The internet loves a food bandwagon to jump on, riding down that all-too-familiar and steep hill of trendsetting until the engine is on fire, the wheels fall off and all the passengers have ejected from their seats. Again, we find ourselves careening down a slick hill lined with compound butter — and we’re headed directly into the brick wall of another trend backlash: butter — and so much more — boards.
First, a little background on the TikTok that brought butter boards to the forefront: On Sept. 16, TikTok user @justine_snacks, whose real name is Justine Doiron, posted a video of her creating a butter board, a dish inspired by a recipe in chef Josh McFadden’s James Beard Award-winning book “Six Seasons.”
“Have you heard of a butter board? This is what one looks like and I want to make them the next charcuterie board,” says Doiron as she pulls out a wooden cutting board shaped like a slice of toast and spread butter onto it she was like frosting a freshly baked cake.
Doiron’s board, full of buttery goodness and flaky salt, lemon zest, edible petals and more churned up 8.5 million views, over a million likes and countless copycats who adorned their butter boards with everything from roasted garlic to halved figs.
It even inspired Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s personal chef to create a vegan version for the high-wattage couple just last week.
In the month since, Doiron’s butter board launched a thousand dips, so to speak, inspiring people to not only use butter to adorn their wooden cutting boards.
Several people on social media have found other deliciously viscous materials to match fanfare and well, much lament, as evidenced by what can only be described as The Butter Board Backlash.
“Let’s make five butter boards with no butter,” says TikTok user @stephcooksstuff, who created a series of videos using spreads like hummus, ricotta, mashed avocado and Nutella, which was the first in her series. Though the video received 593,000 views and 48,700 likes, the top two comments are less than glowing for the butter-board riff.
“My ‘butter board’ is bread, save the dishes lol,” said the top comment under the video.
“Why can’t you just put it in a bowl why does it have to be a board,” added the next most popular comment, who followed their sentiment with a bunch of crying emojis. While most replies to that comment garnered agreement, at least one comment urged “let people enjoy things sometimes,” although no one liked that comment.
Elsewhere on the web, people decried the use of a wooden cutting board to create boards that, while unique, creative and attractive looking, might not work in practice.
There are the more innocent Marshmallow Fluff boards, the daring frosting board and the artistic labneh board, which, to hold olive oil, has been sculpted into a bowl — a dish that might be a more convenient and mess-free way to consume the dip, just to say it.
Perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s cutting board, however, is beloved Vermont ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s ice cream board, which took vanilla ice cream and topped it with crumbled cider donuts, caramel, cinnamon, dipping into it with apples instead of a spoon.
“Butter board, but make it Ben & Jerry’s,” says a voiceover in @benandjerry’s TikTok, which inspired a stitch from comedian Jared Freid.
“Can we stop? Stop. Please stop. This isn’t what God intended. God wanted ice cream in a cup or on a cone and not with an apple,” says Freid in his response video. “If somebody offered me an apple while I was eating ice cream, I would be like are you shaming me?’”
The saturation of butter boards across the internet’s feeds has driven many to take to comment sections and their own feeds to make their voices heard.
“Hear me out: a butter board but the board is made of………bread,” pitched one user on Twitter.
“Enough with the butter boards. They will never be what charcuterie boards are!” declared another Twitter user.
Even celebrities are sharing how they think the trend has curdled.
“No more butter boards,” comedian Chelsea Peretti simply stated on Twitter.
“THE BUTTER BOARDS HAVE TO STOP,” food blogger Gaby Dalkin tweeted in all caps, pleadingly.
“The butter board trend on TikTok started off cute but now it’s gotten out of control with food creators trying too hard by spreading their dinner plate on a board and calling it ______ board,” said famed drag queen Kim Chi on Twitter. “I’ve seen taco board, rice board, ice cream board, etc. I think it’s time to stop!!!”
“Instead of a wooden board that you have to clean afterwards, we’ve been doing an edible butter board,” said Beth Moncel, one half of Instagram account @budgetbytes, in a video lampooning the butter board trend. Moncel spreads a bit of butter onto her “edible butter board,” which in reality is just a slice of toast.
“Wow. Beautiful OG butter board,” said partner Monti Carlo, watching Moncel adding pecans and honey to her toast, slicing it in half and giving one to her and taking a bite.
“We should make an edible cheese board next,” said Moncel before they both laugh at the unintentional invention of a cheese sandwich.
Still, with all the backlash, people are still coming up with new ideas for butter boards, even creating them for the non-humans in our households.
A peanut butter board for dogs was posted on TikTok user @wellnesspetfood’s page, including blueberries, apples, celery and the spread. Many commenters remarked the board might make more of a mess than it’s worth for your pup who probably isn’t as into aesthetics as their person.
“Yeah like it’s definitely not going to get it everywhere on the floor,” commented one TikTok on the video, making a valid point — that is, unless you’re very into mopping your floors.
Still, once your dog licks all up on your cutting board, there is no amount of washing that will remove the bacteria from a dog’s mouth from your board, man’s best friend or not. So, once your pup licks it, that cutting board is theirs now.
