O.K. I must be really lazy. I do not even cut them. I just take them out of the fridge and throw them in and turn it on high,
You know there is a stage that is right between curdled and done. It looks like it is done if you are a newbie. It is super soft and would probably not be stable. One of my first trials was like that.
I don't use pasturized egg whites, but I was at Costco and they had them 8.50 for 6 cartons.

I've never had luck with the carton egg whites... I have this curse with them I think. The just never whip up. I only tried twice... eggs from the shell work, so I figure what the hell. I do feel bad chucking all the yolks though. I can only use so many, and when you go through as many eggs as I do... you just have to chuck them if you don't have an immediate use for them.

Oh and I totally know that stage you are talking about... when there are no pieces of butter, but it's still *really* soupy. Sometimes you don't get that curdled stage at all if your butter is really soft so you have the soup stage the whole time. BUT you do need to keep whipping it so it can fully emulsify and be stable.

so when you put the butter in cold, how long do you wait between each butter chunk addition? I have heard to wait until each piece is incorporated until adding the next, but also heard just to slowly add a piece at a time...which do you SMBC gurus do?

sugar, i drop them in a few chunks at a time, I never wait.

I am feeling a little more confident about it now. Thanks Jamie!

I never wait either... I get butter in 1 lb blocks... I whack a big chunk off with my spatula and keep going until the butter is all in. Then let it whip up for as long as it takes to get nice and SMBC-y. I used to be all cautious about it... making sure to wait... not anymore. The stuff is hard to mess up once you know the process.

The only reason I have to wait a bit is because I overload my little KA and if I go too fast, the soupy stuff will slosh out of the bowl all over the place and make a HUGE mess. Also part of why I make sure the butter is soft... then there is no big piece-o-butter getting stuck to the whisk sideways and causing a semi-done SMBC meringue-a-fall all over my counter. I make an 18 egg white batch with 3 lbs of butter in my 5 qt... I like to live on the edge.

Made some last weekend with butter straight from the fridge and the difference in consistency was like night and day. It was much firmer and now I can see how it would hold under fondant. I was skeptical before because it seemed too soft. Lazy is better!