8 Foods That Taste Better With A Pat Of Butter

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"Everything's better with butter" is a common phrase, and for good reason. Granted, part of that reason is decades-old ad campaigns waged by the American Dairy Association, which drove the notion into consumers' minds. Celeb chefs like Paula Deen and Julia Child have also eloquently pounded the idea home (Child is famously quoted as saying, "With enough butter, anything is good"). But the other part of the delicious equation is ... it's true. It's simply a fact that adding butter makes so many foods richer, tastier, and just overall enhanced in almost magical ways.

Narrowing things down a bit ("everything" would make for a ridiculously long list, after all), we've pinpointed some specific foods that absolutely, unequivocally need a pat of butter if you want them to reach their flavor potential. We could also get into the various types of butter and specific best practices for using them. At the end of the day, any variety has the potential to work its wizardry on food. So, for our intents and purposes here, we'll leave it to your culinary creativity to decide which brand of butter you want to slather on when duplicating these dairy-enriched creations. If you still feel like you need some recommendations, though, pretty much every revered chef has their go-to. Ina Garten's favorite butter, for instance, is Beurre de Baratte, a pricey French variety with flaked sea salt. But you don't need to break the bank to execute a scrumptious butter hack — an ordinary supermarket product will do just fine, too. (If you want a rec that's easy to locate, Kerrygold has been found to be the best store-bought butter brand.) Now, onward to buttery bliss!

In the U.S., we're all about spreading mayonnaise on savory sandwiches, so it may come as a surprise that the British often put butter on theirs — but when you understand the reasons behind the practice, it starts to sound like a trend that should cross the pond. 

We've already established that butter adds yummy flavor to virtually everything, and sandwiches are no exception — the subtle sweetness of the dairy product balances and accentuates salty cold cuts and also helps them adhere to the bread better. In addition to the meat-and-cheese variety, the Brits also put butter on jam sandwiches, because it adds a lubricating element to help keep the bread from tearing when you're spreading the fruit. Buttering one's bread before applying other sandwich condiments additionally adds a barrier that keeps one's bread from getting soggy. On the flip side, it simultaneously adds its own brand of moisture to prevent dryness. In other words, don't knock it until you try it. 

You may already be adding milk to your oatmeal and other hot cereals, but butter is another dairy add-in that similarly brings creaminess and so much more to the breakfast staple. Dropping a pat into your finished cooked cereal lends a silky texture, and the fat in the butter acts as a flavor carrier to help more evenly distribute and more fully develop your cereal's spices or sweeteners, making that hot sauce, garlic, cinnamon, brown sugar, or whatever flavor jam shine much more fully. 

In addition to finishing your cereal with a dollop, you can also toast your oats in butter at the start of the cooking process for another big flavor boost. Toasting them not only adds notes of nuttiness and caramelization, but when the oats absorb the butter, it results in a softer final texture. Pro tip: Toasting your oats in brown butter — or stirring in brown butter at the end — takes the dish even further into the flavor stratosphere, making it almost dessert-like in its deliciousness. You're welcome!

Frying and scrambling eggs in butter is a given, but I must confess that the notion of putting butter on a boiled egg has never once occurred to me in my multiple decades of life. But apparently, it's a thing, lending an Eggs Benedict-esque lusciousness to the somewhat banal breakfast staple. It could be easily argued that the boiled version of an egg is its most simplistic form, but adding a pat of butter on top of that solid, little white orb is evidently quite transformative. When the rich dairy staple combines with the (also rich) boiled yolk, it's a creamy, velvety match made in heaven. Using a salted or compound butter takes the boost even further, with flavor profiles like garlic and herb making particularly scrumptious toppers to heap over (and melt into) your eggs.

When I was in first grade, a lady came to my school classroom and taught us how to make butter by putting cream inside a mason jar and then shaking it — until your arm fell off or butter formed, whichever came first. She then produced saltine crackers for us to spread the pale, newly churned substance onto, so we could sample the fruits of our labor. That mystified me, as it seemed honestly unusual, even to a 6-year-old with limited culinary sophistication, to put butter on a saltine. However, then I tried it, and I was a believer. 

Something about the cool creaminess of the butter and the savory, salty crispness of the cracker forms a perfectly satisfying snack when paired together. The spread simultaneously amplifies and mellows the saltiness, too — don't ask me how; it's food voodoo. Whatever the culinary witchery that makes this combo great, it's one I highly recommend trying — please try toasting your crackers in a compound butter of your choice, if you feel fancy. As an added note, while my butter and cracker expertise begins and ends with the saltine hack (it's the only pairing I've personally tried), others heartily recommend spreading the rich dairy good on additional types of crackers, including grahams.

Most have at least heard of the concept of a butter burger. Fast-food chain Culver's is famous for its version (though, despite the name, Culver's sandwiches only include butter on the buns, not the meat patties themselves). Adding butter to the meat is where it's at, though. You can fry the patties in it, dollop it on top, or mix it right into your ground beef blend. (Technically, you could do all three, but your cardiologist might not approve.) Whichever approach you take, the result is added richness, flavor depth, juiciness, and a beautiful, caramelized crust on the meat. In a word, yum.

It started as a very Simon and Garfunkel-esque duet on the animated comedy "Family Guy," but apparently butter on a Pop-Tart really is frickin' good (and lots of people declared on social media that they were singing its praises long before Peter Griffin). Similar to the way adding butter significantly amplifies pie crust, it does the same for the dough shell of a toaster pastry, deliciously combating dryness, softening the outer layer, and generally adding butter's magical goodness to the sweet pastry. Whatever type of tart you're toasting, butter's fat content, again, enhances the included flavors, and it gives a freshly baked quality to the definitely not fresh treats. As one Redditor put it, "Butter is pure fat; there's no way it's not gonna taste amazing on [Pop-Tarts]." We concur.

Is anything better than chocolate? That pretty much sums it up — chocolate is widely considered the world's ultimate indulgence. Yet, apparently, even this iconic snack of the grocery gods can be improved with a little butter. In an Instagram reel, a private chef with more than a million Instagram followers shared that a sweet treat of perfect proportions is achieved by placing a pat of cold butter on a square of dark chocolate and then topping it with a little sprinkling of flaky salt. Nothing more to do after that but sink your teeth in, and the melt-in-your-mouth (literally) results are a bit reminiscent of chocolate truffles.

Kourtney Kardashian helped popularize a similarly simple dessert pairing that is by no means new (it reportedly dates back, no pun intended, to the Middle East and Levant a few thousand years ago) and whose taste has been modernly likened to cookie dough. The minimalistic formula for creating this treat is butterflying a medjool date (slicing it open lengthwise but keeping the two halves attached), removing the pit if there is one, inserting a pat of cold butter, and generously sprinkling on salt (Kourtney's prescription is flaky sea salt, but you can use any type that suits your palate). This simple, sweet snack is so yummy that its tasty goodness spread virally across the internet once modern munchers caught wind of it.