Woot, I am back! Sorry for the hiatus, but I have some exciting news: I’ve finished the first draft of my first ebook, and it’s now being looked over by several friends for editing. I’ll be making revisions soon, so hopefully that won’t take long, and then I can actually publish it and list it for sale! Yay! I’m looking at available methods for distribution, and at this time intend to make the book available both here on my site and on Kindle using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service.
Now let’s get into what we’re actually talking about today: compound butter! One of the easiest ways to add flavor to foods is to infuse flavors into a fat and add that fat to the food as an ingredient or topped off at the end before service. Infused oils are a popular option, but a lot of restaurant chefs like using butter that’s been blended with different herbs, seasonings, and other flavorings. Compound butters are a fantastic option for adding flavor when you want to let the flavors melt over something.
I make my compound butters in the processor bowl of my Ninja. You could use a mixer, but you need to let your butter soften more if using the mixer, and then you risk letting it get too soft. Also, this is one case where you’d want to use a high quality butter like an Irish or grass-fed variety. If you add sticky ingredients to your butter like honey or agave, grease the measuring cup with an oiled paper towel before measuring out your sticky ingredient. Once you mix your ingredients together, roll the compound butter up in parchment or wax paper and refrigerate at least 4 hours so flavors can infuse.
Sundried Tomato Butter:
¼ c. olive oil
6-8 sundried tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp. or 2 cloves garlic, minced
plucked leaves from 10-12 sprigs of parsley
2 basil leaves
1 ½ sticks, 6 oz., 12 tbsp., ¾ c. butter
Guacamole Butter:
1 avocado
1 tbsp. lime juice
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. or 2 cloves of garlic, minced
plucked leaves from 10-12 sprigs of cilantro
1 ½ sticks, 6 oz., 12 tbsp., ¾ c. butter
Cinnamon Honey Butter:
¼ c. honey
2 tbsp. cinnamon
2 sticks, 8 oz., 1 c. butter
Here are three basic recipes for compound butters. Anything that features solid ingredients like the sundried tomato or guacamole butters should have all the other ingredients processed first until a fairly uniform paste develops. Then add the butter and process again until fairly smooth, occasionally scraping down the sides of the processor with a rubber spatula as needed. Any recipe that doesn’t feature chunky ingredients like the cinnamon honey butter can be processed all at once until smooth. You could add salt to any of these recipes, just be sure to adjust the amount of salt in your dish to compensate.
If you don’t have a processor, you could use a blender to form your flavoring paste, then use a mixer to combine your flavorings with your butter. If your mixture gets too soft before fully combined, pop out the beaters, toss them in the bowl, and stick the whole bowl in the freezer for a few minutes until everything firms up again, then continue mixing. Don’t try to build your full recipe in the blender, though.
Also, I recommend plucking leaves from your herbs rather than chopping them because the stems don’t always break down during processing, and it’s less awkward to have a parsley leaf stuck in your teeth than to have a parsley stem stabbing you in the gums.
But what about how to use these butters once you’ve made them? Animal proteins like beef, chicken, and pork take the sundried tomato butter well, especially if you’re grilling. The guacamole butter is great on any dish with Mexican flavors, especially seafood. And you can use the cinnamon honey butter on everything from rolls to sweet potatoes. You could even swap the regular butter in my biscuit recipe for an equal amount of the cinnamon honey style (just don’t put gravy over sweet biscuits, that would be gross).
I just made some butters this weekend for Mother’s Day, and smothered some strip steaks with the sundried tomato recipe, and some sweet potatoes with the cinnamon honey version, and it was delicious. I hope you guys enjoy whipping up your own compound butters at home. Please leave your thoughts in a comment below, or get in touch with me directly by filling out the form on the contact page.
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