One US stick of butter is half a cup, 8 tablespoons, 4 ounces, or about 113 grams. American recipes count butter in sticks, which is fine if you have them and confusing if you do not. The butter converter turns any amount between sticks, cups, tablespoons, grams and ounces.
The stick, broken down
A US stick is the anchor for every other butter measure:
| Measure | Equivalent |
|---|---|
| 1 stick | 1/2 cup |
| 1 stick | 8 tablespoons |
| 1 stick | 4 ounces |
| 1 stick | about 113 grams |
| 1 cup | 2 sticks |
| 1 pound | 4 sticks |
So half a stick is 4 tablespoons or about 57 grams, and a quarter stick is 2 tablespoons or about 28 grams.
Measuring butter without a scale
You do not always need a scale, because US butter wrappers are printed with tablespoon and fraction markings along the side. To get a specific amount, leave the stick wrapped, line your knife up with the marking you want, and cut. The markings make 1 tablespoon, 2 tablespoons and the cup fractions easy to find.
If your butter has no markings, the water-displacement trick works: fill a measuring cup with a known amount of cold water, drop in butter until the water rises by the volume you need, then pour off the water. It is fiddly, so weighing in grams is simpler when a scale is to hand.
European butter and American recipes
European butter is sold in 250 gram blocks, not sticks, so there is no direct stick to reach for. A US stick is 113 grams, a little under half a 250 gram block. The cleanest approach when cooking an American recipe is to convert the sticks to grams and weigh that amount off the block.
Convert any butter measure
Enter sticks, cups, tablespoons, grams or ounces into the butter converter and read every other unit at once. For the gram weights of other baking staples, see cups to grams for common ingredients.