Butter converter

How much is a stick of butter?

In the US, one stick is ½ cup, or 8 tablespoons, or 4 ounces — a quarter of a pound, since four sticks make 1 pound (Land O’Lakes). By weight that is 113 grams.

Where does 113 grams come from?

A stick weighs 4 ounces, and the avoirdupois ounce is exactly 28.349523125 grams (NIST Handbook 44), so 4 oz = 113.4 g. The USDA FoodData Central entries for salted and unsalted butter list 1 stick as 113 g, 1 tablespoon as 14.2 g and 1 cup as 227 g.

How many sticks of butter are in a cup?

Two. One cup of butter = 2 sticks = 16 tablespoons = 8 ounces = about 227 grams.

Example

A recipe asks for 150 g of butter. 150 ÷ 113.4 = 1.32 sticks — one stick plus about 2½ tablespoons (150 ÷ 14.17 = 10.6 tablespoons in all).

How much is half a stick of butter?

Half a stick is ¼ cup, or 4 tablespoons (Land O’Lakes) — 2 ounces, or about 57 grams.

How many tablespoons are in three quarters of a stick?

Six. A stick is 8 tablespoons, so 3/4 of a stick is 6 tablespoons, which is 3/8 cup, 3 ounces or about 85 grams.

Is a block of butter sold in metric countries the same as a stick?

No. In metric countries butter is usually sold by weight, for example in 250 g blocks, which is a little more than two US sticks (250 ÷ 113.4 = 2.2 sticks). Convert by weight, not by the number of packs.

Is it better to measure butter by weight or by volume?

By weight. A tablespoon of cold, firm butter is hard to pack without gaps, and melted butter measured by volume can differ from solid. Using grams or ounces avoids both problems.

How the conversion works

All the units are tied to the US stick of butter, which is 4 ounces, 8 tablespoons or ½ cup. One tablespoon is 3 teaspoons and 2 tablespoons make an ounce, so everything else follows from those relations. The weight in grams comes from the ounce, which is exactly 28.349523125 g, so a stick is 113.4 g. The USDA lists butter as 14.2 g per tablespoon and 227 g per cup, which agrees with that rounded value. The converter fills in all units at once from the one you enter.

Worked example

A recipe asks for 3 sticks of butter. That is 1.5 cups, 24 tablespoons, 12 ounces, 0.75 pounds or 340 grams. For a smaller batch that needs 6 tablespoons, the same conversion gives 0.75 stick, 0.38 cup, 3 ounces or 85 grams. For a European recipe with 250 g, you need 2.2 sticks, which is 17.6 tablespoons.

Common mistakes

• Mixing up a cup of butter with a cup of other fats. Butter is 227 g per cup. Oils, shortening and other fats have different densities, so the weights are not the same.
• Treating a tub of spread as butter. Whipped butter contains air, so a cup of it weighs less than a cup of regular butter, and light spreads contain more water. The converter is for regular butter.
• Rounding stick weights too early. Rounding 113.4 g to 110 g for each of several sticks adds up to a visible error in a large batch.

Sources and related calculators

Stick, tablespoon and cup equivalents: Land O'Lakes butter measurement guide; weights: USDA FoodData Central entries for butter; ounce definition: NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C. Related: cooking measurement converter, baker's percentage calculator and recipe scaler.