Stanley Tucci's Corn-Buttering Trick Delivers A Built-In Edible Bonus

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Look, we love Stanley Tucci, with his calm presence, culinary passion, and cutting film performances. But he's, like, a classy guy who enjoys fine wine and quality ingredients. We didn't exactly expect him to come up with a corn-buttering trick that will really and truly rock your world. But here we are.

In his memoir, "Taste: My Life Through Food," Tucci describes the hack: "A piece of homemade bread was buttered and then used to slather the salted ear of corn, thus, in true Italian fashion, creating two dishes out of one, the ear of corn being the first dish and the homemade bread (now saturated with the melted butter, salt, and sweetness from the buttered kernels) being the second." Have you ever read a more evocative parenthetical in your entire life?

Warm, homemade bread slathered in butter is already a slam dunk, but then rubbing said bread onto your salted corn is a stroke of genius. It's so much easier than, say, a knife, which the pat of butter always falls off, or a napkin, or your hand, which all get extremely messy. Plus, none of those options leave you with a perfectly buttered and salty piece of homemade bread to chow down on.

Now that you know a slice of bread is all you need to easily butter corn on the cob, thanks to Stanley Tucci, we're here to continue to level-up your corn buttering experience. First, you can always rescue mediocre corn on the cob with sumptuous compound butter. But that sort of prep takes a lot of forethought.

If you don't have that kind of time, don't have any bread laying around, or are gluten free, another easy way to butter corn on the cob is to take a whole stick of butter out of the fridge, set it on a plate, and rotate your steaming hot corn on the cob right on top of it. Your fingers will stay greaseless and grippy, and the whole ear of corn will be buttered in a matter of seconds. The only disadvantage of this method is that the whole stick of butter will be warped and corn-y. But if you make sure to use this method with lots of friends ... or if you plan to down a bushel of corn yourself, you won't waste too much butter.

Some of Stanley Tucci's food moves have been controversial, like his gin-based paloma, but there's no denying that buttered bread rubbed all over corn on the cob is an all-time great idea. So go forth. Slice, slather, and enjoy.