The $12 Tool I Use Every Week During the Summer

Summer lovin’ happened so fast with Butter Boy. And it was grease-coated fingers from buttering corn that led me to bringing him into my life. 

During peak corn season in 2020, I was living with my family in upstate New York during lockdown and we had access to some of the freshest, most succulent corn I’ve had in my life. We would buy corn almost every week, and every week we’d lament the same problem: The stick of butter gets real gnarly when you use it to butter corn directly from the stick. 

Little bits of grill marks or corn silk would get embedded into the stick of butter and we would just wrap it back up and shove it back into the fridge door until it was corn time again. But it was half melted and re-formed in a spooky way, and even if the wrapper was used as a butter buffer, whoever was in charge of the buttering had greasy fingers afterward. 

Then, fate — or, well, targeted ads — intervened. I got an “items you may like” alert about the Butter Boy Butter Keeper & Spreader when I was looking to replace my parents’ old corn-on-the-cob holders (so I could steal their vintage ones). It was the unitasker of all unitaskers, but it was a singular messy task we were repeating over and over again. 

Butter Boy was the solution to our buttery-fingered woes. It holds about a half stick of butter so you can easily add butter to corn or, really, anything, without the mess. The reservoir for the butter is made for an East Coast 1/4-pound stick that is long and skinny. I’m out west and West Coast butter is shorter and stouter, so our butter has to be trimmed to fit. Still, it’s less wasteful and messy than trying to butter corn without the Butter Boy. Once the butter is in, you just push up from the bottom to slather butter onto fresh corn on the cob.

Plus, the little smiling face sitting in the fridge — because you can also store butter in it — brings a moment of joy every time I catch a glimpse.

Butter Boy has now been a part of the Whitney family for three years, and he’s still going strong. I moved with him across the country to Los Angeles and have used him for farmers market corn in the hot months, and even took him on a vacation to a rental house in Palm Springs last year. 

Recently, I found out that there’s also a Butter Girl (currently unavailable, sadly) and a Butter Bunyan (you know, like Paul Bunyan; he has a mustache, ax, lumberjack plaid outfit, and two sets of “babe” corn holders shaped like both ends of a pig). It’s slightly unsettling and incredibly specific, but you butter believe I’m getting Butter Bunyan for my family so that Butter Boy and Butter Bunyan can live in harmony on both coasts, making life more corny and less messy every day.

Buy: Talisman Designs Butter Boy Butter Keeper & Spreader, $11.99