Try a butter bell!

They keep your butter sealed, and the perfect spreading temperature in winter and summer!

http://adesignenthusiast.blogspot.com/2011/05/friday-finds-french-butter-keeper.html

I second the butter bell. I love mine! Amazon has quite a few to choose from and they are very affordable. Not only do they keep butter at spreading temperature, but the water creates a seal so that the butter doesn't spoil nearly as quickly as with a dish.

i second the butter bell, i will never go back to the regular butter dish

wow, what a coincidence - i have a shopping cart in another browser tab with a butter dish, i had looked at the butter bells but was unsure. i think i am sold! my problem with the current butter dish is the lack of a handle - i can't get a grip on the cover when i need to, why in the world would one make a butter dish without a handle. i see the one pictured has no handle - am i the only one who has this exasperating problem?

Butter bell! Live in Florida and it keeps butter fresh, despite the heat and humidity. Love it.

I humbly offer this Rubbermaid butter dish, which is less attractive than a butter-bell but closer to your current butter-dish method. It's also light and unbreakable! I have one and, being a butter-at-room-temperature gal, I keep mine in the cabinet.

After breaking my second butter dish in less than a year, I purchased a $2.50 clear plastic one I found at my grocery store. Some things just need to be able to take a beating.

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/le-creuset-stoneware-butter-dish/?pkey=e|butter%2Bdishes|4|best|0|1|24||4&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_-Feature_Recipe_Rule-_-

I have this in red and love it.

So, I just got a butter bell a month or so ago, and our it ended up with a light bluish slime on the side of the bowl and on the butter. We're on a well and I think there might be something funky about our water, but does anyone have any other ideas? I'm going to experiment with bottled water to see if it makes a difference...

Fiestaware makes a nice one.

I use a tiny (knock off) Le Creuset casserole dish, though to your point about durability, they beak when dropped.

I'm not sure what they're really called, but they look like the big casserole dishes, but are only four or five inches in diameter.

Hi, I'm always on the look-out for 'vintage' butter dishes which I find at fleamarkets or second hand shops with dishes. Off course the falling-problem will still be a problem with a ceramic dish. But on the up side I found that a ceramic/porcelain butter dish keeps the butter cooler than plastic and it looks nicer on your table!

I have a couple of favorites. One is stainless steel from the 60's. (Remember all those simple stainless serving pieces fromt he 'Danish Modern' era?) It has a very simple finial handle that is easy to handle, even with slippery fingers. Only 50 years old and showing no wear.

My utility butter dish is an Ikea lucite one that was about a dollar. It has a top that is completely ridged and very east to grasp. If I ever get back to Ikea, I'll get another one.

Both of these are designed to handle a single stick of butter. I think the wider ones are just a little awkward and I buy butter in 1/4 pound prints anyway.

I have something like this. It holds european butter in the shallow section (or two sticks) but I put single sticks in the deep part - easier to hold and butter doesn't slide around. It's also good for general storage.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=glass+butter+dish&gbv=2&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=609l8703l0l9390l17l15l0l0l0l0l266l1578l0.3.5l8l0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=9079206767689241440#

I also have the Le Creuset butter dish, two actually, and like them very much but good butter dishes are VERY hard to find. My big complaint is that the ceramic ones, (including the Le Creuset actually) do not glaze the underside of the lid. The oils from the butter weep up into the pottery of the lid and sometimes actually show as oily spots underneath the glaze. So far, this hasn't happened with my current dishes. I like the idea of a stainless steel one and I think "Trudeau" might make one? I actually have one that belonged to my mother that is silver and looks like a dome on legs. Half of the dome slides back revealing the butter sitting in a glass dish underneath! Now I'm thinking I should dig that out for special occasions. It has the advantage of never getting butter on the lid (a pet peeve of mine) because of its unique construction. :)

I couldn't find one I liked, so ended up using a Madrid depression glass teacup turned upside down over it's saucer. The embossing of the pattern, and the cup handle make it easy to pick up. It's not huge, but it's not so much out that it goes ooky before we can use it up. It holds enough butter to get us through a couple of days - although there are only two of us in the house.

I have a stainless vintage one and LOVE it. It falls all the time (toddlers opening the door of the fridge roughly) and no problems. Although that doesn't help immediately, you could begin a search on craigslist, ebay, etc.

Another vote for a butter bell. I live in the middle of the desert and that wonderful contraption keeps my butter spreadable and fresh throughout the year. The little handle on it keeps it from slipping out of even the most clumsy of fingers, and it looks attractive sitting on the table.

I never knew generic store-brand butter could taste so good until I got a butter bell! Of course the only problem is that I now consume more butter. . .
For the person who had slime on the butter bell, I change the water in mine every 2 - 3 days. It needs much less water than you think, too, just enough to make the seal. Too much and mold shows up pretty quickly.

my wife loves soft butter, I love the butter bell-- the only way to keep butter fresh for an insanely long amount of time so long as you change the water regularly.

To fill, put a stick of butter out in it's paper wrap. When it's pliable (10-20 min), put it into the bell as you unwrap the stick, with the paper opened against your palm, push the butter into the bell, it should hold one single stick. Use the paper to make sure that there are no air gaps behind the butter and it's securely packed into the bell by pressing with your palm.

Do NOT put it in the fridge else the butter is hard. I saw a movie recently where they opened the frig and there was butter bell in there. Why bother?

i love the one I have from anthropologie http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/catalog/productdetail.jsp?navAction=jump&id=973337&parentid=SEARCH_RESULTS&color=095

I have a butter bell, but when I was living alone I found it took so long to go through a stick of butter that it would end up moldy still. Easier to keep it in the fridge and deal with hard butter (ugh) at that point. Now that I'm living with other people, though, I might have to bring it out and try my darndest to change the water more frequently...

I have used the same Tupperware butter dish for 37 years and it is still good as new.

I don't use a butter bell, but I love vintage butter dishes. But I only use the kind that have a knob or handle on top. My favorite resource is eBay, and my sister, who loves to go junking and buys extra butter dishes for me.

I use a vintage Pyrex refrigerator dish (the larger one fits a stick perfectly). It's sturdy, keeps the butter fresh, and it's cute! Can't tell you how many times I've dropped it, too. Plus, no water-changing involved.

Vintage Pyrex butter dish! I keep mine on the counter year-round-- in the summer, the butter sometimes melts down a bit (we don't have air conditioning), but the butter sits in a bit of a recess so we never end up with butter leaking out of the dish. So easy to clean, too, and it fits either 1/2 c cut of butter (the longer, skinnier cuts I grew up with in the midwest, as well as the squatter ones we have in California).

Probably wouldn't be a good idea if you're keeping your butter dish in the fridge (a little precarious for much more than sliding it across your counter), and if you live in a particularly warm climate but want your butter on the counter, it sounds like a butter bell might be your best bet. I adore my Pyrex though. Here's one I've been eying lately.

I use a small, upside-down Pyrex storage dish...not originally intended for butter! I needed a butter dish in a hurry, and that presented itself. The butter goes on the lid, the Pyrex seals on over top--easy and cheap!

I saw mini butter bells at a Tuesday Morning store a few months ago. They hold about 1 tablespoon of butter. These might be a good compromise for people who don't use a lot of butter.

Love my glass butter dish http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LQIC8K/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_img ! We use this upside down (i.e., store one stick of butter in the bowl & use the dish as the lid) & store it on a shelf inside the fridge. This dish is a beautiful, solid & versatile with a retro/mid-century-modern style. When my butter dish kept falling out of the fridge door compartment & eventually broke ... I decided to buy a sturdy glass dish & store it on a shelf inside the fridge. The fridge's butter dish compartment on the door is not the place to store this sturdy, glass dish ... if the door is yanked open or shut, the dish could fly out. We only use that door compartment for covered food/beverages in non-glass containers like extra sticks of butter, yogurt cups, vitamins that must be stored in the fridge, etc.

Amen to the butter bell! We can leave butter in a regular butter dish out on the counter for about 3 or 4 months of the year down here. For the rest of the year we rely on our 3 butter bells. (Yeah, we love us some butter!) They keep the butter at the perfect spreading consistency, and no matter how hot the kitchen gets (sometimes we even use the oven in summer) the butter doesn't get runny. The funny thing is that I learned about butter bells from someone who lived in Canada and used them in the winter to keep the butter softer!