Butter might be one of the most important ingredients in your fridge. It’s used for breakfast breads, hot dinner rolls, and even baking. If you’re like me, you even have your favorite brand of butter.
You might toss the box away once your butter lands on a butter dish, so there’s an important question you should probably know the answer to: does butter expire?
The short answer is YES.
There is a date on the package, which may be identified as a “sell by” or “best by” date. You can typically eat the butter about a week past that date, but if it’s older than that, you should probably toss it.
Photo by Sorin Gheorghita on Unsplash
If you’re not going to store the butter in the package to know the date it expires, make a little note on the fridge.
Storing butter properly is critical. Here are a few tips:
- Store at or below 41 degrees F.
- You can freeze butter for up to 12 months, too.
- Store it in your fridge, but not on the door shelves.
Want to know how to tell if butter is spoiled? It will either be too soft or too hard compared to what it was when you were using it fresh. If the oils in the butter have gone rancid, you’ll smell it, too. If there’s discoloration, it’s likely mold. Any of these signs should tell you to toss the butter.
Here’s the good news. The shelf life of butter is pretty long, so you typically don’t have to worry about it going bad. Most people will use it before it ever starts to go bad.