Fortunately there's usually markers on the sticks of butter that tell you where to cut for a certain amount. Thanks for all the measurements.
A "stick" is a quarter pound by industry packaging convention. If you are using tub butter, you can use the trick my mother taught me:
Take a measuring cup which will hold more than the amount you want to measure.
If you want a half cup of butter, use a 1 cup or larger measure.
Put cold water into the measure in a determined amount, like a half cup. Add butter until the level of the water is at the level of the amount of butter you need plus the amount of water you started with.
This works with sticks or tubs, or even one blob pounds which is also represented as lb. or #.
Take a measuring cup which will hold more than the amount you want to measure.
If you want a half cup of butter, use a 1 cup or larger measure.
Put cold water into the measure in a determined amount, like a half cup. Add butter until the level of the water is at the level of the amount of butter you need plus the amount of water you started with.
This works with sticks or tubs, or even one blob pounds which is also represented as lb. or #.
In the Philippines a bar of butter is usually 225 grams and this is equivalent to 1 cup. We use the metric system here and are not familiar with lbs and oz. The package has markers printed at the back, so if you need 1/2 cup of butter you just cut the bar in half, if you need 1/4 cup then divide the bar into four and so forth and so on. This bar is also equivalent to 1/2 lb. If you need to convert from oz to grams, 1 oz = 28.35 grams, therefore 1 lb (16 oz) = 454 grams.
Anyone ever heard of a "pat" of butter. From what I've been able to find, it's about a pound in round form (old school terminology)? Not to be confused with a tblsp worth of butter!