The Worst Food Trend of 2022? Of Course, It’s the TikTok Butter Board

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Imagine you were a stick of butter in 2022. The beginning of the year would've been ordinary enough. But around summertime, things would've gotten chaotic. Your price in the UK would've begun to climb dramatically enough—30%—to make headlines and to become a talking point in the cost-of-living crisis. In the fall, people in the US would worry you'd gotten too expensive ahead of prime baking season.

But the year's most unexpected twist would've been when you found yourself spread on all manner of nonfood surfaces and headlining an unlikely food trend: the butter board.

Indeed, TikTok enthusiasts made it a very big year for butter. They showed the world innumerable ways to serve the dairy product, first by swirling it around on some version of a board, then by adding garnishes that ranged from appetizing—radishes, toast—to ridiculous, such as unripe strawberries (because the trend blasted off in October, way past true berry season in most parts of the US).

I'm a butter fanatic. It was, in fact, the behind-the-scenes star of the best dishes I ate this year, from the browned butter that takes a chocolate tart over the top at Perilla in London, to the melted stream pulling together the salted egg dressing that flavors fried chicken at Brooklyn's Pecking House.

It's just the absurdity of a butter board as a new holiday party trick that makes it untenable to me. A pile of good butter with accouterments certainly has a place on a restaurant table—the trend seems to have officially gotten its start via chef Joshua McFadden in Oregon. He created butter-slathered planks for farm dinners as a way to highlight seasonal ingredients and different breads. It's fine when you're at a table with people you've chosen to eat with, as