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Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware
- ilaksh 6y agoWow,the Japanese even have superior butter technology.
- dvh 6y agoChinese spends their life finding a way to do things. Japanese spends their life finding the way to do things.
- maroonblazer 6y agoThe 'noodler' tool is brilliant. Butter lasts longer when refrigerated but spreading cold butter on bread is a recipe for destroying the bread or toast. https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/1105453_81_102355_0lIrCESl4.jpg https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/1105453_81_102355_0lI...
- barrkel 6y agoButter also lasts longer when it's covered, as long as the ambient temperature doesn't get too high. We generally keep at least 100g of butter in our butter dish (i.e. under a cover) on the kitchen countertop, more if it's not summer. As a child in the west of Ireland, we'd go through a pound of butter a week. I can't even find butter sold by the pound (or 500g - I'm not fussy) in the UK, blocks are generally 250g.
- sedatk 6y agoas a fan of Kerrygold, I respect Irish butter. For some reason American butter doesn’t even come close. French, perhaps.
- thebooktocome 6y agoMass-market American butter is designed for shareholder profits, not taste.
- spullara 6y agoIn the 70s and 80s margarine was all the rage. Butter, even boring butter, is a step up from that. But I do love some great french butter.
- sleavey 6y agoNot to mention margarine is full of omega 6 oil (linoleic acid) which is horrendously bad for your mitochondria. Incredibly people think it's the healthier choice.
- gabcoh 6y agoHonest question: is it any different elsewhere? If so, why exactly and how do you know?
- 082349872349872 6y agoSwiss milk is also mass-market for shareholder profits, but the demand curve differs. CH: 3,5% 2,5% fat US: 3,25% 2% 1% 0% fat I think I can taste the extra fat in the "full" and "drink" grades, but maybe it's better cow welfare and not just the fat? (direct from a farmer the fat content is over 4%)
- thebooktocome 6y agoEuropean butter is 82% butterfat; most American brands are 80%. American milk can't be sold in Europe because of how adulterated it is with hormones and antibiotics. Meanwhile, European dairy products intended for export to the states still have to satisfy European dairy standards. I bake a lot and I can taste the difference.
- throwanem 6y ago
- Waterluvian 6y agoReally enjoyed reading this. I have a problem with articles that usually either try to bash or over-romanticize Japan. Could definitely use more articles like this one.
- kakkun 6y agoI've always enjoyed stuff by Rain Noe (the author of this article). I believe he has lived in Japan previously, and seems to have a more realistic viewpoint of Japan's pros and cons.
- antiterra 6y agoIt’s not bad but ‘need for order’ and ‘would be too visually chaotic for Japanese sensibilities’ are borderline. Japanese people eat sloppy katsu curry and noodles that are no less chaotic than shredded butter. Also, plenty of people in Japan do not live or work in immaculately organized quarters.
- unscaled 6y agoAlso, as most of the commentators from Japan here noted - most people here have never seen or heard of these utensils. There are obviously some differences in how the Japanese eat stuff, but in general I can't say that Japanese are noticeably fussier when it comes to daily dining habits. I think visitors often get the wrong impressions because what they see is: 1. Nice restaurants (not necessarily expensive ones), which are very particular about how they serve their food. 2. Enthusiastic hosts who go out of their way for infrequent guests - especially guests from abroad. It all boils down to omotenashi - to be exoticizing a little, that's the Japanese spirit of treating guests with the utmost welcome. To be more down to earth, this is all about cultural expectations. Restaurants and cafes try to present a perfect-looking dish, because this is how they are judged by their customers. Some (not all!) hosts might go out of their way and serve using their best dishes, trying to make restaurant-looking food to make good first impressions on a guest.
- GuB-42 6y agoAs a French guy, I like the "grater" knife, I may even buy one, but the "right angle" one feels weird. But I may have an alternative explanation. The article talks about order and Japanese sensibilities, but to me, a right angle cut in a butter slab doesn't look particularly pleasing. Instead, what I think it is to make precise cuts easier when the butter is hard, for example if it came out of the fridge. In this case, it can require a significant amount of force to cut through the slab, and making a straight cut can be difficult. With the tool, you push straight down, so you can use more force. And the right angle shape stabilizes the blade during the cut.
- nhebb 6y agoI don't want to get between a Frenchman and his butter, but I just use a potato peeler for cold butter. I find it works well enough. I've also used a cheese slicer, but I found it harder to control the thickness.
- romanoderoma 6y agoI second this. Or simply use a regular knife, either the teeth or the back, depending on the type of cut you want, to scrape the slab's surface. I love Japanese strive for perfection and their tools, but I feel butter cutting is a solved problem.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoScraping it off the slab works well enough but then spreading cold butter on a slice of bread still sucks.
- romanoderoma 6y agoThe secret is warming the bread or the knife's blade.
- kebman 6y agoA French girl once asked me, "Why is there no salt in your Norwegian butter?" This really got to me. It forced me to ask existential questions like, "Should there really be salt in butter?" But the fact is, putting salt in stuff is an old conservation method. Because of it, unsalted butter was looked upon as fresher, and thus of higher value when used as spread or in cooking. As far as I know, the idea of unsalted butter was actually popularized by French gourmands! But as newer and cleaner dairy production methods came about, the production of unsalted butter became more common. On top of that, the colder climate in Scandinavia means that unsalted butter keeps for longer than in warmer countries. So that's why Norwegian butter isn't salted. But yeah, as for the "grater knife;" I think it just made it to the top of my wish-list for Christmas!
- klyrs 6y agoI am so jealous. Canada seems to do it the worst. Unless you pay for the premium stuff, it comes in 1-lb blocks. Well, 454g blocks, but they aren't fooling anybody. The block is a huge square extrusion about the size of 4 American sticks of butter. It's utterly unweildly and in the decade I've lived here, I haven't seen a butter dish made for these bricks. I'd love to hear from other Canadians how they manage these things.
- ink_13 6y agoI (and my family before me) just cut them into pieces. We have small bowls that will take about a 1/4 square section, so we cut off a fourth along the short axes of the large block, leave that in the dish on the counter, and put the rest back in the fridge. Salted butter keeps at room temperature for longer than it takes for the butter to be eaten.
- wussboy 6y agoI spent weeks trawling Amazon for a butter dish that was explicitly listed as handling a Canadian block. Finally found one and never looked back.
- smnrchrds 6y agoYou can get sticks at any grocery store, they are just slightly more expensive. https://www.loblaws.ca/Food/Dairy-and-Eggs/Butter-%26-Spreads/Butter/Butter-Sticks%2C-Salted/p/20315960_EA https://www.loblaws.ca/Food/Dairy-and-Eggs/Butter-%26-Spread...
- khuey 6y agoHeh, during the early days of the pandemic when there were shortages these 1 lb blocks turned up at my grocery in California marketed as "chefs size" and I loved them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ABCLAW 6y agoA chef friend of mine treated me to a spread of different butters, salted and unsalted, sourced from various areas in Canada. There's top quality butters to be had, but the supermarket stuff isn't it. Maybe try a local farmer's market if you're not up for huge blocks? I find they have wonderful honeys and butters if you find the right one. Haven't found one of the big blocks you're referring to. Where are they stocked?
- rvba 6y agoInteresting. I thought many people prefer "cream butter" so it can be cut easier.
- pwagland 6y agoInterestingly enough, one of the things that I hate about travelling in the US, is that a lot of restaurants only have that creamed butter. Maybe it's an acquired and/or cultural taste, but it certainly isn't what I prefer :-)
- yegle 6y agoIf you live in the US, you can actually purchase these products from amazon.co.jp (Amazon Japan). They support switching the website language to Chinese and English. When you switch to English, everything including the comments are translated. You do need a separate account on this website and you cannot delete the account (unlike Amazon US). Shipping from Amazon Japan is faster than from Amazon US if you are not an Amazon Prime user.
- akdor1154 6y agoI don't know whether to thank you or curse you.
- homero 6y agoSounds fun, I'm making an account. How do you pay? I see internet money and atm options.
- rwmj 6y agoI pay using my ordinary (UK) credit card.
- morganhankins 6y agoLooks like the "right angle" cutter is the Kaijirushi KHS Butter Knife https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/FA-5162-Kaijirushi-KHS-Butter-Knife/dp/B0113NCXCA/ref=mp_s_a_1_9 https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/FA-5162-Kaijirushi-KHS-Butter-...
- cmwelsh 6y agoI like the associated butter tub (frequently bought together section), what are the imperial butter sizes for it at my local American grocery store...?
- spike021 6y agoYeah Amazon JP is great, plus it's handy to already have one if you plan to make a trip to Japan. Both times that I went, I already had an account so it was super easy to order the SIM I wanted from Amazon to my hotel a couple days before arriving. As far as shipping to the USA, YMMV, but when you can order items with delivery here then it's super awesome and generally fairly quick (aside from during COVID times with slower logistics).
- throwanem 6y agoWhy is every butter dish in the world not equipped with those pegs? I can't count the times the stick has slid out of mine while I was just trying to enjoy some toast.
- jernejzen 6y agoUnrelated to article. But in many countries in Europe, even if you live in cities, its fairly easy to find fresh milk from farmers. From there on butter is easy to make by yourself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jelliclesfarm 6y agotrue story: i had always made cream and butter from fresh milk. milk from cow every morning, quick boil. skim cream off the top. collect for a week or so. churn to make butter and buttermilk. when i moved to the united states many many years ago...i kept trying to extract cream from full fat milk and couldnt figure out why i kept failing. having never had store bought homogenised milk before, i had to learn full fat isnt truly 'full fat'. gnarly!
- zemnmez 6y agoas an english person, these tools all seem to be for working on butter that’s fresh out of the fridge; they’d be impossible to use on normal, room-temperature soft butter. There’s something funny about inventing a tool to solve a problem that only exists for such a simple cultural reason (assuming butter goes bad quickly if not refrigerated) Also, really odd how this article thinks of normal, unsliced butter— normal to everywhere else in the world but the US as some kind of pre-technological tradition. edit: a friend pointed out to me that in lots of other places in the world, butter probably just melts to the point of becoming useless, so it has to be kept refrigerated, which is something I never considered before, feel pretty dumb about that
- warabe 6y agoI've been living in Japan since I was born, but I've never knew these products. Thanks for sharing this! I think I am gonna buy this one. https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Butter-BTG2DX/dp/B008MR3OYM/ https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Stainless-Steel-Cutter-Butter-... It seems Butter Cutter(lattice shaped one) can only be used for "soft" butter, but it must be helpful anyway.
- jungletime 6y agoJust curious, how popular are butter croissants in Japan?
- warabe 6y agoIt’s quite popular I believe. You can buy one anywhere. Quality varies, though. Why did you ask me that?
- jungletime 6y agoI'm hoping to visit Japan one day.
- greggman3 6y agoI've lived in Japan for 15yrs. I never considered this strange. I've seen similar butter dishes in the USA. I mean googling "butter dish" one of the first hits is this https://www.amazon.com/Creuset-Heritage-Stoneware-Butter-White/dp/B004E5K5QG https://www.amazon.com/Creuset-Heritage-Stoneware-Butter-Whi... Here's another https://www.amazon.com/Sweese-318-101-Butter-Keeper-Handle/dp/B07VBXVK15/r https://www.amazon.com/Sweese-318-101-Butter-Keeper-Handle/d...
- pattusk 6y agoI've lived in Japan for a long time too and while the dishes are familiar, I've never seen anything like the knives presented in the article. They look more like novelty items you'd get from the home shopping channel than a staple of every Japanese household (still neat though!).
- eps 6y agoButter dishes are commonplace everywhere. That's not what the article is mainly about though.
- vijucat 6y agoMy first day in Japan, I switched on the TV and was immediately thrust into a program where different designs of nail cutters were being analyzed. The angle of the cutting blades, etc; The cutting of the nail was inspected in slow motion video capture, and an Excel sheet of how far the nail flies, how neat the cut was, etc; was filled and a Winner was arrived at. I've never seen anything like it and I watched all 30 minutes of that program! It was a fascinating demonstration of what I believe is called "kaizen". I really like the attention given to everyday objects in Japanese design.
- centimeter 6y agoJapanese designed and manufactured tools are always a delight to use. Whenever I go to Japan I always find myself picking up some new beautifully designed and made object. The last time I was in Tokyo it was lighters. I bought probably $300 of various lighters from Tokyo Pipe Co. I don't even smoke! Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to find products actually made in Japan, and despite what many people want to believe, Japanese obsession with perfection makes a big difference in the quality of manufactured goods. Makita doesn't manufacture in Japan anymore, and quality has suffered. Fujifilm stopped making several of their lines in Japan, and quality suffered. Very sad.
- secondcoming 6y agoYes, the AvE youtube channel has two recent video of Makita drills literally going up in smoke. Which is a real shame as I really needed a drill and was all set for splashing out on a Makita.
- centimeter 6y agoI think their more expensive drills are still pretty nice - the ones AvE keeps blowing up (what the hell is his business anyway?) were bargain bin ones. It's just sad that makita has any bargain bin lines at all. I looked at what the best drill-drivers I could reasonably buy were, and there's almost nothing that's not made in China these days. Even Hilti makes its battery powered tools in China.
- patio11 6y agoFun historical fact: one of the Japanese daily newspapers, during the Occupation, was prevented from publishing an editorial (accurately) describing the Constitution as being written by the occupying powers. They instead described the new Constitution as "smelling of butter", which the censors missed due to lack of familiarity with the idiom. (I once had call to describe a client's request to micromanage which engineers were working on their account as "The client believes my work product might smell of butter" because my coworkers were dancing around the obvious issue so delicately that a Japanese colleague didn't understand what they weren't saying. That got some stares. "What can I say; I learned nuance from the best.")
- perakojotgenije 6y agoDo you have a reference for this newspaper trivia? I've just mentioned this "butter smell" to a friend of mine who lives in Japan and got told that it's not a thing and that it doesn't exist.
- amelius 6y agoLives in Japan, or was born and raised in Japan?
- perakojotgenije 6y agoLives in Japan since 2 years ago
- tantalor 6y agoSounds like you are the one lacking credible references.
- VRay 6y agoFWIW I never heard of that either, despite living in Japan on and off for a couple of years, marrying a Japanese woman, and being decent at Japanese My guess is that it's just a 1960s meme that's fallen out of use Actually, I've never seen or heard of any of the butter-related stuff.. Maybe those butter tools are a regional thing, or they're relatively unknown. I've never seen them on TV, and I couldn't find any butter dishes for sale when I was looking for one in Tokyo, so I ended up having to use a plastic box from the dollar store. My in-laws were furious when I kept hiding butter in a tray outside of the fridge so it'd stay soft, and all their friends agreed with them that I was being a crazy foreign fool
- gorgoiler 6y agoRefrigeration is for the butter that’s on deck. The butter pat at bat is always kept at room temperature. Culture, here, is part of the local culture: one of the three butters I regularly stock is always a little rancid. It is also unpasteurized a la mode Normande. (Apologies to actual French people.)
- toolslive 6y agoThis is not Japanese Only. I'm Belgian, and my mother (a boomer) has all of these. However, they are not 'tableware': they are never put on the table for a guest to be used; they are reserved for the cook's use only. The cutters also have notes on them like (25g,50g,...). Might it be that this is just lost knowledge?
- neximo64 6y agoOr maybe it was bought from Japan?
- toolslive 6y agoNo. definitely not. Just asked my wife, and her mother has'em too. We ourselves don't have them.
- com 6y agoMy folks had a variety of butter curling/ribbon ing/noodling implements, which was strange because we lived in Indonesia with locally-available butter options from a can or pretty wild water buffalo butter custom made by local farmers for the crazy expats.
- twic 6y agoYes, i remember seeing the rasp-type butter knife in the '80s or '90s in the UK.
- bazzargh 6y agoI'd seen most of these before too (UK/Ireland), a butter curler is common and cheap. However the right angled curler is new to me; it seems to be a consequence of their butter dishes being different tho? My butter dish (and most of the ones I've ever seen here) looks like: https://www.porzellantreff.de/en/Friesland-Ammerland-Blue-Butter-Dish-p32436.html https://www.porzellantreff.de/en/Friesland-Ammerland-Blue-Bu... (a flat plate with a cuboid lid), so straight butter knives with a curler edge can work right to the last of the butter, where the photos in the article show a cuboid dish with a flat top - the right-angled knife is going to be needed to reach the butter when the butter has been used to below the rim of the dish.
- kwargs 6y agoBarely a week passes without a japanese article.
- Freak_NL 6y agoThis article makes me wonder about the shapes butter is sold in worldwide. Everyone who ever looked up a recipe online knows Americans use those 113g 'sticks' of butter (this seems to be the exotic option), but it looks like most regions use bricks/slabs. The Japanese ones look to be standardized on 200g. A lot, if not most, of Europe seems to do 250g bricks, which often have a printed measure on the inside of the wrapper to help you cut off 50g pieces for baking. Canadian butter seems to come in huge unwieldy blocks of 454g (four US 'sticks'). Any other form factors in common use?
- 082349872349872 6y agoWe buy 200g (table, in tub) and 250g (cooking, as slab, with wrapper measure) but it looks like there's a wide variety https://www.coop.ch/fr/nourriture/produits-laitiers-oeufs/beurre-margarine/c/m_0084 https://www.coop.ch/fr/nourriture/produits-laitiers-oeufs/be... of which I'd say the other I most commonly see are 15g (single service). Edit: looks like you all have more than 250g and 500g, but not as much more: https://www.ah.nl/producten/zuivel-eieren/boter https://www.ah.nl/producten/zuivel-eieren/boter
- Freak_NL 6y agoYeah, in the Netherlands it is almost exclusively 250g bricks (excepting tubs for spreadable butter blends and margarine of course). Variations exist mainly for high end butter and bulk packaging.
- dawnerd 6y agoIn the states we've been getting more and more 'European' butter thats sold in 227g slabs. I do prefer the sticks, they seem to keep a little longer and make baking easier.
- derbOac 6y agoYeah I see a variety of forms. Usually sticks which I prefer also but also "two stick"ish and "four stick"ish slabs. I also see logs of rolled butter, which are about three sticks worth or so rolled into a cylinder. I also see square slabs, maybe the mass of a stick or so, and sometimes tubs. The tubs are convenient for spreading but not as much for baking. I usually prefer the sticks, as you don't have to cut the larger slabs.
- needle0 6y agoFWIW, I’m a Japanese native living in Japan and have never seen any of these unusual butter knives. I wonder where they’re sold.
- tapland 6y agoAnd I’m a Swede and have seen them all sold in stores, although the grid one is rare nowdays (we use prepackaged serving size ones if needed). And the butter cover looks about the same size as ours.
- johnchristopher 6y agoTotally OT: I wanted to read the article but the constant moving items on the right column and the whack-a-mole game to add them to adlbock got me off the site. Oh, wait there's a reader mode I forgot to try. /rant
- ogogmad 6y agoDo people who are lactose intolerant - like most Japanese people - have any issues eating butter? Or is the butter sold in Japan adapted to remove lactose?
- thinkingemote 6y agoCheese has lower levels of lactose generally. Probably the same with butter?
- ekianjo 6y agoButter is so pricey in Japan that you would not risk eating much of it. Most pastries are devoid of it (even croissants, which make for a surprising taste when you know the real thing).
- ekianjo 6y agoThe format of the butter in Japan is similar to the European one in shape, but not in size. The typical size is Japan is 250g which is much smaller than what you find in Western Europe, and way more expensive per gram as well. Also, butter is regularly out of stock because of the JA mafia.
- pantalaimon 6y ago250g is the standard size in Europe too, at least in Germany https://static.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/425/036/590/0255/front_de.4.full.jpg https://static.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/425/036/590...
- benhurmarcel 6y agoSame in France and Spain. 250g is the standard size.
- jansan 6y ago250g is the standard weight of a piece of butter in Germany. Btw, our German butter tableware is nothing to be sneezed at, either. Here is my butter dish (to be fair, designed by an American): https://www.pinterest.de/pin/396527942192892955/ https://www.pinterest.de/pin/396527942192892955/
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI like the french butter dish: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_butter_dish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_butter_dish Takes advantage of butter being hydrophobic, and stores it upside down!
- kansai-ben 6y agoCurrently living south of Tokyo, and in my years I've never seen these kinds of knives. Using normal knives is, well, the norm.
- monadic2 6y agoHow come you never see stuff this useful at Target?
- kazinator 6y ago> Both Westerners and overtly Western things were referred to as bata-kusai, "kusai" being Japanese for "stink." Although that is a literal meaning, -kusai functions as a suffix which creates an adjective from a noun indicating that something has the quality of that noun, and that the quality is undesirable. In this role, it doesn't indicate a smell. It basically means "-like" or "-ish", with a negative slant. For instance "ao" refers to the blue/green color and also to an unripe state of plants or immature state. "aokusai" refers to a raw vegetable taste or smell, like cut grass, or something unripe for consumption; also to an inexperienced person, greenhorn. "inakakusai": unsophisticated hick, country bumpkin. "mendoukusai": troublesome, bothersome. "usokusai": seemingly false, contrived, questionable. ("uso" -> lie). "oshiroikusai": (it. smelling of face powder) coquettish.
- vldr 6y agoLPT: In the Netherlands we have cheese slicers. They also work really well on hard, cold butter.