Cold butter is an important ingredient in a lot of recipes because it creates a specific texture. In baked goods like muffins and scones, for instance, cold butter creates space in the dough when the butter melts and evaporates in the oven. In other recipes, like butter sauces, you need ice-cold butter to keep the mixture emulsified. Cutting butter with a knife is a little frustrating, however. If you use a chef’s knife, the broad blade sticks to the butter, and you’ll end up having to pull it off the blade with your hands a lot. A thin-bladed knife like you’d use for tomatoes or cheese works better, but an egg slicer is the best tool for the job.

Egg slicers are designed to make very thin, precise cuts through a hard-boiled egg using wire, not unlike wire cheese slicers. The wire design works so much better than a knife blade because there’s no surface area to get stuck to the soft egg, and the same mechanism works great with sticky butter. The other nice thing about egg slicers is that you can cut several pieces of cold butter at the same time. All you have to do is cut cubes of butter about the same size as an egg, pop them into the slicer, and push the wires down.