The story, reported by the Daily Mail, offers a clever solution for an age-old problem — hastening the softening of butter needed for a recipe. But it also calls to mind a slightly off-color joke that has its punchline “You should see the way he makes donuts.”
The trick? Placing the butter under your armpit. Food & Wine even has a video showing the method:
According to the Daily Mail article, the armpit is generally the warmest external part of the body. Room temperature, in contrast, averages 69.8 degrees, meaning the armpit will shave off time considerably from the conventional alternative or leaving the butter out on the kitchen counter.
Needless to say, you are going to want to put the butter in a plastic bag before inserting it under your arm. But that’s assuming you and other members of your household are going to want to use butter that has spent time in an area where the sun don’t shine.
By the way, the video above outlines other techniques for speeding up the softening of butter, including filling a glass jug with boiling water, allowing it to heat up for 5 minutes, discarding the water, and then covering the stick of butter with the jug face down for about 20 minutes. The butter won’t have the same cachet that it will having spent time under someone’s arm. But maybe, as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.
