oil and 40ml water.