Fresh Herb Butter
Today we’re making herb butter from scratch.
It goes well on warm toast or crackers. Also if you’re making a roasted chicken it’s amazing for that.Here’s what you’ll need:
About ten leaves of fresh sage, a healthy dose of herbes de provence, saome pepper and some oregano, and I used about a cup of fresh heavy cream.
First I finely chopped the sage and simmered the sage and herbes de provence with the heavy cream for a bit, until the flavors were infused in the fat from the cream.
Then I strained the mixture in a fine strainer so that the big pieces got separated out, then refrigerated the herb cream overnight.
Next comes the churning process. I used my KitchenAid mixer. You’ll need to use the whisk attachment at a high speed. First the cream will whip up like whipped cream, but you’ll need to keep going. Right after it looks like the below picture, it will break very soon.
This is what it looks like once it breaks. You’ll have the chunks of butter fat and then the pool of buttermilk at the bottom.
Take the chunks out and put them in some cheese cloth to strain.
And then squeeze out all the moisture.
The next step is washing the butter. Basically this means getting out the buttermilk which will make the butter spoil quicker. When you get it out, the butter will last longer in your fridge without going rancid.
So take a big bowl and fill it with ice water. Dunk your hands in there until it hurts unbearably so that the heat from your hands doesn’t melt the butter, then play with it a bit, mush it around so all the pockets of buttermilk get washed out.
Then repeat the cheesecloth step a few times to get all of the water out.
Well done!
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mallorylance posted this
