11 Ways You Can Use Your Leftover Butter Wrappers

Household plastic waste is a growing problem. Every day, the landfills and the waterways fill up with more and more single-use, non biodegradable items, like water bottles, potato chip packets, plastic trays from microwave meals, candy bar wrappers, and so much more. In fact, according to one Greenpeace report, in 2021, plastic waste in the U.S. amounted to more than 50 million tons of plastic waste per household. There are more than 131 million households in the U.S. — adding up all of that waste is complicated math, but let's just say it totals up to a heck of a lot of trash.

But there are small actions that each of us can take to help minimize the amount of waste we throw away. We can recycle, reduce the amount of plastic we buy in the grocery store, and reuse. It might seem insignificant at first, but even reusing small items can make a big difference. If every household in the U.S. re-used their butter wrappers this month, for example, that's millions of pieces of plastic kept out of the landfill and the ocean for a little bit longer.

The good news is that butter wrappers can be re-used in many different ways. They can be a stand-in for parchment paper and cake liners, for example, and they can even help to add an extra layer of flavor to your food when you're cooking. Intrigued? Check out some of our favorite, innovative ways to reuse butter wrappers below.

After spending hours in the kitchen baking or cooking, the last thing you want is for your masterpiece to fall apart as soon as you try to lift it from the tin or the pan. This is why it's essential to grease your cookware or bakeware before you load it up with ingredients. If you're baking, you should do this even if the pan is nonstick. If you don't, there's still a chance that your cake, brownie, or any other baked good will stick to the edges. Your final sweet treat will still taste as good, but chances are the edges will crumble and break.

You can grease your cookware easily by dabbing some oil or butter on a piece of parchment or wax paper and then rubbing it around your dish to add a layer of moisture – this will help your food to slide out easily, and reduce the risk of it sticking and breaking when you remove it. But if you want to save your parchment, you also use old butter wrappers to grease your cookware. Don't clean them before you store them, just fold them away with the last remaining dregs of butter on and pop them in the fridge. That way, they'll be ready to add a handy layer of grease to your dishes as soon as you need them.

If you're baking muffins or cupcakes, a few items are essential. For example, you need a muffin tin (you know the type, it's essentially a standard baking tray, but with separate cups built in). You could also benefit from tablespoons or a cupcake scoop for dolloping out your mixture evenly, and you need liners. The latter isn't absolutely essential, but they will help to stop your mixture from sticking to the sides while it bakes. It's easy to find muffin or cupcake liners in your local store or online, but old butter wrappers work just as well. Plus, re-using them will save you a little bit of pocket change, too.

When you're ready to start baking, simply grab your butter wrappers from the fridge and use them to add a layer of grease to the inside of your muffin tray. After that, push the wrapper into the mold before dolloping over some of your mixture. After that, pop them in the oven to bake and voilà — you've got tasty muffins wrapped in a recycled lining. You can then munch them all yourself or gift them to loved ones. They make for a lovely homemade present for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.

A number of cooking and baking recipes call for softened butter. This is because when butter has melted a little, it's far easier to mix and blend with other ingredients. One of the easiest ways to soften or melt butter is to leave it out at room temperature, but this will usually take up to 45 minutes or so. If you don't want to wait, you can also soften butter in the microwave. It's a quick way to get the results you need, but it's not always the cleanest.

When butter gets too hot in the microwave, it can explode and cause splatters that are a pain to clean up. This is because butter contains water, which turns to steam when it's heated. The steam erupts from the butter, causing splashes all over the place. However, there are a few ways to reduce the level of mess caused by exploding butter.

One way is to set the timer on the microwave for short bursts, like 15 seconds at a time. This causes the butter to melt at a slower rate, reducing the risk of messy explosions. But another way to keep spills to a minimum is to simply use the butter wrapper to form a lid. Just like in this TikTok video from "NYT Cooking," place the wrapper over the bowl of butter. It'll help to keep the splatters in check, and you can use any butter that has splashed onto the wrapper to grease your dishes.

Greens, like broccoli, asparagus, and string beans, are nutritious additions to any meal. They're packed with everything from fiber to antioxidants to essential vitamins and minerals, like iron, vitamin C, and calcium. But when they haven't been seasoned, they can taste bland and boring. This makes them less appealing, and when a food is less appealing, we're less likely to eat it, which means we'll miss out on all the nutritional goodness greens have to offer us.

The key to eating more greens is to make them taste delicious. One of the best ways to do this is through seasoning. Paprika, garlic, salt, and pepper are great flavor-enhancers, for example, but butter can also bring a delicious creamy texture to a pile of greens.

One of the best ways to add a layer of butter to your freshly cooked greens is to remove them from the heat (whether it's the saucepan, the oven tray, or the air fryer) before letting them rest with a butter wrapper over the top for a few minutes. The heat will melt the leftover butter on the wrapper, and it will soak into the vegetables, making them taste extra delicious when you come to eat them.

This trick doesn't just work for vegetables. Plant-based proteins like tofu also taste delicious with a little extra butter, as do plant-based meat products, as well as cuts of meat, like steak and pork chops, and fish, like salmon and tuna.

It's easy to pop to the store and stock up on a loaf of bread, but making bread from scratch has many benefits. For example, you can use hand-selected minimal ingredients (store-bought bread is often ultra-processed), you can customize it to fit your tastes (adding a little honey or some seeds can boost flavor and nutrition), and fill your home with a delicious bread smell. Plus, you can enjoy the satisfying feeling you get after you've baked your own tasty loaf by yourself, from scratch.

Fresh bread is already tasty, but to make it taste extra delicious, you can lightly rub a stick of butter over the top of your loaf. You can also, of course, grab one of those leftover butter wrappers from the fridge and wipe those over the top, too. This will not only add to the taste, but it will also add a layer of softness and moisture to the crust. Afterward, you'll be left with soft, buttery bread that is good enough to enjoy on its own, with your favorite jams or preserves, with a hearty bowl of soup, or in any other format your heart (or stomach) desires.

If you've ever bashed a stack of frozen burgers down on the countertop repeatedly to separate them, or maybe hit a packet of frozen sausages with a rolling pin, you're likely familiar with how frustrating it is when food gets stuck together after it's spent a while hanging out in the freezer.

This usually happens because of excess moisture between the food. The water droplets freeze, sticking the food together, and creating one big block. This is usually referred to as a freezer burn, and it is more likely to happen when food has been exposed to the air in the freezer. According to the USDA, it is safe to eat foods with freezer burn, but it can lead certain sections to dry out and not taste as pleasant.

One way to reduce the risk of freezer burn is to slot old butter wrappers, or pieces of parchment or wax paper, between your burgers (or sausages, or chicken, or anything else that keeps getting stuck together) to separate them and prevent moisture from gluing them to each other. You can reduce the risk of freezer burn by ensuring that you store food in air-tight packaging. After a bag or box has been opened, simply slot the butter wrappers between the food items, before transferring them to a separate container and placing them in the freezer.

Cleaning the fridge is never a fun job. Nobody likes to spend their valuable time cleaning up spilled mustard or dribbles of orange juice from their fridge shelves or drawers. But it's important that fridges are kept clean and sanitary. After all, this is where food is stored. When the fridge is dirty, it increases the risk of mold and cross-contamination. Fridge liners are a handy way to keep your fridge clean without having to spend ages mopping up spills. You can use anything from paper towel to parchment paper to line your fridge, but leftover, clean butter wrappers will also do the job well.

To use your leftover butter wrappers as fridge liners, first clean the wrapper by running it under the tap, before leaving it to dry. Then simply place the wrapper underneath an item that is prone to spill or cause mess (we're thinking half-used condiments, like ketchup or mayonnaise). When the item is all used up and you're ready to throw it away or recycle it, you can simply remove the fridge liner and dispose of it, without having to clean the shelf. If the wrapper is still in a good state, you can just place a new item on top.

Some baking ingredients, like honey and syrup, can stick to the side of measuring cups, which means that when you go to pour the ingredient into your bowl, some gets left behind. To make sure you get all of your ingredients into your mixture, one trick is to simply lightly grease the side of the measuring cups. Like with your baking tins and pans, you can do this with oil or butter, which means that, once again, those leftover butter wrappers will work perfectly. 

Leaving a little bit of your sticky ingredients in the measuring cup when you're baking might not seem like a big deal, but it's vital to get the measurements right when you're baking, which is why greasing is important. In fact, it's often said that while cooking is an art, baking is a science. This is because while a good cook can create delicious food with slightly different ingredients and methods to a recipe, baking often needs to be precise to get the desired results. If you don't have the right amount of flour, sugar, or honey for the recipe, for example, it's going to impact the final taste and quality of the food. The grease from leftover wrappers can play a vital role in making sure everything is as accurate as possible, with nothing left sticking to the side of the measuring cups when it should be in the bowl.

When baked potatoes are cooked to perfection and loaded up with butter and ingredients like cheese, avocado, and chili, they make for a super satisfying lunchtime meal or a dinner side. The best baked potatoes have a light and mushy inside, while the outside is golden brown with a crispy skin.

One of the best ways to achieve the right texture is to lightly grease the outside of the potato before you bake it in the oven. If you do not grease a potato before cooking, it will still be fine to eat, but it won't be quite as crispy. You can also microwave a potato, but the texture won't be quite the same — it'll be a little softer and, again, less crispy. You can grease a potato with olive oil, vegetable oil, margarine, or butter prior to baking or microwaving. This means that just like when you grease a tin, a pan, or measuring cups, you can grease the exterior of your potato with leftover butter wrappers from the fridge. As an added bonus, the extra layer between you and the potato also helps to keep your hands clean.

Dividing up a large block of butter into smaller segments can come in handy on many different occasions. If you're hosting a dinner party, for example, and want to hand out individual slices with bread for each of your guests, or if you're packing yourself or a child off to work or school with soup and bread, it's handy to have a smaller stick of butter on hand.

If you want to neatly divide up a large block of butter, one easy hack is to slot little pieces of wax paper or parchment paper throughout the block to serve as butter dividers. To do this, you simply cut small pieces of paper before folding them around a knife and slicing them into the butter. This trick will also work with leftover butter wrappers, too. Simply wrap the packaging around the knife and slice in gently, just as you would with paper. Slicing with a knife is a clean way of dividing up your butter and it helps to keep your hands mess-free. 

Air fryers are booming in popularity right now, and it's not hard to see why. Air fryers can cook everything from tofu to mushrooms to sausages quickly, and they're easy to use and store. Plus they don't require anywhere near as much oil as deep-fat frying. This means that they're not only a more efficient alternative to frying food, but they're also much healthier, too. Fried food is high in saturated fat, which can lead to high levels of LDL cholesterol in the body, which can be harmful to health.

That said, a little bit of oil or butter is fine in moderation, and it does help to add flavor to certain air-fried dishes, like vegetables, meats, and plant-based proteins, like tofu and tempeh, for example. If you don't want to add lots of fat to your air fryer, but you want a little buttery texture and flavor, you can simply lightly grease the bottom of the tray or drawer with a leftover butter wrapper. It will help to moisten your food and give it just a touch of that creamy mouthfeel you've been craving.