The Best Tool For Cutting Butter Isn't A Knife

It feels like second nature in a kitchen: if you need to cut something, use a knife. But while different knives are perfect for different uses, the best tool for cutting butter isn't actually a knife at all. Professional kitchens often use a bench scraper to partition sticks of butter as needed, often for recipes where the butter doesn't require precise measurements.

A bench scraper, also known as a dough scraper, is a kitchen tool with a sturdy but unsharpened edge that's usually made of metal, with a wider handle opposite the edge. Bench scrapers are meant for handling raw dough and clearing cutting boards, but their design also makes them ideal for cutting sticks of butter into small cubes for quick, even melting.

Bench scrapers leave room for cut butter to climb up their broad sides as you continue slicing the stick into small pieces. Chopping with dull knives is extremely dangerous, but using the dull edge of a bench scraper in this way is perfectly safe. Its ease of use in pressing downward on the handle and into the stick conveniently applies just enough force to almost effortlessly break the butter up.

Bench scrapers are one of the essential baking tools you should have in any kitchen, as they're valuable for a range of applications beyond baking. Do note, though, that bench scrapers are different from bowl scrapers, which are useful in their own right. But the curved edges and more pliable shapes that make the latter great for scraping mixing bowls clean also make them a less appropriate, though technically workable, choice for cutting butter.

One of the more overlooked reasons that bench scrapers are ideal for cutting butter has nothing to do with either item. It's actually a good way to protect your knives from premature dulling.

Of course, even refrigerated butter is sufficiently soft enough that it won't measurably dull a knife. However, the cutting board underneath the butter will gradually dull your blade. High-quality wood or plastic cutting boards are best, and glass cutting boards are especially damaging to knives, but it's ideal to spare your knives from any unnecessary blade contact. Cutting butter with a bench scraper saves those sharp knife edges for when they are really needed, helping to keep you safe while working in the kitchen.