If you are on TikTok or Instagram, you know about butter boards, the entertaining trend that has invaded your timeline and gatherings. Butter boards, which first appeared in chef Joshua McFadden’s 2017 cookbook Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables, have taken over social media feeds in the last couple of months.
If you happen to have a life outside of social media (congrats!) and have never heard of this phenomenon, here is all you need to know about a Butter Board.
First, at its most basic, a butter board is similar to a cheese or charcuterie board. Softened butter is decoratively swooped and swished onto a cutting board, sometimes shaped to look like an ocean wave or molded to hold the shape of a flower. In some cases, the butter is garnished with toppings like flaky salt, seeds, and spices. Sliced bread, crackers, or crunchy vegetables like radishes or carrots are served alongside for dipping.
Like other trends, butter boards have gotten out of hand. Now you can find every kind of board — bagel boards with cream cheese, French fry boards with mayonnaise, and ketchup/condiment boards. There are even soup boards, which should be a board with one or more soups in small bowls accompanied by crackers and soup-like accessories, but there’s actually one on TikTok where the soups have been dropped onto the board and are running off of it in some misplaced homage to food anarchy.
One of the first issues with butter boards is food safety. Many folks construct their butter creations on top of wooden cutting boards, which are the least sanitary cutting boards. Wood is an organic material that is porous and fibrous, so wood cutting boards can absorb bacteria from meat, fish, or dairy placed on them. It’s generally good practice to never use a wood cutting board when cutting proteins — you should extend that practice to butter boards, too.
If you’re committed to assembling your butter board on a cutting board, plastic cutting boards are your best and most sanitary option. There are plenty of super cute plastic cutting boards on the market to choose from. Or use a ceramic crudité platter or a plate. You can even assemble individual boards on small plates so each person gets their own.
Since Butter Boards made TikTok’s Top Ten in Food Trends for 2022, it doesn’t look like they’re going away any time soon, and a butter board can be a memorable and tasty addition to your next party. You can make them savory by adding spices or olives or even anchovies and set out veggies or bread/crackers for dipping. You can make them sweet by making a honey butter, or adding fruit spreads/jams or even vanilla beans to the butter, then placing cupcakes, cookies, or shortbread for dipping. If you’d like to get more extravagant, go for the seafood like lobster, crab, shrimp, or even caviar. You can also level up by making a compound butter.
As Barbra Streisand famously sang in Funny Girl, “Life’s Candy and the Sun’s a Ball of Butter.” Or in this case, a Butter Board.
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